I feel the need to apologize for my past sins. Once upon a time, I viewed the Dirty Bird as a wildly overrated discount bourbon. It is not. It is magical. It is perfect. For $37 Cdn. (which is a steal when it comes to American whiskey in Canada, you can ignore my past complaints on that front), it is basically everything you want in your hooch. It's got kick, but it's got real flavour. A nice blend of sweet and spice. Pickle and caraway and baking spices stewed in apple skins and brown sugar. Creamy vanilla. The taste is still a bit sharp (my past notes weren't *wrong*, per se), and there's a touch of acetone here, but the whiskey feels fundamentally . . . real, if that makes sense, and--in a spirits world where the snobs among us are constantly buying and trying something new, it is one of only two bourbons (along with Buffalo Trace) that I find myself consisently re-buying. Poor, poor foolish, younger me.