Maybe the hardest bottle ever to come up with a name for to even search. So story on this for me was I knew someone who wanted it, saw it...figured I'd grab it and share. I guess i was lucky on the price and point bs. 120-130 bucks. I'm not sure I'll get around to reviewing this with mike...we might, but there's just so much american whisky I have to review and rye isn't mike's thing. It's just hard to bring something like this up to review. Nose - To be honest it's not that bold. You get a nice minty wintery rye element with a nice amount of very soft oak. Combine that with some cherry cough drops and really I think you've more or less got this one down. It's like they took the 4 year rye, turned it down to 80% and then added oak. It's both what you'd expect with a blend of bourbon and rye and kinda disappointing because the bourbon isn't doing much, but Willet purple top bourbon isn't really to my knowledge all that bold on the nose generally. Taste - Earthy mossy oak with layers of spice from the rye and low sweetness caramel and oak dust. Unique without a doubt. And with each sip you really can find new elements here. I get a sweetness up front sometimes and other times the earthy almost vegetal elements come through instead. The more you sip this the more bourbon notes come through up front through more traditional sweet caramel and vanilla notes and the rye moves more towards the middle and finish. One thing is for sure, this wasn't a great bourbon, but it wasn't a bad one either. It was likely a very dull and middle of the road bourbon that they felt needed something else and MGP rye came to save the day. Yeah starting to get red cough drops at the end of a bourbon now. Finish - LONG! Really this is an impressive finish as it really coats the mouth and lingers forever. Mostly just good rye spice and quality oak casks are linger here. Honestly this is a winner and a loser. If you're excited by 6 year willet bourbon and 10 year mgp rye blended...I think you'll be disappointed. I don't think 6 year willet bourbon is any good. Sorry purple top fans. And while the sum of the parts don't resemble either part individually, I think we wasted some epic MGP rye to give life to boring bourbon. That said I know this is rare and I know it's expensive, but you really want 2-3 glasses of this in a sitting because it grows on you as you acclimate to it. And in that regard that's why I'm scoring this higher and why I think there's a winner here, it's just hard to get to. There's so much complexity and depth here to a whisky that seems to come on like a freight train. It's really bold and full of all kinds of crazy fun flavors. But it's not a 130 dollar flavor experience even if the parts kinda would normally justify that level of spend. I'm also note sure this bourbon is actually the same bourbon they put in purple top. There's a part of me thinking it's sourced barton at 6 years old (is that a thing?) Water add some more classic bourbon spice and some funky butter scotch notes fyi. Oh even some dark chocolate with perhaps some kinda cayenne pepper combo. OK so score...I'm really all over the map. So my system under a 1 is basically trash. 1 star is a quality whisky worth drinking for the right price. 2 star is average. 3 star is really good stuff that you really want unless it's crazy expensive. 4 star is wow 400 dollar kinda level stuff. 5 stars are unicorns and the things dreams are made of. 2.5 on this one. I can't think of a comp to try and set my score against. But lets see I gave the 4 year rye a 3 star. That is a whisky I just like more, but it's not as complex. I also might have overrated that one...but I'm also buying another bottle of that when mine is gone. I see some good stuff like the four gate batch 11 ruby rye springs which I bought a second of at 2.5...I might need to get better at scoring and buying lol. So for this one I'd want to give it a 2.65 so I guess 2.7 stars. I honestly think this is a winner at the price point, it's a bit disappointing when you dream of what it COULD be from the label. But overall there's so much good here and even the bad isn't so bad.