My package store here on the Southside had two bottles of this sitting on the shelf like nobody told the buyer what they’d gotten in. No lottery, no allocation list, no line out the door at 8 a.m. — just Old Forester’s newest 117 Series release, the High Angels’ Share Rye, quietly parked between the bourbon and the well whiskey. That’s usually a sign a release either isn’t very good, or nobody’s figured out yet that it is. This one is the second kind, and if your local shop is anywhere near as sleepy as mine, it’s worth a look before word gets out.
What the 117 Series Is Actually For
Old Forester treats its 117 Series as the R&D notebook nobody has to get approved by committee — small-batch, 375ml, ideas that would never make it into the flagship 1920 or Birthday Bourbon lineup. Past releases in the series have played with finishing casks and mash bill tweaks. This one skips finishing barrels entirely and goes after something more fundamental: char level. Old Forester’s standard barrel gets a #4 “alligator” char. High Angels’ Share Rye triples that char time before the rye spirit ever touches the wood.
Triple-Char: Gimmick or Genuine Difference?
More char time means more caramelized wood sugar and more surface area for the spirit to pull tannin and vanillin from over the years in the barrel — but it also means more risk of an ashy, bitter mess if the distillery doesn’t know what it’s doing. I walked in skeptical. Rye already runs hot and peppery on its own; stack an aggressive char on top of that and you can end up with something that tastes like a campfire that got out of hand. That’s not what happened here. The heavier char seems to round off rye’s rougher edges rather than add to them. There’s a sweetness up front I wasn’t expecting — more toffee than smoke — and it holds the 115 proof together instead of getting steamrolled by it.
How It Rates
This isn’t a rye that’s trying to be gentle, and I wouldn’t hand it to someone who’s never had a barrel-proof pour before. But for what it is — a genuine barrel experiment that actually changes the character of the spirit rather than just the marketing copy — it earns its price and then some.
What I’d Light Next To It
Char and toast are the whole story with this rye, so I wanted a cigar that could meet it there instead of fighting it. I landed on a Camacho Triple Maduro — the wrapper leaf is triple-fermented and barn-smoked before it’s rolled, which gives it the same charred, slightly bitter-sweet backbone this rye has. Puff, sip, pause. The cigar’s espresso-and-black-pepper profile locks onto the rye’s clove and toffee almost note for note, and neither one washes the other out. If you want a full-bodied smoke that won’t get bullied by 115 proof, this is the pairing.
Triple-fermented, barn-smoked wrapper leaf with the same charred, toffee-and-espresso backbone as a heavy-char barrel — built to stand up to a barrel-proof rye.
Final Verdict
At around $40 for a 375ml bottle, this isn’t a cheap experiment, but it’s not Blood Oath or Little Book money either — and unlike a lot of small-batch novelty releases, the idea behind it actually shows up in the glass. Old Forester didn’t just triple the char time and hope nobody noticed the bitterness; they built a rye around it. If your shop has it sitting quietly on the shelf like mine did, don’t wait for someone else to figure that out first. Grab it, pour it neat, and let it sit next to something with real char of its own.
Stock up on full-bodied, char-forward cigars from Cigars International to test against your own barrel-proof pours.