Belle Meade Sour Mash Straight Bourbon

Nose: Apple, brown sugar, vanilla Taste: Candy, maybe some bread, not that hot Overall, really like this

Wonderful nose of caramel and citrus, turns to cinnamon and spices on the palate and has a nice rye spice finish of medium length. Downfall is it has a thin watery mouthfeel

Sorry I've been so quiet for *checks watch* 6.5 months 😬 It has been a crazy time, resulting in a decision to finally move back to Memphis. I will try to rectify this with a review of the very first thing I tried after setting up the new bar; and it's from Nashville, no less! (followed slowly by a massive backlog) The nose starts faint, but gets more pungent as it opens up: corn flakes and cherry, then mineral with a slight citrusy note. More of those sharper notes carry forward onto the palate. It really is more sour than sweet, and barely reads as a bourbon to me at first. The classic flavors are still in there, but it really forces you to peel back the layers. Lemon oil gives way to a rewarding cinnamon bark complement if you can find it, and a decent finish that only gets sweeter. As far as complexity goes, this is an outstanding complement to all the "honeyed vanillas" that you probably have in your bar... This appears to be a somewhat technical bourbon that succeeds at being "interesting", perhaps a result of not chill filtering (who knows?), and that in itself is worth a decent score. With that said, I was expecting this to be a lot more enjoyable though, even going so far as to make it a "house bourbon" candidate, but something about the sour notes just don't hit right for me... Oh well. Now I'm back to *real* liquor stores that aren't controlled by the state, so I don't even care! 😉