My initial note would have read: “This is rum. Do not buy, unless you want to buy an overpriced rum.” However, I then did the following note-enrichment procedure: 1. Pour bottle into a decanter. 2. Hate contents so strongly that you don’t touch it again for like… 3 months. 3. Decide to kill it over the course of a few days to make room for a new Bardstown product in said decanter. 4. Get really drunk one night playing Rocket League, forget that you haven’t reviewed it yet, and pour last 4 fingers over ice. 5. Immediately realize that you haven’t yet reviewed this on Distiller, and are not of sound mind nor clean palate to be able to make a reasonable review. 6. In a fierce determination to not have to buy another bottle of this, promptly pour back about two ounces into aforementioned decanter. 7. Wait until you’re not hungover. 8. Review whiskey. My methodology may sound strange, but I swear to you that it made a noticeable improvement. Genuinely. Nose is cedar, sourness, mustiness. Not a rum connoisseur but I don’t detect the rum influence on the nose. It’s honestly more reminiscent of Russell’s Reserve or Elijah Craig 18 than of a finished bourbon. Body is: rum. I get tangerine too if I really hunt, but that rum note is everything. Finish is sugar, rum, cinnamon. There’s coconut. There’s no other way to say it: this is a suboptimal product. I think that my accidental dilution and aeration did in fact reduce the bite of that rum finish, but it is still dominant. Bardstown’s finishes aren’t exactly known for subtlety, and I’d argue that nobody errs more strongly on the side of the finishing barrel’s profile (over the base juice) than Bardstown. Most of the time, that’s a blessing. Twice now, it has been… “suboptimal.” This is a step up from Destillare, which… over 2 years later, I haven’t revisited my open bottle once. But this is definitely not their best work, nor is it close to best in genre. Go for Borough (if you can find it), Blood Oath (ditto), or Jefferson’s (totes can find this one) before going for this bottle. BTW: I gotta give it to @pkingmartin… “chalky orange sports drink” is one of those brilliant, non-unlearnable whiskey notes. Once you read that, there is no untasting it. That is my new, overall takeaway from this whiskey, and I’m not hating it one bit.