Larceny Barrel Proof Bourbon Batch A122

Delicious hitter of a bourbon. Dark chocolate, a peanut/peanut buttery chocolate bar taste. ...chocolate covered cherry on second taste. Very little to no Kentucky hug which I'm surprised at with it being 124 proof.

"What we talk about when we talk about batch variation" (Yeah, I did it, I threw down the Raymond Carver reference.) I've had Larceny Barrel Proof prior to this. I even have a review of this buried on my feed. It was batch B521 I think (being honest, can't really be bothered to look it up right now). It was good and priced in that sweet zone where, even as it was getting jacked up elsewhere, it's still $49.99 in my state. So of course, I bought another bottle. And that bottle was C921. I still have it. Haven't opened it yet. I also have three bottles of this one, batch A122. Why, you might ask, do I have three bottles of this one batch. Well, the funny thing is, in my state, Larceny Barrel Proof is an online only purchase. And you can't specify which batch you want. I ordered a bottle in May of 2022, and got my first bottle of A122. I didn't know at that point whether it would be A122 or B522, but I didn't much mind. When I ordered again in July, I expected I'd get B522, since time had passed and they'd sold out of the previous iteration and gotten more in stock, but when it arrived, it was again A122. Then, when I ordered Blue Spot, I needed an additional bottle for free shipping, and since it was September, I assumed this time, I'd get either B522 or C922, but again, it was a bottle of A122. I have to be honest that I don't mind all that much. I'm not going to go so crazy as to say batch variation isn't real. Because obviously it is. But what I am going to say is that it's likely you can only tell the real objective difference between batches if you're tasting them next to each other. You might remember a previous batch as remarkable, and maybe it was. Or maybe it just hit you at a time when you were in the mood for the particular whisky you were getting and when you tasted the next batch, even though they were similar, you didn't like it as much. Maybe you weren't tasting it with the same crowd. Maybe the experience in which you sampled it just wasn't the same. Now, proofs will vary, and distillers may change the ages of whiskies based on stock. But I'm not sure how much that's the case here. Because to me, my present experience of A122 is not really that far removed from my experience of B521. On the nose I'm getting what I'm now thinking are the standard Larceny BP aromas: oak, leather, cherry, caramel and vanilla. On the palate more of the same with a nice spicy finish. It's bold and rich and really good. Now that I think of it, I should probably pop the bottle of C921 open and taste them against each other to see jus how different they are. But I keep hearing from different review sites I read how, you know, "Oh, A122 is better than A121" or "C922 really nails it and is better than both previous releases this year," but those reviews never mention if they're actually tasting these side-by-side or going from memory. For that matter, I have two bottles of two different iterations of Maker's Mark CS I could taste it against to see how they fare when compared. And that would make for a fun, and very intoxicating evening, but I'm also not sure how much I care. Maybe this review is me hitting a wall in that I'm not sure it matters to compare whiskies of the same iteration released three months apart. This one is very good. And the last one was very good. And if there's a difference between very good and very good, I'm having trouble seeing it. Send me a notification when it starts to suck and I should stop buying. Until then, this is good value for money at $49.99. I hear they've raised it to $59.99 and I'd still buy it at that. Let's hope they don't start feeling themselves and overestimating their own worth like the Lux Row lineup. At this point, I'm done with Rebel and Ezra basically because they've priced me out. The quality isn't good enough to justify where they've taken their SRPs (though it's possible I'll make an exception for the 7 year Barrel Proof Old Ezra Rye given I just both the 8 Year Sagamore BP Rye for $80). But that's a rant for another post. This is my second barrel proof tasting for today, so I should best sign off before I get sloppy (I prefer this to the Seagrass, but that could be because this is more cost effective and also a little more in the realm of the expected). Now it's time for some chili over grits. Goes well with bourbon, trust me. (Oh, and I have the soundtrack to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly playing in the background. So it can't be too bad an evening, can it?)

Good little sipper. Nothing too special with this and can throw off some proof. Just take it easy with it and enjoy and worth the $55, but don’t expect the best you’ve ever had.

Spicy, little burn towards back

Really great.