Have you ever tried a new whiskey and thought: okay... there goes my whiskey budget for the next month. For me, Bardstown Phifer Pavitt does this for two reasons. Up front, you’re going to drop around $125 on this bottle. But then, after first taste, you realize that eventually you’re going to have to try all those little bastards now. At $125+ retail each, this whiskey and its brothers are aligning themselves with some of the bourbon greats. Think Four Roses SBLE, Old Forrester Birthday, Blanton’s SFTB, Wild Turkey Masters Keep... strong peers. Even with an appropriate level of respect for that list, I must say, holy hell, this little guy delivers. He delivers and thanks you, even if you tip poorly. This was the blind taste-test champion in my red wine division of my barrel finished bourbon bracket. Final rankings here were: 1-Bardstown Phifer Pavitt 2-Hooker’s House 7/21 3-Jefferson’s Reserve Pritchard Hill 4-Slaughterhouse Straight Edge My next step is to find a true favorite barrel-finished bourbon by somehow comparing 5 champions from red wine, white wine, rum, port, and sherry finished brackets. This is going to be one tasty April. About this whiskey: You could read this anywhere, but you’re reading this here, right now, aren’t you? So let me drop a statomic bomb for ya. Juice: TN Straight Bourbon Whiskey Age: 9 year Mashbill: 84 corn, 8 rye, 8 malted barley Initial Proof: 110.2 Finish: Phifer Pavitt Cabernet Sauvignon Finish Duration: 19 months Finished Proof: 107** **That’s right. There’s enough red wine left to actually reduce the proof, despite being in a barrel for 19 months. Think about that... —- The tasting of Bardstown Phifer Pavitt: This smells old. There’s sour notes as if from a high oak exposure, and I get honey, citrus, almond, and tart cherry. I really like this nose. Body certainly delivers on that oak, and the mouth feel is not shy on the heat. If you get past those two barriers, there’s honey, orange, cherry, cane sugar, caramel apples, browned butter, brown sugar, chocolate, almond, cinnamon... basically you name it, it’s there, and it’s delicious. I don’t usually rattle off a billion things like that, but I can’t help it because each sip is bringing something new. This body is fantastically complex, though it is spicy in feel for sure. Finish is sour in mouth feel with a fading sugar and cinnamon note. I could see toffee, cinnamon buns, cinnamon powdered donuts, or any other cinnamon-themed desert. It’s pleasant and leaves you wanting more. —- This whiskey rocked my world. It really is that good. What impressed me most from a technical aspect was that this doesn’t taste like a bourbon that is necessarily cask finished. You can get all those flavors from virgin oak, and since the red wine influence doesn’t strike you over the head at any given point, with no context this could make your pallet think it’s just a standard bourbon whiskey that somehow became complex as hell. They married the native juice to a wine profile perfectly, and they made magic here. What concerns me most is standard bourbon snobbery stuff. It’s hot, even for 107 proof. It’s high oak, in a way that I wouldn’t expect from just 9 years. These things can be off putting, but if you look past those factors, the flavors are nuts. At $125 would I buy another? Wrong question. Correct question is how many can I get away with buying before my wife leaves me. If y’all create a divorce-date pool, I get 10%.