Nose: oatmeal and cinnamon cookies. Sweet with a little bit of spice. A tint of oak with a deep breath. Plenty of alcohol on the nose, but not strident or obnoxious.
Taste sweet with a nice depth of rye grain. Enough mint and spice with some citrus to tie it together like a nice holiday cake. The sweetness is offset by the harsher rye grain to provide a balance with a well defined depth. You will notice that I write a lot about balance. I generally feel that balance is the key to a good drink. Compared to a lot of the single barrel or small batch type stuff, this is a very different balance. Those are raw balances that seem to happen by chance with just pure selection from large numbers. This is a carefully engineered balance. The blend has been clearly selected and tweaked to give the palate that the designer, in this case Don Livermore, exactly what he wants. The flavor has plenty of depth, but it isn't the un fathomable depths of many great single barrels. This is a well defined chasm with a clear cut and formed trench along the bottom. It has been expertly engineered to fit the deepest vessel that is expected to pass with sufficient clearance. I can't wait to put this thing in a head to head with some standard shelf items like Elmer T. Lee to see how it does blind. It is so wonderfully smooth that I have to take my hat off to the top of line items from these guys. This, the Lot 40, the Wiser's 18, all drinks that are just so wonderful at what they deliver and so smooth I could drink them to excess daily. The mouthfeel of all three is really quite impressive, I can hold this in my mouth for minutes and just keep exploring the nooks and crannies of that trench. If I had been more sober at WhiskyFest, I would have taken better notes on what they do to get this great feel, but as it is I will have to just wait until I corral him at some future event. Maybe I'll just go knock on his office door. They are quite close, you know.
Back on topic, the finish is pleasantly long, but not unending. It turns a hair bitter and acidic if I'm looking for something to be amiss, but that is a bit of a stretch for me. In general, it gives a nice reflection on the sip and then fades gently to a memory.
This is quickly becoming a shelf item at my house. It is a little pricier than I would like, but it is really quite nice and just different enough to get people's attention when they come over. Unless they are a geek, chances are that they have overlooked this on a shelf a few times and never tried it. Every body that I've handed it to has taken one sip and just gone a little wide eyed and given me a nice "whoa." Hiding in plain sight. Just like your first bottle of Elmer T. Lee.
(quote is from High Society)
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