Initially there’s a lot going on. Bakery confectionary meets spice rack, followed by dried oak, toasted oak, covered baked apples, canned peaches, and dried apricot. Then tobacco and leather strike before mouth-coating butterscotch and vanilla icing. Once these notes dissipate, lighter baked fruits and jams walk this into a medium finish. While good, this whiskey could have been great if it maintained its initial complexity.

Reviewed by: Fred Minnick (Summer 2017)

Think of sitting on the front porch swing, legs up, a good song playing, and this smooth barrel strength rye. It’s an easy sipper, from the allspice and old-style licorice to the cadre of caramel and vanilla expressions that intertwine custard and German chocolate cake. You don’t expect sweetness, but it’s here, and lasting. If it has a weakness, it loses its intensity about mid-palate, but rebounds with a healthy medium-length finish.

Reviewed by: Fred Minnick (Fall 2016)

After regular bourbon maturation, this is finished in a barrel made from toasted wood with no charring (and no age statement). The wood character of the nose is restrained; corn, vanilla, some nuts and light citrus, but just a light hint of oak spice. Complex mouth: corn pudding, cornmeal, sugar cookies, caramel, pawpaw, jackfruit, and a real creaminess that stretches into the finish…where we get the delayed oak. Mature whiskey smooth, young whiskey lively, and a good price, too. Sourced whiskey.

Reviewed by: Lew Bryson (Winter 2014)

This limited release is aged in new charred oak, like Michter’s bourbons and ryes, but finished in uncharred barrels with a milder toast profile. Made from a mashbill that doesn’t qualify it as bourbon or rye, it has a nose of perfumed oak, candle wax, iced tea, orange blossom, and wild strawberries. A silky palate of licorice, spice, raisins, and dark fruits is followed by a finish of apple, pear, honey, chocolate, and oak.

Reviewed by: David Fleming (Winter 2019)

The nose on this is lovely and seductive, with a gingerbread cookie quality coupled with leather and baking spices. The palate is lively and warming with root beer spices, but its character is overshadowed by the intensity of the toasted barrel, and feels just a bit hollow beneath all that lavish oak.

Reviewed by: Jeffery Lindenmuth (Winter 2018)

More mature and with more depth than the US-1 expression reviewed below. Lush, sweet notes of caramel and toffee up front are followed on the palate by light fruit, dried spices (cinnamon, evergreen, and a hint of ginger), finishing long and dry with more spice, leather, and suggestions of tobacco.

Reviewed by: John Hansell (Winter 2006)

Smells like bourbon—corn, a bit of cinnamon, oak—but there’s something else: a touch of doughy sweetness, a note of straight wood, a twist. Light and pleasant, with enough heat to keep it respectable (and likely alive in a cocktail); all the usual suspects are here, but without the heavier oak character. Afternoon bourbon.

Reviewed by: Lew Bryson (Winter 2015)

Off-market for two years. Nose of caramel, sugar wafers, and a touch of just-ripe nectarine. Sweet/smooth in the mouth, with sweet mint, rock candy, and gliding King syrup flavors slipping all over the tongue, while oak notes provide high spiciness. Finishes with a lingering light sweetness, like a dissolving sugar flake. With all the sweetness, though, it doesn’t cloy. Nice, if not complex.

Reviewed by: Lew Bryson (Spring 2014)

Youthful in nature, and fairly straight-forward. Fresh, minty spice notes accompany some candied citrus fruit and some light toffee. What’s there is pleasing enough. I just wish there was more there (in both flavor and depth).

Reviewed by: John Hansell (Winter 2006)

Layers of sweetness: concentrated vanilla, marshmallow, taffy, white chocolate and caramel. Subtle, underlying fruit. Palate: Again the layers of sweetness, but not to the point of being cloying or unpleasant-underlying notes of oak and minty, resinous spices emerge mid-palate and cut through the sweetness to keep it from dominating too much. Sweet and spicy finish.

Reviewed by: John Hansell (Winter 2003)