Rating: 15/23 This is a blind tasting. N: This has sort of a musty dustiness that suggests mellowness and age. It's earthy with a peppery spiciness. There's a bit of green apple and a waft of vanilla. Maybe faint mint too. P: Indeed it does taste musty-dusty. It's smooth. Perhaps a tad light in rye character, but fairly mature with some nice herbs that aren't punchy but go well with that wood. There's a vegetal layer that melds into buckwheat. I get some clove, but not the usual bright herbs and spiciness that I expect from a rye. Jalapeños - I think that's where I'm getting some of the earthy, vegetal character. There's also sort of a milk chocolate flavor. Have you ever tried using milk chocolate to flavor bourbon and been surprised by the funky flavor it imparted? OK, I'm probably the only one who's tried that, but this has precisely that flavor. It's a variation on buckwheat with more vegetal funkiness. It's certainly more challenging that buckwheat. There's a lot of depth to this particular flavor, but I'm not sure whether I like it. The complexity is solid, but some of the flavor strikes me as the type of thing that distillers usually try to keep out of their distillate. Still, I appreciate the a funky whiskey now and then. F: The musty-dusty wood with some mellow, faintly sweet herbs including mint and dill. Quite a bit of that vegetal buckwheat milk chocolate weird thing. The jalapeño largely recedes, but there's a bit of pepper still present. - Conclusion - The maturity (or perhaps mellowness with clever aging) and complexity are good, but the funkiness to this flavor profile doesn't land for me. I'm not really sure whether I like this or not. I'm so torn that I'm considering anything from a 13 to a 21. I guess I kind of need to pick a rating. I find Rittenhouse (14) to have a bit too much alcohol, so I place it a bit below this. Pikesville (16) is less complex, but it's more coherent, so I like it more. Old Forester Rye (15-16) is a tad better than this with its complexity, even though it strays a bit from a typical rye profile and is fairly sweet. I really get the impression that this is an older rye than anything else I have open on my shelf and I appreciate the complexity a lot. But the flavors are just weird. I think this is going to be a 15. I can imagine upping this score as I drank through a bottle and got to appreciate the nuances more though. This seems like an acquired taste, but one while I have not gotten the opportunity to acquire yet. Out of everything on my shelf, what this reminds me the most of is Willett 4 with its chocolate flavor and musty backing. The Willett 4 has way more tropical notes instead of the earthy funk though. I could believe that this is an older Willett and that I'd love it if I tried more, but right now it just strikes me as too weird. Thank you @Bourbon_Obsessed_Lexington for sharing this fascinating whiskey! I always love trying something this unusual.