boviscopophobic
Coopers' Craft Original 82.2 Proof Kentucky Straight Bourbon
Bourbon — Kentucky, USA
Reviewed
June 1, 2017 (edited February 26, 2019)
First off, for the folks at Distiller: it's Coopers' Craft. Coopers', plural possessive. As in the craft of more than one cooper; not "cooper's," as in just one of them. Second: while this whiskey won't blow anyone away, I do think it's a bit better than some of the reviews suggest. The nose in particular is quite nice, rich, evocative, and way bigger than you'd expect for a lowly 41.1% ABV--vanilla, icing suger, cake batter, huge white peach, plum (stone fruits more generally), slight berry fruits. Faint milk chocolate, a bit of slight lactic sourness that's actually not unappealing, some nice herbal/floral character (like a rose water?). But things start to come apart a bit on the taste, which is thin, watery, and leads with pencil shavings. There's some nuttiness, some sour peaches, a bit of baking spice, and something faintly cheap scotch-like. Faint grape drink, some more sour/lactic character (this time less appealing). Over time, you do get some apple and pear, a touch of leather. Finishes hot, gingery, with some unintegrated fresh wood, bitter chocolate, and dried fruits. Lingering herbal . . . green-ness. If the taste could follow through on the nose a bit better, this might be worth taking a flyer on. But as is, it's hurt by the combo of high(-ish) price, low-ABV, and too much youth. I'll join the chorus below me, agreeing that this is probably going to be consumed largely in cocktail form.
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BDanner, happy to be of service. Boviscopophobic, I'm with you. I don't think other BF offerings are too bad, but when it comes to bourbon, i gravitate more to the lineups of Heaven Hill, Beam, and Buffalo Trace.
OF isn't widely available up here in Canada, so I haven't had a lot of it, but there are distinct similarities (the peach/stone fruit smell). Personally, B-F's entire bourbon line-up doesn't do much for me; I think Woodford Reserve is pretty mediocre, so I shouldn't be surprised that I didn't really like this.
Erogers...my dislike for Old Forester is what has kept me from purchasing this one. Thanks for confirming my suspicions
Nice review. Your palate certainly seems much more acutely discerning than mine, as I always observe in your reviews that you pick up far more nuance than I'm able to detect in whatever whiskey you happen to be reviewing. In this case, you detected more aroma and flavor notes than I did, but your ultimate conclusion was similar to mine. I was actually eager to try this when it came out based upon the expert reviews I read, but came away disappointed. In fact, I thought it tasted suspiciously like it's cheaper cousin, Old Forester, and so much so that I thought it was a marketing gimmick: put the same juice in a different bottle, make it sound like it was exposed to some special, select maturation, and charge $10 more for it. I even thought it had the identical cherry cough syrup note that I get from Old Forester, which I find objectionable. I much prefer Brown Forman's offerings in the Woodford Reserve line, many of which are available at pricing similar to this effort, which I consider a swing and a miss.