Redemption Rum Cask Finished Rye Review
Redemption Rum Cask Finished Rye ReviewWhere to buy Redemption Rum Cask Finished Rye — compare online retailers and find local stores near you.
WHERE TO BUY — ONLINE & LOCAL
Quick Facts
Is This For Me?
You already like the 95/5 MGP rye backbone but want it rounded off; you enjoy tropical, raisiny sweetness sitting on top of rye spice; you build a lot of stirred cocktails and want a rye that carries its own sugar; or you want a cask-finished whiskey without paying cask-finished prices.
You want an obvious rum bomb — several reviewers report only a faint rum note and one says it dominates, so the influence is genuinely inconsistent batch to batch. The body reads medium-to-thin, and Breaking Bourbon flagged the finish as "off-tasting, vinegary" on Batch 1. Critic scores range from 2.5/5 to 4.1/5, which is a wide spread for one bottle.
Flavor Profile at a Glance
What It Tastes Like
Nose
Brown sugar and molasses first, then vanilla and clove over dried fruit, with an unexpected tropical fruit lift — mango and ripe plum — that the base rye simply does not have.
Palate
Rye spice arrives early — allspice and white pepper — then dried raisin and rum-soaked cake, with oak and a little leather sitting underneath.
Finish
Cinnamon and golden raisin fading into tannic oak. Length is genuinely disputed — "very long" to one reviewer, "quick" and "fleeting" to two others.
Best Ways to Enjoy
Neat
Workable at 94 proof, and softer than the standard 95/5 rye, but this is the setting where the disputed finish shows up most plainly.
With Water
A drop or two opens the fruit. Go further and it collapses — one reviewer describes a "razor thin line" past which it loses all character.
On Ice
Fine, though the chill mutes exactly the tropical sweetness the rum casks were brought in to add.
Cocktail
The consensus home for this bottle. Four separate reviewers land on cocktails as where it does its best work.
Cocktail Scores
Price & Value
This is the cheap end of cask finishing, and that is the honest case for it. A finished American whiskey usually asks $60 and up; this sits in the mid-forties and gives you a real secondary maturation in Jamaican and Barbadian rum wood rather than a marketing line. The catch is that the base liquid is the same widely available MGP 95/5 that a dozen brands bottle, so you are paying roughly a $15 premium over the standard expression for the finish alone. Whether that is good value depends entirely on how much rum character your particular bottle picked up — and on the evidence, that varies. For the wider field of cask-finished bottles at every price, see our finished rye whiskey collection.
Bottle Transparency
- DistilleryDistilled at MGP of Indiana, Lawrenceburg — disclosed openly by the brand and confirmed by every independent source we checked. Redemption is a non-distiller producer owned by Deutsch Family Wine & Spirits.
- Grain95% rye, 5% malted barley — MGP's standard high-rye recipe, published by the brand.
- MaturationNew charred oak for the primary maturation, then a minimum of three months in ex-Caribbean rum casks sourced from Jamaica and Barbados. No age statement; reviewers estimate four-plus years in the primary barrel.
- Finishing casksSupplied through a collaboration with Plantation Rum (since renamed Planteray). Early releases carried "Plantation Rum Cask Finish" on the label; current bottles read simply "Rum Cask Finished." Same cask programme, same proof.
- BatchingReleased in numbered batches — at least three to date (Batch 1, March 2020; Batch 2, 2021; Batch 3 thereafter). The label does not always make the batch obvious, and reviewer impressions differ noticeably between them.
- FiltrationNon-chill filtered and natural colour, per the bottle's own back label and Whiskybase's record.
Full Review: Redemption Rum Cask Finished Rye
Redemption does not distil. It buys MGP's 95% rye, 5% malted barley whiskey — the same liquid underneath a large share of the American rye shelf — and blends it. That is stated plainly on the brand's own materials rather than hidden, which is more than can be said for several competitors. The Rum Cask Finish takes that base, already a straight rye, and gives it at least three months in ex-Caribbean rum barrels from Jamaica and Barbados, supplied through a collaboration with Plantation Rum. The stated logic is that the Barbadian casks bring richness up front and the Jamaican ones bring fruit on the back end. Bottled at 94 proof.
The Fruit Is Real. The Rum Is Negotiable.
Where our sources agree is fruit. Apricot, persimmon, mango, ripe plum, sultana and golden raisins, guava, stewed cherries, fruitcake — tropical and dried fruit turn up in nearly every set of notes we read, and they are plainly not coming from a 95/5 rye on its own. That is the finish working. It is also what separates this bottle from the standard Redemption Straight Rye, which is a much drier, spicier pour.
Where they disagree, sharply, is how much rum you actually taste. The Whiskey Jug found "no big rum note" and only caught a concrete one right at the end of the finish. Distiller's own reviewer had the opposite experience entirely, calling the rum "the dominant force in this dram, overtaking the whiskey at times." Both were tasting Batch 2. That is not a difference in palate sensitivity; that is batch variation, and it is the single most important thing to know before buying. If you want a rum-finished rye where the rum is unmistakably in charge, Angel's Envy Rum Cask Finished Rye remains the reference point, for better and worse.
Notable Absence: No Dill
MGP's 95/5 is the mash bill most associated with the dill note that defines modern American rye for many drinkers. It appears in exactly none of our sources here. Caraway does show up — the brand names it, and Distiller's reviewer finds "grain spice" — but the herbal-dill signature that people either love or cannot stand in high-rye whiskeys is simply absent, buried under rum sweetness. Read that as a feature or a loss depending on which camp you are in, but it is a genuine finding rather than an oversight.
Where the Criticism Lands
Breaking Bourbon's Batch 1 review is the harshest and the most specific: an enjoyable palate that transitions into an "off-tasting, vinegary, and ethanol affair" on the finish, flawed enough to keep it off their recommended list. Later batches drew warmer responses — The Whiskey Wash scored it 7/10 in 2022 and 8/10 in 2025 — which suggests the blending genuinely improved. But the Whiskybase community, rating Batch 1, sits at 81.67/100 across five ratings, and Distiller's crowd of sixty-three lands at 3.48/5. Nobody in our pool calls this a great whiskey. Several call it an interesting one.
Our Verdict
A legitimately interesting finished rye at a fair price, held back by inconsistency it does not advertise. Buy it for the tropical-and-raisin character that the base rye cannot produce, and buy it primarily to mix — that is where four separate reviewers independently placed it, and where the disputed finish matters least. Do not buy it expecting the rum to announce itself, because on a meaningful share of bottles it does not. If cocktails are the plan, our best rye whiskeys for cocktails guide has the field.
Community Tasting Notes
This score rests on ten independent scored sources and about 74 named crowd ratings in total — a usable base, but not a deep one. Remove the single largest pool (Distiller's sixty-three reviews) and the figure only moves from 3.4 to 3.3, so it is stable. The bigger caveat is spread, not size: individual critic scores run from 2.5/5 to 4.1/5 on what is nominally the same bottle, and those critics were tasting different numbered batches.
Top Reported Flavors
Rating Distribution
🎁 Whiskey Review Rewards
$10 Gift Voucher — Every Review
Write a real tasting review and we'll send you a $10 digital gift voucher for barware and whiskey accessories on the store. Your honest notes help fellow rye lovers discover new favorites.
"At RyeCentral, we never pay for positive reviews — honest, unbiased opinions matter."
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Genuine tropical and dried-fruit character the base 95/5 rye cannot produce
- One of the cheapest real cask finishes in American whiskey, around $45
- Non-chill filtered and natural colour, stated on the label
- Distillery of origin (MGP) disclosed openly rather than obscured
- Four independent reviewers land on it as a strong cocktail rye
- 94 proof gives it enough structure to survive mixing
Cons
- Rum influence is wildly inconsistent — "no big rum note" vs "the dominant force," same batch
- Breaking Bourbon found the Batch 1 finish "off-tasting, vinegary" and a potential dealbreaker
- Critic scores span 2.5/5 to 4.1/5, an unusually wide range for one expression
- Medium-to-thin body; "thin upfront" and "medium-light" recur
- Roughly $15 more than the standard Redemption Rye for a finish that may barely register
- Batch number is not prominently marked, so you cannot tell which release you are buying
Frequently Asked Questions
❓ What proof is Redemption Rum Cask Finished Rye?
❓ What is the mash bill?
❓ What kind of rum casks is it finished in?
❓ Is it the same as Redemption Plantation Rum Cask Finish?
❓ How old is it?
❓ Does it actually taste like rum?
❓ Is it a straight rye whiskey?
Quality You Can Trust
RyeCentral Lab
Tasted it? Get ranked for it.
Every review earns Lab points — climb the ladder from All Rye to Rye Legend. Your first review earns 100 points and $10 store credit — five stars or one.