Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 8

500mL bottle, from random liquor store in CT, sitting upright on the warm shelf at 8 years old, drunk 11/19/25. As pictured.
Well, that's not great. The cork comes out with literally zero noise and the beer is very nearly flat.
Doesn't smell bad or oxidized, though. Just a lot of grape with a hint of bourbon and oak. Fruity, juicy, lots of mineral. Some maltiness even. No alcohol or big acidity, though there's light acetic and moderate lactic.
Well, just goes to show the resilience of barrel aged beer. Almost no carbonation (not none, though, but incredibly low), and yet it's in fine shape. Very wine-like, with guarded acetic and rounded lactic acidity. Soft bourbon and soft, buttery oak with a chewy texture remaining somehow. You get a good deal of fruitiness, but everything is so well-homogenized at this point that you can't even definitively say there are cherries or spices in this.