Bernheim Original Wheat Whiskey

Smoother than I expected it

Nice a surprisingly complex. An 88 in my book

Nightcap with Game Of Thrones.

Oh the rabbithole a person can go down when trying to trace history of a particular whiskey! What we have here is Bernheim Original Kentucky Straight Whiskey Aged 7 Years. On the nose there is brown sugar and vanilla sweetness with citrus and blackberry. On the palate you get the same flavors with cinnamon, oak, and candied orange peel as well as wheat toast. Medium finish with black pepper, burnt sugar, and more toasted bread. This is something different versus the usual bourbon and rye that is coming out of Kentucky and is much appreciated. The history behind the label is a bit tangled and takes some research to unravel. Bernheim Original was first released in 2005 with the 7 Year expression sometime after. The label is actually owned by Heaven Hill and is distilled at the Bernheim Distillery that Heaven Hill acquired in 1999 from Diageo along with it's DSP-KY-1 permit. This was the result of a fire in 1996 at Heaven Hill's original facility in Bardstown that almost completely destroyed their plant (DSP-KY-31) and about 90,000 barrels of aging bourbon. Jim Beam and Brown-Forman stepped up and helped Heaven Hill to use their capacity to continue to produce until 1999 when they acquired Bernheim Distillery in Louisville and now all production for Heaven Hill occurs there. Aging, bottling, and shipping is all done at the Bardstown location.

Here goes, hoping for a little bit more characters than the Woodford wheated whiskey. The body is pretty thin and the legs are pretty quick. Color is a medium amber. The nose honestly doesn’t offer me much. I might get a little lightly toasted oak and green apple. The first sip is pretty smooth, but also pretty bland. The flavor is almost bittersweet in a way. The second sip brings around a little bit more leather and caramel with maybe a little bit of raisin in the background? Still no burn, and no spice as one might expect with a wheated whiskey. In ways it reminds me of the Weller special reserve without the aroma and taste of ripe banana sweetness (instead more dry leather). Honestly, I would take the woodford wheated whiskey over this one any day. Although Woodford wheat lacks complexity, it has a more pleasant and consistently smooth finish. Maybe my taste buds were just built for rye, but so far outside of larceny and Weller 12 (as different as they are similar) I’m just having a hard time finding the sweetness and oak that I want out of a wheat-based whiskey.