The King is dead, all hail the new King. Nose: Spices, cinnamon, clove, pumpkin, all cover the underlying brown and dank corn and wheat sugars. Front: Big sweet honey bread sugars mix into the kitchen of baking spices, apples nutmegs and nibs tapering into a hearty caramel pecan pie slice with toffee and vanilla sugars. Finishes with more oily cinnamon apple spices and heat, a reminder this is a 94 proof treat being sampled yet still incredibly smooth and nearly absent of any "burn" from such a stout dram. Purely delicious, seared french oak staves FTW! Recently the interwebs have turned up a spate of whiskey channels all offering up sampled opinions, one of the more prevalent themes of the day is the Best Bourbon Under 40$ contests. For good reason Makers 46 has been nailing this contest and hard. It's continually found on the shelf at 40 or below and almost nothing in that range really compares, now the real question, what if anything outside of that range compares? I've often touted the 107 Weller Antique as "the real Weller" that's worth going after and much like standard Makers can go toe to toe with the green label Weller, the 46 may be the "new" king killer in it's ability to stand up to "the good Weller". Makers 46 is just a fantastic sampling of a top notch wheated bourbon and the kicker is you can walk into any liquor store and find it on the shelf and at a moderate price. rating: Just being included in the mix of top Weller products would automatically throw you into the plus 4 star category, but being an entirely acquirable product for a really modest price, that's worthy of some status as well. Most of us are value conscious when it comes to price and even those excluded from us "rabble" would do well to note the quality of this bottle. For many of us, this is in range of an every day drinker and from now on will get much more respect from myself for being a bottle that won't cause me a headache just to acquire it. For being a relatively young(less than a century old) distillery, the folks in Loretta have not only figured it out, they've gotten it right and are keeping it coming, that's worthy of some serious kudos too. You GO Makers Mark! Cheers