When Jack Daniels announced they were releasing the Bonded and Triple Mash, I figured I’d try them eventually, but I wasn’t in any rush. Aside from the fact that JD’s never really been my go-to brand of American whisky, these two were released at 700 ml rather than 750, which feels like a cheap ploy to short us whisky. But the Daniels Single Barrel and Single Barrel Cask Strength aren’t bad, and these are in that affordable range still (this despite the fact that they seem to be going for $10 less in all other areas aside from mine). Still, there were so many other things I wanted to buy first that I didn’t get to the Bonded until it won the Whisky Advocate 2023 Top 20, and even then, it was a drunk buy on my way home from the office Christmas Party last year, and it was all right if you can get it for $30, but it’s pushing $40 around here and that’s pushed it past what I’d be willing to spend on the rebuy. Oddly enough when I read the descriptions of both, I assumed I’d like the Triple Mash more. Not only did the mixture of single malt, rye and bonded strike me as more up my alley than a straight Tennessee Whisky recipe, but I think I may have been pulled in by the marketing (in other words, I liked the red label better than the black label). My mistake. I was lukewarm on the Bonded, and I’m decidedly even more lukewarm on the Triple Mash. Now I finally pulled the trigger on this because of an Instagram account I follow. The guy did a blind tasting of this against the Jack Daniels 10 Year, and while the 10 Year won, he touted how strong the Triple stood up against it. Perhaps he’s in JD’s pocket and got paid to say that, how am I to know, but I figured that, with the Triple still at $40 around me, I might as well pull the trigger before they boost that price to $50, as we’re seeing happen so often lately. And I did. And funnily enough, I picked it up on the way home from a work charity event in June, which parallels picking up the Bonded after the Christmas party because I was also a little tipsy after the charity event. And I figured then, since I had it after I got home, that maybe my palate had been polluted by the Old Forester 86/Coke mixture I was drinking at the event all afternoon, and I’d have to try back later. Didn’t help. The expert reviewer here begins by saying the nose is bright and fairly intense, which makes me wonder what he was drinking. The problem for me with this whisky is that the nose starts off muddled and muted with a faint spiciness and cinnamon undercurrent, astringent with a nail polish edge, but not much other than that. I can agree with the reviewer that the palate is average and not terribly plush. It drinks hotter than 100 proof and the flavors are relatively simple: banana, cinnamon, red hots, cherry. Now, I’ve long held that a whisky doesn’t have to be overly complex to be enjoyable, and while those flavors should work together, they don’t for some reason, mostly because of the burn that precedes it. It’s like the peppery finish starts before the flavors arrived on the palate, and that finish arriving first ruins the taste entirely. Or maybe it doesn’t ruin it, but it doesn’t make this something I feel the need to return to. It’s more of a last whisky of the night type of whisky (as it was after that charity event) when you still want a drink but you don’t want to drink your best stuff because you know your palate has been compromised. I don’t know. This could very well just be the way it’s hit my palate and it could work differently with other taste buds, so take this with a grain of salt, but of the two the Bonded is definitely better, but not better enough that I think I’ll ever be dipping into either well again. I'm going to see if ice helps, but even if it does, that won't much change my assessment.