Much like Mark Twain, the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. Kid #2 plus being married to a doctor during a pandemic plus everything else meant not a lot of bandwidth for booze tasting notes, but…I’m back! This was a great way to dive back in, too. I’ve long been a fan of Dickel’s approach to whisky, and this is really the pinnacle of it. The nose has plenty of what you expect from their take on Tennessee whisky - maple, ripe tree fruit, pepper, pecan pie, warm spices. The age adds in a distinct note of old oak; it’s earthy without being funky or off-putting. The palate is a beautifully balanced interplay of sweetness, spice, and wood - the initial entry is maple sweetness, then the spices kick in, followed by a backbone of that old oak, and then finally on the finish is a beautiful return to sweet notes, but this time almost like a white cake with a maple frosting. That beautiful finish lingers, too. It’s good stuff; what makes it even better in this whiskey market is that you can get a good 15 year age statement whiskey of any sort for $60-70.