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*
* Technically not an arts and craft bottle, this was right after the switch over to the new label.
(Left) Aged 10 Years; 50.0% ABV; Barrel No. 2979, Barreled on 03/14/06
(Right) Aged 10 Years; 50.0% ABV; Barrel No. 1024, Barreled on 09/30/2002; Thanks to /u/flavorjunkie for the sample
Nose: Considerably more dense and compact than the current bottle. It smells more like a 10 year old whiskey should - lots of oak, lots of condensed caramel sweets. There are hints of dusty funk which is nice. By comparison, the modern bottle smells more flat, young, and fruity.
Taste: Largely a reinforcement of the nose. It's not as dense as some of the best of these but it's rather compact. Everything about it taste-wise is just bigger than the current version. The mouthfeel is full, lush, and thick. The traditional caramel and vanilla sweets are very heavy, like thick cake frosting. On the oak side it's very woody but in a nice way with only a touch of bitterness in the finish. Side by side the 2016 bottle tastes fruitier, more honey forward, and younger with way less oak influence.
Thoughts: Another jarring experience. While the last post fire bottle was a bit disappointing, this is considerably better than any McKenna I've had in the last 4-5 years. Like all of the other standouts in this series, color is again a huge tipoff in quality as the differences here are dramatic.
Rating: B+
Note that price is not considered when assigning a rating.
Final Thoughts: Going into this adventure, I expected the decline in quality of these to be gradual over time, coinciding with the switch from pre to post Heaven Hill fire. That's certainly not been the case - there were low points in even the pre-fire barrels and a high point in a barrel that was dumped just six years ago. What I haven't seen are any standouts any later the last one here. My previous best theories on the differences in quality were things like old-growth wood, bottle conditioning, and environmental factors but I'm less confident in those ideas now given the bottle covered today was so recent. Given that, my best guess for the change in profile is it coincides right with when the bourbon boom started to surge. I'm thinking better quality casks and or warehouse locations were gobbled up by other Heaven Hill brands as they struggled to keep up with demand. That's really the only answer that makes sense to me and if so, I doubt Heaven Hill would ever own up to that reasoning.
Update 06/19:
I forgot to add some commentary about the volume of barrels over the years. From 1994 to 2012 there were about 1000 barrels selected. From 2012 - 2015 the next 1000. They doubled all that from 2015 - 2017.
There's your bourbon boom in one concise picture.
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