What is there not to love about this almost-annual release? What bourbon fan would taste this and object to any of its qualities? Release after incredible release, it confirms what great bourbon should taste like.
To be fair, at least this is a great whiskey winning the top prize. However, given the number of awards won by the whiskey named after a suffer-no-fools distiller, these competitions are boring for everyone except Buffalo Trace.
If you’re expecting a ready-to-drink Manhattan, it’s not quite that. Wondering if it might be, I fridge-chilled it, poured it into a chilled glass and garnished it with an expressed orange peel.
If you haven’t had honey drizzled on a pizza, you’re missing out. Hot honey is even better, as in spiced up rather than heated.
Personally, I like 8-year-old whiskey, which I think is kind of a sweet spot for bourbon. But we’ve got older stuff, including a barrel from the first lot that I ever bought. It’s 16 years old and it’s 148 proof.
“Oh, we’ve had people argue about it for sure,” Mandy Vance, manager of the Private Barrel Selection process at Four Roses, told me a few years ago about a pick. They generally work it out, though, because they’re having fun.”
Despite lacking complexity, this is an easy-sipping tequila that’s ideal for newcomers who are finally convinced to go slowly with tequila rather than shoot it.
Immediately, I thought of Heaven Hill’s bourbons, which have only 10 percent rye in the mashbill but come off as nicely spicy in the glass. Then Veach cited Old Fitzgerald, a wheated bourbon that has terrific spice notes despite having no rye.
The nose is rich and complex, combining dried flowers, ripe raspberries and blackberries and whiskey-wetted oak.
If you’re even semi-American whiskey savvy, you recognize the phrase in this bottle’s name: Cask Strength Bottled-In-Bond Bourbon. Well, it’s true: no water was added to achieve 100 proof; just the mingling of sub- and above-100-proof casks to attain that essential proof for BIB.
