Smells of bourbon cherries, peach iced tea, and orange peel. The taste is sweet and fruity with flavors of cherry, tangerine, and peach each vying for attention. The finish is long with a moderate burn, featuring notes of apricot, cherry stems, orange zest, and a hint of oak. Overall, it’s sweet and almost syrupy, but still strong enough to drink neat. The fruit flavors are well balanced, and the bourbon notes are nice but I can’t help but wonder if using real bourbon as a base would add a nuanced fullness to the flavor.
A “SoCo Lime” (essentially an amaretto sour made with Southern Comfort) is sweet and fruity with orange, peach, and cherry up front with notes of lime and bubblegum underneath. Very sweet yet very smooth, an ideal cocktail for cutting with seltzer.
A SoCo Margarita, essentially the same as above plus triple sec, is a little bit smoother and well rounded, though with a bit of alcoholic bite in the finish.
A “SoCo Coca-Cola with lime” is actually quite enjoyable with the fruity notes of the SoCo, the lime, and the cola flavors balance each other out perfectly and the end result is remarkably smooth.
A SoCo Manhattan is smooth and layered with notes of cherry, bourbon, and smoked orange peel, very delicious, though it borders on the edge being of too sweet.
A SoCo Old Fashioned, essentially SoCo with bitters as I didn’t add any other sweeteners, is fruity and sweet, with delicious layers of orange, cherry, peach, bourbon barrel, and apricot. It does have a bit of bite the end though from the high ABV.
SoCo and lemonade is quite refreshing and delicious in its simplicity. Orange, peach, and cherry up front with tart lemon underneath and just a hint of oak in the finish.
SoCo and peach tea is smooth and very peachy, with iced tea and subtle oak notes in the finish. I used “subtly sweet” here but it still feels a bit too sweet for my personal preference as an iced tea, however a dash of lemon juice greatly improves the balance.
An Arnold Palmer mix of the tea and lemonade with SoCo is deliciously smooth and complex. The fruit forward notes of the SoCo plus the added peach from the tea layered up front, then lemony, oaky, smoky smooth tea in the finish. Superbly balanced at 2oz SoCo, 3oz tea, and 3oz lemonade.