While this is quite a decent sip, there is nothing outstanding about it to recommend it. Mild and smooth, oaky and with that familiar bourbon barrel-char and brown sugar flavors… it still doesn’t inspire me to drink more. I’m also not crazy about the nose – too composty for me. Maybe it’s the sulfur?
Not particularly brash, but also not particularly complex or interesting. The oak comes through, but without much vanilla to balance it. There aren’t any higher fruity notes either. Mostly a muddy, indistinct “bourbon-ness”.
Overall an extremely smooth, unchallenging dram. After a week drinking fiery young bourbons, I find that this one is miles ahead in sophistication. While it doesn’t yield many exciting flavors or anything unexpected, it is eminently drinkable and very satisfying.
Not impressed. It has more flavors going for it than your average bottom-shelf whiskey, but its brash young grain and overbearing corn sweetness are just too much to recommend it anywhere but the cocktail glass.
Tasty in its way, and (I would hazard) better than some cheaper bourbons. However, with those fake corn syrup flavors – almost reminiscent of aspartane or other non-sugar sweeteners – I can’t say I would ever be in the mood for it.
Are you going to be upset and go ranting about the unfairness of it all? Of course. Did you deserve this outcome? In my opinion, yes you did. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this happens very often, if at all… most of the Scotch brand names are fiercely protective of their heritage and staunchly ethical about the quality of their final product. In my opinion, though, it’s just as likely a series of events as the “nightmare scenario” in Forbes’s article, and personally, I think it’s a good thing.
Why painstakingly age expensive liquid in secondhand barrels for decades to coax out faint flavors like black cherry when you can just add that flavor straight to the whiskey! (Happy April Fool’s Everyone!)
Overall not as harsh and young-tasting as the principal Jack Daniel’s bottling. Whatever happens to those barrels up in the upper floors of the warehouse, it makes for a better product in the bottle. However, in my totally biased opinion, this is not $45 worth of whiskey. It also doesn’t change my mind about American whiskey. Oh well.
Right away there is big peat, in that briny, smoked-fish style. Smokehouse fumes, sugarcane, vanilla extract, and a pervading young woodiness – freshly-hewn green wood, dripping sap.
I keep hearing two phrases around the whisky and whiskey community these days. One is “Blends can be excellent!” (Of course, one can also say “Fast Food can be excellent!” but it rarely is. That aside…) The other is “90-95% of the whisky sold internationally is in blends.”…