Here is the followup to a huge side by side tasting I did involving twenty years of Henry McKenna Bottled in Bond. The TL;DR version is after trying some amazing Henry McKennas distilled in the mid 80s that run circles around the current product, I thought it would be fun to run through the years since then to see how the profile has changed. The grand side by side turned into a bit of a disaster though as there were just too many samples involved. In an attempt to salvage some sense of usefulness, I'm running through what vintages I have remaining in a more typical review style. On deck we have:
- Barrel No. 0083, Barreled on 12/05/86
- Barrel No. 0208, Barreled on 05/01/92
- Barrel No. 0232, Barreled on 04/19/93
- Barrel No. 0324, Barreled on 05/09/95
- Barrel No. 0328, Barreled on 05/20/96
- Barrel No. 0842, Barreled on 10/24/01
- Barrel No. 1024, Barreled on 05/30/02
(Left) Aged 10 Years; 50.0% ABV; Barrel No. 842, Barreled on 10/24/01
(Right) Aged 10 Years; 50.0% ABV; Barrel No. 3035, Barreled on 03/14/06
Nose: Pretty typical bourbon flavors - vanilla, caramel, and a good bit of oak. The current bottle smells slightly fruitier and more grain forward but it's not as noticeable as with previous instances.
Taste: Very caramel and sweet forward with a lot of dry oak starting in the mid and back palate. Those notes continue but then there's some unpleasant musty earthiness like dirty oak barrels that linger in the finish. The heat is overly evident for 100 proof and I'd even say it drinks hot. Tasting this side by side with a current bottle they are slightly different in profile but I can't say I prefer one over the other. The newer version tastes less oak forward but isn't as dry nor does it have any off-putting notes in the finish.
Thoughts: This finished near the bottom in the big blind tasting of these and here today I'm standing by that. It's not a bad bourbon but compared to the pre-fire versions previously covered it has a lot of flaws. It's not well balanced, it's missing the condensed bourbon flavors noted in previous bottles, and it's a touch too hot. Most all of the ones leading up to this have drank way under proof and have been incredibly dense flavor-wise so this is a big change.
Rating: C+
So is post-fire where things went downhill for McKenna? We've got one more lined up to find out.
Note that price is not considered when assigning a rating.
No comments:
Post a Comment