THE WHISK(E)Y
Four RosesSingle Barrel Bourbon
m. 60% corn 35% rye 5% barley
p. 100
a. 10 years
NEAT
Bit of a sunny and light lively amber with a slight caramel tint to the eye-balling. Medium+ legs in my Dollar Store old-fashioned glass. That glass is older than a glass perchance should be; I wanna say I moved out west with it long ago. Schnoz is caramel and spiced fruit up-front. Behind is a bracing vanilla which transitions to a thin-sided maple syrup. Under-belly is an increasingly cocoa-laced wood note. I get popcorn on the far out -- makes sense. Gentlepersons, I want popcorn.Feels a tick young on the immediate palate -- a boychik. Fills out to dang nigh robust and too mellows quickly 'nuff -- a somewhat mensch. Hints of ripe plum, warmed vanilla, caramel. Spices come up next; quite red and goodly warmed alongside that vanilla. Woods toast off into the finish. Verily smooth and nuanced; delicately long. Delineated. Still, complexities arise in the soft vanilla and hard wood minglings. I'll again use the word lively... balanced while in perpetual motion.
w/ WATER
Gams stay yowzer, see? Colors don't dilute notably or even noticeably so. Popcorn comes up higher on the nose and it is buttered (not my nose, the popcorn). Caramel lengthens but dulls a tick. Vanilla seems more spiced -- or less vanilla'd? This Four Roses is opening up, for sure. I wish my roses would. It's been a rough year in the garden. Woods un-toast a half-tick. Cocoa is far away and I really have to look for it. Possibly invent it. I'm closer to inventing something like a butterscotch.The teaspoon of aqua affects the body a lot, prolonging the fleshing out of the neat snootful and allowing more sharpness in the interim than I'd like. Whenst it doth settle, there is a nice smokiness there not seen prior. Fruits are melons now. Honey dew and cantaloupe. Other notes are quite in step with my first nip. The gulp is delineated greatly by that sharpness. Finish humsoever is a tick mottled here and nuances suffer whilst complexities grow there. Lots of play betwixt melons and spices and smokiness backs 'em up. Very nice. Nice too, is that this Bourbon is a non GMO offering. Good to see the war on science continues to be waged. I'd like a Habano cigar offering with this Four Roses. I also like to end Bourbon reviews with a couple/few random thoughts. Provocative. Cucumber.
FINAL GRADE
****B+****
Thanks for the loaning of yer attns., gentlepersons.
L'shalom