Hawaiian Bourbon Duo
Ko’olau & Kauai Bourbons | Various ABV
Time Machines
Better late than never. Summer has fully wound down here in Calgary and it was a weird one.
We had many grey overcast days, cool weather, and rain throughout the summery months and that seemed to drag everyone down. We usually average around 330 sunny days per year, so when weeks on end were grey and cool, it brought down the summer vibes.
As someone who thrives on sunshine, the overcast weather made me far more crankier, agitated, and lethargic. So when looking for a whiskey to pour this summer, I found these two sitting collecting dust on my shelf. I brought both back from a trip to Hawaii in early 2025 and, reaching for them a couple months ago, I was instantly teleported back in time just by the simple act of grabbing the bottle and rubbing the dust off with my t-shirt. More importantly, it’s been about five weeks since I started penning this review and we are fully in the throes of fall, with naked leafless trees, frosty mornings, and winter’s kiss singing in the air. This is a when-I-have-time type of gig after all.
Grabbing these bottles and you’d think I should win a Nobel prize for inventing time travel, instantly teleporting back to our first major international trip with the kids. Back to sandy beaches. Warm moist air. Golden sunsets. Bliss.
We were there for ten days, staying in Honolulu right on the Waikiki beach, a privilege for sure, but also a necessity if you want to maximize the amount of time spent enjoying the location. Especially if you don’t want to spend time figuring out public transportation with a three year old and a six year old in tow.
Sure, we could have gone to more off-the-beaten-path locations, or even less popular islands, but we decided to go all-in. Being February, the weather could be hit-and-miss, but we only had to duck for cover from the torrential sideways rain a few times.
Heck, I’ve got a vivid memory of day eight or so where it was warmly raining and us crazy Canadians went for a swim in the hotel’s outdoor pools, simply because our kids were stir crazy after a few hours in the hotel room during the drizzling deluge. I mean it’s only a warm rain right! But the hotel staff forced us out of the pools because of a risk of lightning and we were forced to scamper back to our rooms. Lo and behold, no lighting came about after I was interrupted in throwing some tight spirals of the old pigskin (American football) to my daughter in the shallows and my son, who was running from the deck and catching the football midair before splashdown in the pool.
That pretty much sums up our trip: kids were awake early so we were almost always the first on the beach, swimming in the tide-broken, protected shores unabated from tourists (like us), and enjoying some private time before the floodgates opened to unapologetically bloated sunseekers, old sycophants in skimpy speedos changing outfit at the beach (seriously, WTF?), and rude, selfish, and inconsiderate types too. We followed that up with day trips around the island to Diamond Head, which the kids still role-play to this day, and four-hour road trips the “long way around” the island; which is hilarious. For me and many others in Canada, a drive like this is nothing because Canada is so vast that a “simple” four-hour drive can mean I haven’t even crossed provincial borders at 120 km/hr average speeds. So ya, it was a nice, casual, simple drive ‘round the circumference of this tiny island. Japanese temples, blowholes, markets, desserts on the beach, watching surfers battle the waves, backseat driving comments from my parents… all fun under the sun!
I think it’s cool how a tactile act can initiate the dredging up of memories long since buried by school deadlines, work stress, and all manner of adult life ‘things’ that ultimately distract from the things that are most important: family and memory-making adventures.
So let’s dive into this pair of off the mainland bourbons shall we?
Review 1/2
Ko’Olau Distillery Old Pali Road Whiskey, Batch 21, 43% ABV
US$55 paid (CAD$80 - GB£47)
Score: 4/10
Some promise.
TL;DR
Itza bourbon!
Nose
Quintessential bourbon. Soft vanillas, gentle sawn oak, generic sweetness, praline nuts, counterpointed with the faintest hints of indistinct baking spices.
Palate
The low-proof theme continues on the palate. Soft vanillas, mild oak, ballpark bubblegum, traces of spiced loaf.
The Dregs
Yawn. This isn’t a slight towards Ko’Olau’s bourbon here but more towards the category. Low proof/strength bourbons generally don’t have a lot of traction to them: simple flavours, short finishes, and general simplicity. So this is par-for-the-course as far as bourbons go, and given the “average” sale price of this whiskey despite the premium location, it's understandable that this whiskey isn’t anywhere close to exceptional.
Regardless, the memories of Hawaii still remained, hard-coded to the bottle rather than the liquid inside.
Score: 4/10
Review 2/2
Kauai Distilling Co. Kapahi Bourbon Whisky, Barrel No. 2018090737-53, Matured for 2 yrs 186 days, Bottled “2021”, 375ml bottle, 46.5% ABV
US$38 paid (CAD$50 - GB£25)
Note: error on the label, stating May 2021 bottling but 2 years, 60 months ageing means bottling in May 2022. This aligns with Kauai’s website where their first ever bottlings were released in “November 2021”.
While their URL doesn’t function on their label, I was able to sleuth out the information on this particular release through a few clicks and a few minutes of perseverance later on their poorly organized site. Which admittedly isn’t much information compared to adjacent releases. Lucky me I guess! So you’re getting no mashbill and no official tasting notes that would inform.
30-GALLON BARRELS 2018090737-53 (Released to HI Market, 2022). Contains our first small barrel, micro aged lots of bourbon in eighteen 30-gallon barrels and was released in the spring of 2022. Considered a straight bourbon this whisky was aged for 2 years and 6 months.
Score: 5/10
Average. In a good way.
TL;DR
Itza bourbon, with a darker twist
Nose
Dark, roasty and broody; quite the antithesis to its compatriot in this head-to-head. Dark chocolate, dark rye loaf, heavily spiced molasses cake, dark roast coffee. Lots of spicy type notes going on making me think there might be some rye involved in the mashbill?
Palate
While the nose is mega punchy, the palate enters nice and gentle before ramping up. And boy oh boy, is that ramp up nice! The initial soft and light, but indistinct, sweet entry takes a full second before bringing in baked spice loaf with brown sugar crumble on top, firm spices, and toasted oak. The finish is short and drying, reminding me of 80% dark chocolate and dark roast lungo espresso. Water tamps down the flavours while keeping the spices: not ideal.
The Dregs
The sweet and bitter aspects are an interesting interplay and make me want to refill my glass compared to the sickly sweet and one-dimensional bourbon typica. The flavours and ramp-up experience are big winning points for me, but an offset here is the short finish and rather high price when extrapolated to a full size 70 or 75cl bottle. Couple this with the slightly erroneous fact that the corn is grown on Hawaii and distillation and maturation is completed on the west coast of the USA, and we arrive at the fact that this whiskey is more of a mainland-style and heritage bourbon rather than a true island-heritage bourbon. I know; economics are what they are, but I feel that contract distilling on the mainland from Hawaiian-grown corn is a shortcut, which probably describes this whisky. A shortcut. Grab the Hawaiian name, hide it behind terrible website obscurity, crank out average bourbon from contract-based distilling, and market it back as something special.
Score: 5/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. BB
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