Tastes

Very interesting. Getting tobacco, molasses, coffee, and a nice oak flavor. Not a typical bourbon as I'm not getting a lot of caramel or maple flavors, which is refreshing in this case. Very good!

Getting floral notes and honey...way too much honey. May be good with a mixer but it's not interesting enough on it's own to sip neat. A bit too mellow

Surprised this one gets rated less than 4 and put in the "meh" category by a lot of people. I think for the price this is a great classic bourbon that has a lot of oak, brown sugar, and cinnamon notes. Much better than the regular Maker’s Mark, although the straight bourbon is still plenty good. Tried it back-to-back with Maker’s Mark FAE-01 and honestly liked this a bit better. The reviewer score of 90 is completely reasonable in my opinion.

My first sip out of the bottle actually tasted pretty good with some spices and marshmallow flavor. However, once I poured a glass, I got a strange plastic and cherry cough syrup taste, which I think others have noted is probably a particular spice note, that unfortunately doesn't agree with me. Wanted to like this one as I really enjoyed the regular No9 but it's not doing it for me at all so far. They are very different so if you disliked No9, that doesn't mean you will necessarily dislike No9 Reserve.