Nothing beats a free pour for your birthday. And nothing makes you feel younger than trying new stuff. So I’ve been trying stuff outside of scotch, including bourbons. I’m really enjoying some natural strength Michter’s and Four Roses, which are expensive enough pours, so bartender asks what’s the occasion, and I say it was my birthday. He gives me an ounce of “their most sought after and rarest whiskey” on the house. Whatever. Just sayin’ that to make me feel special. I find out later that this is harder to find than Pappy, rated by most experts as better than Pappy, and some online stores are selling this marked up to as much as $890. Wow. NOSE: Probably the best nose of any bourbon I’ve tried so far. It’s utterly decadent bakery stuff with a boulangery sweetness and spiciness (as opposed to “America runs on Dunkin”). I feel most bourbons sadly strive to be the perfect corn syrup; but there’s no corn syrup in this one. There’s brown sugar, dark chocolate with cherry syrup, cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon sprinkled on a French Baguette. The high 67.7 ABV keeps the scents under wraps. Even though you can already smell it with your nose 2 feet above the glass, you know there are pent up aromas that will explode out with some water. PALATE: Hot caramel sludge. Molten macaroons. So densely sweet and hot, it’s almost unbearable. The alcohol dries your mouth in the first 1-5 seconds, despite the rich sweetness. This transitions to the gentler tartness of grape and strawberry jams. The salivary glands start to catch up after about 10 seconds, and the mouth waters. FINISH: Baking spices and Dr. Pepper lingers on. The finish is long. The liquid is resinous and mouth-coating. As the intensity wanes, a little bit of the vanilla American oak finally is noticeable. And some coconut oil, exotic yeast proteins, sourdough sourness. WITH WATER: I had one sip neat, and then added almost 50% water by volume. Even with the addition, there’s plenty of alcohol punch. Candied fruit aromas wake up and start jumping out of the glass. The sweetness changes from brown sugar to more honeycomb. The palate is much fruitier, bordering on Juicy Fruit bubblegum, but this is balanced by tartness. The wood influence makes an earlier appearance. Neat offered some tightly wrapped flavors that spill out with the addition of water. I would recommend trying this both ways. VERDICT: Spent a long time with this one, and had fun. In the end, the Michter’s Toasted Barrel I paid for earlier was better to my tastes, but this one deserves respect because it threatened to put me on my ass. It lacks the full fruity range and salinity of a good Scotch, but this makes up for it with a confectionary clobbering. What is a fair price for this bottle? I would consider buying at the $150 range, not the >$500 prices I see online. MARK: 89/100.