Bourbon Season 2015-2016 in Review

KNOB CREEK 120.

Started off the season with this selection from Jim Beam.
Big, bold in your face flavor largely due to the  #4 char beam uses on their barrels and the 120 proof.
Everybody liked it.
Aged nine years.
120 proof.
Readily available.
Decent price point.
All in all a nice offering.
I'd stay away from the 100 proof offering.
A few dollars more gets you 20% more bourbon.
So why not go with that?
Always bear in mind, 1 drink of 120 proof bourbon = one and a half drinks of 80 proof liquor.
So two drinks = really three and so on.
Tread with caution when dealing with high proof  bourbons, in particular the smooth tasting ones.
More on that in a second.

RUSSELL'S RESERVE 110.

This was next up.
Wild Turkey Product.
Quite frankly one of the best bourbons going.
Easily one of the best four or five bourbons I've ever had the pleasure to sample.
I can't imagine what the 18 year old offering of this would be like.
No age statement.
110 proof.
Smooth as silk.
Tread carefully.
If you ever see it?
The bottle without the 10 on the label.
Grab it.
You'll be glad you did.
I've seen it in a liquor store twice.
Walked out with it both times.
It's of the "Are you sure you got the right one?" variety.
Yeah.
Pretty sure I did.
My buddy Christian got us the first bottle, I snagged us one later.

EAGLE RARE

Split this Buffalo Trace offering with my buddy Dave.
Pretty much we were running out of things to try and we wanted to sample this.
Great reviews etc.
So we had a few pours off of it and split the rest.
To be honest?
I didn't see what all the fuss was about.
10 year old.
90 proof.
Good, but it just pales in comparison to the Russell's 110.
Then again?
Most bourbons would.
Dave liked it more than I did.
To each his own we say.
I'd still like to try the 17 year old version of this.

BOOKERS

Another Jim Beam product.
It also of the # four heavy char barrel.
First of the "Barrel proof bourbons".
Each bottle is a lil different on the proof.
The bottle I have yet to finish off says 130.8 proof.
Almost 65% alcohol so be careful.
A pour or two will probably be plenty.
Really liked this at the start of the year and then my enthusiasm kinda waned and then picked back up later.
The trick for me was to use plenty of ice, as in: "You think thats enough? No it's not, the ice should be dome shaped in your glass, there, that's enough, now stir it up real good and let it sit for a good while, seriously, 10 or 15 minutes, don't even think about a sip."
I guess for me, if it's going to be a # four char on the barrel?
Let it age a while longer.
Straight from the barrel, no filtering.
Big bold flavor with a high proof what you want?
Here ya go.
Christian snagged this.
Multiple times :-).
I got one.
Come to think of it?
There's more bottles of Booker's sitting around this neck of the woods than there are of anything else.

PURE KENTUCKY

The find of the season for me.
This and one other gem (more on that later) stood out.
Willett offering.
107 proof.
Smooth as silk with a lil spiciness of the rye at the finish.
Liked it.
A lot.
 As I do almost all of the Willett offerings.
I don't care if they do get their juice from Heaven Hill as has been speculated.
They can barell it, store it, age it and bottle it all they want if this is the end result of the process. It's not like they are the newbies on the block at doing this, they have been doing it for 50+ years, so I'd say they know what they are doing.
I wanna find ways to work this into summer cocktails if at all possible.
Usually prefer my bourbon on crushed ice in the winter.
This one has me wanting to explore different possibilities.
107 proof and smooth, yeah, let's make some cocktails with that and see wat people think.
My first exposure to this was the bottle dave bought, later on, Christian bought himself one as well.

NOAHS MILL and RUSSELL'S RESERVE 10 YEAR.

Noah's Mill is one of my favorite Bourbons going.
Around 114 proof.
Thought to be 12-14 years old.
Willett offering.
Smooth as silk.
Remember, careful the high proof smooth stuff.
Staple for me for two years now.
Thats saying a lot.

Russell's Reserve 10 year old.
Wild Turkey obviously.
Kind of a disappointment at 90 proof.
It's fine, there are plenty worse bourbons for more money.
Dave drank more of it than I did the past two years and he said he's movin on from it next year.
Just get sick of the same ones after a while I guess when there's so much good bourbon available.
Anyway, it's a good bourbon, it just makes us want the 110 proof at this point.

We've already discussed the Pure Kentucky.

PAPPY VAN WINKLE

15 year old.
107 proof.
Finally, we meet a legend.
Buddy Dave won a raffle for it.
So he says lol.
Buffalo Trace Product.
Wheated.
Which before this season I thought was my favorite.
Not much to say.
The best bourbon I've ever had in my life.
I'd like to do a blind side by side taste test with it and Elijah Craig 18 year old someday.
Already talked about both Russell's and the Pure Kentucky.

BLANTON'S

Had this a long time ago.
Back in mid-eighties when Rob brought it to the house one evening.
Had a lil sample bottle a few years back.
Didn't think much of it at the time to be honest.
This sampling however?
Quite enjoyable.
Really just wanted the bottle lol.
Keep in mind we had been having pours of anything between 107 - 134 proof, with the exception of the eagle rare 90 proof, which by this time was a lil bit ago.
This seemed sweeter than I remembered.
Went down a lil too easy lol.
Between the two of us (not at liberty to say who, but she and I both know :-) we just about finished it in one sitting.
Christian didn't care for it that much.
Buffalo Trace Product.
92 proof.
The original Single Barrel Bourbon.
Suffice it to say, after all the high proof offerings we had been trying?
This went down really easy.
Very enjoyable.
I can see what all the fuss is about with this one.

JOHNNY DRUM

I was hoping to like it more, I really was.
Willett product.
Good reviews.
I've liked all their other offering to date so why not?
This season seemed to be about sticking to the high proofs.
This offering here is 101 proof.
I liked it.
Others did as well.
I just happened to have liked several of the others a lot more.
Earthy? Smokey?
How they can charcoal filter it and still call it bourbon is beyond me.
I might get some more someday but if I do?
It's because I wanted something different.

HENRY MCKENNA

This was the other gem that stuck out to me.

Plus its the best picture I got of a bottle all season.

Heaven Hill product.

I like the Elijah Craig and Larceny offerings from them and thats about it.

Or so I thought.

I had this one with Rob Morrison way back in the day as well.

New look, new bottle, new packaging.

10 year old, 100 proof Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey.

Bottled in Bond (look it up, I'm not going into all the details here).

Hard to go wrong.

Smooth.

Goes easy over ice.

Taste great.

The guy at the store said the owner loves this stuff.

I can certainly see why.

To sum up this years bourbon season 2015-16.

It was all about variety.

Trying different things.

Forgeting about having a go to bourbon.

Ended up sticking with mostly the high proof offerings but there were a few exceptions.

The two "gems", Pure Kentucky and Henry Mckenna were thought to be so largely because they exceeded expectations. 

Greatly exceeded.

Which is great lol. 

I'd rather buy something with low expectations and have them exceeded than vice versa.

Thats not to say they were the best bourbons we tried all year.

That order to me would be:

Pappy 15 year old.

Russell's Reserve 110.

Bookers.

But having different people all pitch in and try different things?

That's really the way to go.

That way nobody's out a bunch of money for something they didn't like etc.

Plus everybody gets to sample everyone else's purchase as well.

Simply put?

It was a really, really good year for bourbon drinking around here.

Thanks everybody.