A fast-baced Bourbon review – because I realise I haven’t reviewed all that much Bourbon, and each year there seems to be even more of the stuff about. This is my first attempt to rectify that. I’ve a few other samples to get to, but first up is Buffalo Trace Distillery’s Colonel E.H. Taylor, Jr. Single Barrel Bourbon, which is 11 years (and 7 months) old. It’s named after a founding father of the bourbon industry.
Colour: Dark amber. On the nose: A rather earthy, pungent sweetness at first. Densely packed aromas, rather than a slap-you-silly sugar hit. Hits of creamy cheese – real light stuff.
In the mouth: you know, it’s not all that distant from a very sweet Scotch whisky, this one. There’s a complexity here that goes way beyond the initial oak and molasses. Of course, a bundle of intense chewy raisins. The oak spices that lead into a kind of tannin sensation. Lemon. Stewed fruits, blackberries, elderberries. A real vegetative note in the background. Whizz it around some more and some interesting aniseed notes whistle through. A curiously bitter finish that’s almost tobacco like. That bitterness isn’t quite integrated with the sweetness well enough for my particular tastes, but I can be a funny one at times.
You’d be looking to pay around $80 for that. I’m not quite sure if it’s available in the UK (free market, my arse).
