Advent Posts

Four Roses Single Barrel

Back to Four Roses today, and another single barrel offering. However, given that this appears to be one of their core range I can't help feeling that it's missing the whole point of a single barrel bottling - the uniqueness and individuality of the barrel. Four Roses Single Barrel is a 50% ABV bourbon ...

Eagle Rare 10 Year Old

Eagle Rare is a single barrel bourbon from Buffalo Trace. It's produced at two different ages - 10 and 17 years - with the older of the two being part of Buffalo's Antique Collection. There's always a slight hazard in reviewing single barrel spirits, because inevitably every barrel has it's own variations. That's the whole ...

1792 Small Batch

The 1792 Distillery is one of those confusing operations that seems to use several names for the same product - although I suspect the truth of the matter is rather that the name has changed over time, and different sources have updated at different times. The bourbon in question was initially launched as Ridgewood ...

Noah's Mill Bourbon

Noah's Mill is one of a number of whiskies produced by Kentucky Bourbon Distillers, a Bardstown-based distillery. From what I can make out of their remarkably comprehensive history, the distillery in it's current form dates from the 1980s, when it took over the old Willetts distillery - which explains the heavy use of the Willetts ...

Jefferson's Bourbon

Jefferson's is one of those brands that feels like it's been invented by someone in Corporate Marketing, rather than someone in a distillery. The website is desperately slick, and yet manages to convey almost no information. Barely any tasting notes, a warm and fuzzy bit of history that tries to connect a young (founded in ...

Smooth Ambler Old Scout 7 Year Old Bourbon

To Smooth Ambler, for the second time this advent. Having been slightly underwhelmed by their Contradition last week, I'm curious to see how their Old Scout measures up. As a young distillery, their older offerings such as this are bought in from other producers - some searching suggests that at least some of that older production ...

Elijah Craig 12 Year Old

Elijah Craig is a brand owned by Heaven Hill, who also produce (among others) the Evan Williams we saw last week. The bourbon is named for Rev. Elijah Craig, who - Heaven Hill tells us - invented the bourbon we know today, after a fire in his warehouse charred the barrels that he was going ...

Old Forester

If nothing else, this month is teaching me that the bourbon industry loves a good dose of history. Old Forester goes for the big score, as it turns out to be "America’s First Bottled Bourbon ®" - although that dates from 1870, so that doesn't really beat other brands by a huge margin. They also ...

Four Roses Bourbon

For some reason, I had always got the impression that Prohibition did terrible things to the alcohol industries of the USA. It's often been held up as a major cause of what one might charitably call the "unchallenging flavours" of pre-craft American beer, because everyone forgot what real beer tasted like and the brewing ...

Blanton's Gold Edition

Blanton's Bourbon comes from the same stable as Buffalo Trace, and is produced at their distillery in Franklin, Kentucky. It was (according to their website) the first "single barrel bourbon" when released in 1984, although it also notes that Colonel Blanton (for whom they are named) used to have his favourite single barrels bottled ...