Tastes

This Tennessee style whiskey seems to have a consistency problem. The last 10 or so cases I bought were all excellent, really good stuff. The two cases I bought today however, tastes harsh, shows lots of sediment and I couldn't help but notice that Big Machine, the new owners of Clayton James, (perhaps the root of the problem?) first stopped putting the barrel time on the individual bottles, and as of today's purchase, they have stopped putting it on the case as well! The barista assured me that they age a minimum of four years upon my questioning. I also learned today that their original master distiller retired in January 2023. Maybe this is the reason for the problem, or maybe it's a combination of this and the new owners. Like what happened to JD when Brown and Foreman bought them a number of years ago. I even wondered if they sourced this batch and bottled it as their own, it's that different. A close inspection and comparison between one of the newest bottles and one from my last purchase, that was clearly marked as aged 52 months on the case only, shows that the newest stuff was very lightly colored compared to the prior bottle. A taste test between the two was like comparing a fine Cabernet to a bottle of Mad Dog 20-20! Hopefully they can pull out of this nose dive, I certainly hope so for up until today, they had been my most favored whiskey. I'll give them a year or so to sort things out, if they can, otherwise I'll be back to searching for a new favorite. It's going to be awfully hard to beat the old Clayton James. Fortunately, I went through my inventory and found five older bottles left, so I'll be able to hold out for a little while. If this hadn't of happened, I would have rated this whiskey five stars...