Tastes

Region: KY ABOUT: Until now, most Knob Creek has been bottled at 9 years of age or younger for good reason: There’s no guarantee that bourbon will taste good after a dozen years in the barrel—let alone great. This one is richly complex from the start: York Peppermint Pattie, raisins, baking spice, dark chocolate-covered cherries, iced tea, and tobacco barn appear on the nose, followed by a chewy, full palate laden with cinnamon, allspice, and ginger, and perfectly balanced with sweet berry cobbler, chocolate ganache, and caramel. The finish goes on and on.

Region: KY ABOUT: Maker’s Mark has resisted the rampant experimentation that defines some distilleries, but they appear to be making up for lost time with two 2021 releases in their Wood Finishing Series, which started in 2019. This release is enhanced by an American oak stave that has been toasted on only one side then added to the barrel. This innovation amps up the oak influence without going overboard. Fresh-sawn oak, earthiness, leather, and iced tea are balanced by caramel apple, toffee, and baking spice. A flavor-packed, oak-driven bourbon that wears its proof well. TASTING NOTES: AROMA: Heavy vanilla with spiced caramel TASTE: Butter pecan ice cream. Vanilla with creamy butter notes, dry spice, and caramelized sweetness. FINISH: Long, round, and dry PROOF Cask Strength (110.8)

Distiller: Buffalo Trace, WL Weller Region: Frankfort, KY ABOUT: A wheated bourbon with a full-bodied flavor and a balanced palette. Old Weller Antique is bottled at 107 proof, offering a complex taste and bold finish. It’s certainly a recognizable member of the Weller label, with its own unique characteristics to compliment the high proof. TASTING NOTES: A medium amber bourbon, bearing a sweetish note with some unusual floral notes and a string dash of vanilla. The body is big and the palate is very well balanced, flirting between sweet honeyed fruit notes, a strong vanilla undertone and some sharp spicy tones; the finish is long and spicy. A very well crafted whiskey. Sip it at room temperature with a little spring water or over ice.

Nose: Caramel and Dark Fruit Palate: Dried fruits, almonds, milk chocolate Finish: Long mid-palate Our penultimate pick of 2021 comes bearing gifts just in time for the holidays. Get a bottle, and you could win prizes, including a FREE bottle of this pick! A brief background first. Maker's Mark Private Selection offers a new take on the Maker's Mark 46® process. It begins with cask-strength Maker's Mark® and is aged nine additional weeks in barrels specially fitted with 10 wood-finishing staves in their limestone cellar. Where Private Selection separates itself from Maker's Mark 46 is barrel customization using five different stave types. This results in over 1,001 different possible combinations. As single-barrel bourbons, all Maker's Mark Private Selection expressions are bottled at cask strength – which ranges from 107-114 proof. Ours was bottled at 110.8 proof and has the following stave combination: 0 x P2 (Baked American Pure) staves. We ended up NOT using this stave at all in the final blend formula 3 x Cu (Seared French Cuvée). Cu is made from French oak that's ridge-cut and seared with infrared heat. It gives off toasty notes of oak and caramel. This is the second-highest presence of 4 staves that made up the final recipe. 2 x Maker's Mark 46. It's made from seared French oak and delivers dried fruit, vanilla, and spice. A barrel fitted with 10 of these staves would give you a cask-strength version of Maker's Mark 46. 4 x Mn (Roasted French Mendiant stave), is French oak cooked on low in a convection oven. It adds pleasant traces of milk chocolate, nuts, and dried dark fruit. The heavy presence of this stave turned our final recipe into magic. 1 x Sp (Toasted French Spice stave), is also French oak that's toasted in a convection oven, first at high heat and then low heat. Sp has a flavor profile of smoke, coumarin, and spice. We treated this stave almost as a finishing stave that gave the final recipe it's unique profile. Once a consensus was reached on the desired flavor profile back in April, these special barrels of Maker's Mark Private Selection were aged for nine weeks in the cool temperature of the brand's one-of-a-kind limestone cellar. The final result was bottled in June and delivered to us during #barreldropmonth of December. So what can you expect from this expression? We are glad you asked: Nose: Caramel and Dark Fruit Palate: Dried fruits, almonds, milk chocolate Finish: Long mid-palate We hear you say, "All this is well and good, but what was that about winning a FREE bottle?". You heard correctly - each bottle comes with a scratch-off card. Try your luck and you could win Maker's swag, cool rocks glasses dipped in wax, and a grand prize - a free bottle of our pick itself! All we ask to qualify is to post a picture of your bottle (so we can see our stave profile recipe), the scratch-off indicating your prize to your social media profile (IG, FB, etc). Then subscribe to our profile on IG (where we announce cool new drops), and you are in! Appropriately, the sticker theme for this barrel selection is a nod to one of the most famous lotteries around, the Power Ball. The sticker resembles the actual NY edition Power Ball ticket with some of the vital info about the expression on it. Lastly, we will donate $5 from each bottle to the Western Kentucky Tornado Relief Fund. This was a no-brainer after seeing the devastation to the region all whiskey enthusiasts have a connection to.