Whiskey Review: Oceanside Odysea Double Oak Bourbon

I was visiting a friend on Florida’s east coast recently when I realized that there was a SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch scheduled for that Saturday. I promptly bribed my friend into heading over to watch the launch by promising a trip to a local distillery tucked between the Banana River and Coco Beach. That’s where we found the Oceanside Distillery, and between the bourbon flights and the rocket launches, a couple bottles of their spirits found their way onto my flight home.

History

When we do these reviews, most bottles have quite a bit of distillery history that we can pull from… but unfortunately, there’s not much available on Oceanside. In fact, the only history from their website is the following blurb:

The story of Oceanside doesn’t begin with 100-year-old recipes, or generations of family in the distilling business.  It started with two brothers and a dream of making craft spirits on Florida’s Space Coast using the very best Florida and regionally sourced ingredients, the best oak barrels, and some of the most technically advanced distilling equipment. 

I was also able to find a really great article from SpaceCoastLiving.com, where owner Ron Foleno talks about his three year journey of research, training, and planning to open the doors of his dream project. After reading that article, I got in touch with Foleno and spoke directly with him about the history of his distillery.

Foleno’s brother, Lorenzo, had over 15 years of experience in distillation and was an integral force behind the distillery. Together, the brothers decided to go into business together and create Oceanside Distillery. The distillery was TTB licensed in 2018, and the immediately began distilling spirits.

Before transitioning into the spirits industry, Ron Foleno had owned a commercial design and construction business and actually built the building that houses the distillery and tasting room. During the first two years Ron learned the entire process of fermentation and distillation from Lorenzo, while Oceanside produced over 100 barrels of Bourbon, Run, Gin, and Vodka.

Sadly, Lorenzo passed away in early 2020 leaving Ron to carry the torch of the distillery alone. As he told SpaceCoastLiving.com, “this project is like my second career and my new responsibilities of wearing many hats (as the CEO, manager, brand and logo designer, chief tour guide, distillery chemist, and marketing guy) have been challenging, but I really enjoy every aspect of this venture.”

Product

• Learn More: What Is Bourbon Whiskey?

When the distillery was founded, Ron aimed to use high quality ingredients in all of their spirits. All of their whiskeys use locally grown Florida corn, earning a Fresh From Florida designation from the Department of Agriculture. That corn makes up at least 51% of the mashbill, as is required for a spirit to be labeled a bourbon. The rest of the mashbill is not specifically known, but often rye and malted barley are used to round out the recipe. 

Those grains are milled, mixed together, and added to the mash tun with some of Florida’s finest water that has been triple filtered (to remove any extra gator flavoring). This mixture is cooked to convert the starches into sugars and then fermented by adding yeast to the mixture in a 550-gallon fermenter. Oceanside takes pride in the truly small batch nature of their process and tools, which only allows them to make five barrels of whiskey at a time.

After distillation, the raw white whiskey is added to new, charred American oak barrels from the Kelvin Cooperate in Kentucky. The whiskey is left to age in these initial barrels for 24 months. 

At this point, the spirit is ready to become their Odysea Florida Bourbon Whiskey. However, this is a double oak spirit — so before bottling, it will be transferred to a French oak barrel for another eight months. Once the whiskey is ready, the end result from each barrel is proofed down to 90 and bottled. There is no blending or mixing — every bottle they produce is truly a small batch bourbon.

Packaging

Oceanside is a newer distillery, so I can’t blame them for leveraging a fairly standard bottled design. The bottle is styled more like a wine bottle than a whiskey, with a slender round body, rounded shoulder, and a medium length neck.

There is a large label on the front of the bottle with the distillery and product name. It’s a large, dark (almost black) label with white and gold lettering. It also contains all of the important information about the spirit in that bottle — including the batch number of your bourbon (I happen to have purchased a bottle from batch 4).

The label is relatively simple and designed. Surprisingly, the only Florida or ocean iconography on it is a nautilus shell. Given that you are drinking a product distilled and bottled on the Space Coast, I would have imagined that more of that would have been pulled into the design — especially given the bold nautical mural that adorns the wall of the distillery.

Most newer distilleries tend to have simplified bottles and labels. Usually, the owner / distiller is doing it all (just as Ron Foleno described of his role at Oceanside). So I can cut them some slack on design. My one and only real beef with this bottle has to do with the stopper: it appears to be a real cork, which is great… but it’s topped with cheap plastic, which is not great. There are teeth around the outside of the plastic, and every time I open the bottle, I have a very negative tactile response.

Neat

Like any good Florida product, the first thing I smell is bold orange scent. There are other notes of oak and sweet vanilla, although they’re not nearly as robust or powerful as I had expected. I typically anticipate more of a bold aroma from a double oaked bourbon, but this seems to be a rather standard presentation. 

But the aroma was clearly a little deceptive, since first sip of bourbon gives you oak for days. That combination of American oak and French oak barrels gives the spirit distinct notes of orange and vanilla (just like we got on the nose), as well as some nice straight oak wood tones. It’s all supported by a bit of cinnamon spice, with butterscotch and vanilla adding a touch of sweetness. The finish has a slight pepper note with just a hint of black coffee.

Generally speaking, taken neat, this is a very smooth bourbon with very little heat — great bold flavors, but ones that don’t come across as overwhelming. After the first few sips, I already anticipate that most of this bottle will be consumed neat once the review is complete.

On Ice

Well, I was wrong, I might be drinking the rest of this bottle on a big sphere of ice. 

The ice opens up the flavors profile and lays them all out on a bed of velvet. The sweetness comes to the forefront with a mixing of vanilla and butterscotch, and the oak becomes more mellow and seems to soften from the strong flavors when neat. 

The thing I really like on the rocks is that the spices really seem to rebalance. There is little to no black pepper now, but the coffee and cinnamon are both stronger. 

If it were appropriate to drink bourbon for breakfast, this might be the perfect drink. Maybe I need to try this mixed with a shot of espresso. 

Cocktail (Old Fashioned)

Given the orange notes in the bourbon, I was excited to try this in an old fashioned.

But the reality is, this is not the best old fashioned that I’ve ever had. The heavy oak flavor seems to cause the flavors to be out of balance. 

That said, it’s not the worst old fashioned I’ve ever had, either. It’s a smooth cocktail with a lot of flavors. The orange is very bright and works great, but you also get a ton of the oak which does unfortunately tend to clash with the bitters. There are also still undertones of coffee and pepper, which add some richness and depth. All of the sweetness of this drink comes from the sugar rather than any sweeter flavors, which is not surprising based on what we’ve seen so far. 

Given how good this bourbon is neat and on the rocks, I could not (at least not in good conscience) recommend using this in a cocktail.

Fizz (Mule)

This is just alright, maybe slightly tilted towards bad. 

Unfortunately, the strong oak flavors that caused problems with the old fashioned are back to causing problems here, too. The cocktail tastes like the ginger beer and the bourbon are butting heads, clashing instead of enhancing and balancing each other out.

The one positive thing is that the flavor of the bourbon does not get hidden by the ginger beer. You can still pick out many of the individual flavors of the bourbon… they just do not play well with the rest of the components in this drink.

Overall Rating

When I first found Oceanside Distillery, I didn’t expect to find such a good bourbon. That’s not a knock on Oceanside — it’s more about on happening to find a randomly good distillery while primarily going to watch a giant metal tube full of fuel get yeeted into the void of space.

This bourbon shines when you are drinking it neat or on the rocks. It can make a decent cocktail, but the bold flavors can cause some issues with balance… so I would personally recommend sticking to as-is or on the rocks, myself.

The care and focus taken by the Foleno brothers while establishing the distillery is clear in their product. I’m really impressed that so much flavor has been imbued in this bourbon in less than three years. And during my visit I tasted their base Odysea, this double oak, wheated, and rye whiskey — while not all are getting the full review treatment, they were all memorable and well worth the price of admission. 

Next time I’m in Florida, I’m definitely going to do my best to stop by and taste new spirits (like the soon to released whiskey that has been finished in Oloroso Sherry Cask that we imported from Cadiz, Spain) created by Ron, who clearly is distilling in honor of brother.

All reviews are evaluated within the context of their specific spirit classification as specified above. Click here to check out similar spirits we have reviewed.

Overall Rating: 4/5
A bold double oak bourbon with enough flavor to launch your taste buds into orbit.