Tastes

Nose: chocolate pudding, raspberry, coconut, baking spices, nutmeg, roasted nuts, cotten candy, and Autumn leaves. Taste: chocolate, dark and citrus fruits, with a nut filled fudge finish. Experience: taking a bite of a fruit and nut brownie or fudge on a cool crisp fall day. Really loving this, it's like Bunnahabhain 12 if you added fruits and nuts. Starts with chocolate, goes sweet nutty and fruity, then finishes with a darker bitter chocolate, I'm delighted. *Not sure if mine is the same as it is 43% abv and the bottle is much darker almost black.

Nose: true peat bog peat, not the medicinal Laphroaig peat, or the burning tire fire peat, but a true damp dirty earth lit ablaze. Salt, olive oil (the good thick stuff), cheese curds, dried wood, with just a hint of fruits, mostly a dark cherry. Taste: cereal, hay, bitter wood, Chestnut, grass, and a bit of pie crust. Experience: eating a cheese board. Like the whole board wood and all. Cheese, olives, meat, salt... Wood. It's the whole board with everything on it. But in a fantastic way. If you want a meal in a whiskey this is it.

Nose: green apple, cinnamon, pie crust, lemon zest, grass clippings, honey. Taste: Citrus takes over, no more pie crust, black pepper, and nutmeg finish. Experience: Another hot girl/guy who is fun on a fling but not someone you'd want to spend more than an evening with. The excitement they offer is fun and fast but there is nothing deeper going on here... This is a bit disappointing. Not just for the high price and low availability but also as a whole. The finish is very short and very hot. Fun but not interesting.

Nose: musty fruits, candy hearts, barrel char, slight baking spices, vanilla. Taste: wood, sour fruit, and a muddling of the nose notes. More: I really wanted to love this whiskey. But it's sort of a mess. Are there interesting notes there? Yes. But they are so muddled together and messy it's hard to pick it apart. In general this whiskey feels like a rushed product. They wanted it in a year so they rushed the sourcing, rushed the "aging" and came out with a rushed product. I love Dave Pickerel, I love a lot of what he did. I don't love this whiskey. Is it bad? No... Is it good? Maybe... Do I love it? No. I am glad it is at a fair price point.

Nose: Sweet dark fruit and brown sugar, some leathery musk, a hint citrus in the effervescent tip of the nose. Taste: Cherry, leather, the body (not smoke) of a cigar, nutmeg, cinnamon, with a long finish that leaves a heat in the front of your mouth. Experience: it's a lounge in a glass. Cigars, cocktail cherries, and a dancer's kiss, all wrapped in alcohol and leather. This is a good one boys, it's a bourbon's bourbon (if that means anything.) It should hold up to rocks if you like and should be on the shelf next to EH Taylor, Booker's, and the such.

Nose: Vanilla, apple, dusty metal. Taste: More vanilla taking a tart woody bitter turn then ending with metal or bloody lip. Experience: Icecream after splitting your lip on the baseball field, sweet but hard to enjoy with all the dust and metal in your mouth.

Nose: Chocolate, orange peel, caramels, burnt marshmallows. It's like a fruity burnt smore. Taste: hints of caramel and sour apples, with a strong cereal or cake batter body ending very quickly in a smokey citrus. Experience: I've never eaten fruit with s'mores, or even by a campfire at all. But that is the direction it takes. It's not a bad ride, but a short one for sure. The proof feels lower than it is.

Nose: Dirt, pear, apple, dry bread crust. Taste: dried fruits, pepper, cola burn but without the sweetness. Experience: snacking on a bag of dried fruit on a hot summer day driving down a dusty road. I can't get my head around just how dusty and farm-like this whiskey is, the high rye keeps it from feeling like most bourbon but it doesn't taste like a rye that much either. I would love to see what a few more years does to this.

Nose: oh boy, this is why I love rye. Eucalyptus, baking soda, pixie sticks, vanilla, dusty herbs, cotton candy, strawberry. A full nose if you take the time to look. Taste: cotton candy (including the finish it falls right off), citrus zest, herbal spice, ending with dirty earth. Experience: walking through a herb and citrus garden while sipping sweat tea. Sweet and earth notes mingle with a herbal undertone. Note: this is the classic Bulleit rye turned up. If you like the base offering you'll like this a bit more, if you don't like the base this will not change your mind. Let this open up or go back to it after opening and using the bottle, at first I was disappointed by how close to the standard rye it is, but after a week or so I found the complexity that the younger brother lacks.

Nose: deep dark cherry, damp wood, raw leather, vanilla, dark chocolate, smoked bbq. Taste: hot, deep, sticky and sweet. Like a Kentucky summer bbq, plenty of cherry, chard wood, rich chocolate, with a spicy finish. Experience: A piece of chocolate cherry cake at a summer bbq. Notes: the 2018 is fantastic. I personally like the 2017 more but it is still so good. The notes are not that unique but what it does it does the best.