The 2019 King of Kentucky I an many others are on record for stating it is truly the greatest Bourbon ever made. Tonight I bring you my fist bottle review of the 2020 which pulls the age statement back to 14 years from 15 and sadly while they made about the same number of bottles, these are going to be much more heavily sold at the distillery and as a result they'll be far harder to get and likely much more price prohibitive for those of us who loved last years to get it. Lets just say my cost to get this was insane. The nose starts sweet and I'd argue a bubble gum like note. Brown sugar and rich french vanilla is coming through. Oak and leather are here. The biggest problem with this is that it's overly sweet and somewhat youthful. At least youthful in the sense that WLW is a bit young, not young like an evan williams. Water is bringing out apple cinnamon. It brings down that "WLW" bubble gum sweetness and creates a more integrated and balanced over all profile. Complex, rich and well integrated spices, oak and sweetness now. Taste - Upfront I'm once again getting a huge sweet bubble gum. Then a transition to vanilla, rich oak, huge spice bomb driven by cinnamon and tobacco, and then finishes with burnt oak. Once again I'm getting something just off here. It's good, it's extremely good, but it's not ready. You can just tell this bottling is too young. Water - once again well more spice and oak tannins and just huge oak spice. Crème brûlée with a richly overly sweet oak. The spice really went to 11. Well folks, I'd really wanted to find out tonight I was off on my first tasting but this is by far the worst of the 5 king of kentuck bottles I've had, 4 being last years release. I think the 1 less year, especially with that heat sync where a year is more than a year really did do this a disservice. If you pay over 400, god I hope you find a better barrel than this. Barrel 16 and this is one of 75 bottles and at 64.55%. I'm sorry guys, but the king is dead. I hope to find at least one more barrel just to confirm that the age drop really did hurt it. I will however just note, I paid basically retail (store cost was a touch high so I paid 270), but I did buy 3 HP 30's to cover my "right to buy"...which has me close to the right on a second. A last note is that while I get some youth, I also get some over oaked notes. I think this needed MORE oak to fix the off oak notes. But it just needs more sweetness that was what put the 2019's on a whole other level. The intensity of sweetness is what made King of Kentucky 2019 perfectly balance with what they claim is the oak character of a 21 year old bourbon. Anyway 3.75 vs a 5.0 on last year's bottle. The difference in perfection and outstanding is really narrow sometimes as you simply can't have flaws like I'm getting here to be a 4 let alone a 5.