Who doesn't like some lovely wheated action? I'm a pretty big fan of both Maker's Mark No. 46 and Bardstown's wheat bonded bourbon, and the two producers have some of the coolest facilities to tour in the state of Kentucky. Another interesting through line, Steve Nally, the "King of Wheat" was at points master distiller at both companies, though I believe he had retired from makers before the introduction of No. 46 in 2010. Origin Bottled-in-Bond was the second of Bardstown's Origin standard lineup to be released, and I've only seen good feedback from others as well. The hope with this experiment is to vanilla bomb the creamy sweetness of the Bardstown using the French Oak from the Maker's. I get a bit of campfire charcoal in the 46 that I'm wondering if a little dilution will edge out (that and the fact that they were sitting next to one another on the shelf and I thought "why not?").
Vámonos!
For the uninitiated, Whiskey Frankenstein is the practice of whiskey blending at home to create improved or interesting combos.
🧪Preparation
I blended the two spirits in a 50/50 ratio to arrive at a 50ml sample. Final proof should be around 96.
Whiskies were measured using a 100ml lab-quality graduated cylinder wielded with questionable skill. Mechanical agitation (stirring/shaking) was applied at the time of blending and prior to consumption. Blend married for 5 days. Let rest for 10 minutes in Glencairn.
👅The Tasting
Nose is boozy with a strong honeycomb cereal aspect. I also get apricot and ripe orchard apple in a sort of "hot afternoon" way which was not present in either. Somehow seems less thick than either whiskey, perhaps due to an uneasy marriage. There is a flare up of oak bark and a small bit of candied orange towards the finish which itself is unremarkable and a bit muddled. The campfire aspect of the French oaked is indeed gone, but so too are some of the more refined black tea notes from the Bardstown.
🏆Verdict
2 - Inferior - Not because it was bad, just because it was worse than both of the rather excellent subcomponents. It was a fun experiment, but the result was just an acceptable muddle. I think the proof difference was simply to great when coupled with the base sweetness of a wheated bourbon.
Now that the hard work is over, time for a real quality PHD (pretty huge drink). Thanks for reading!
💀Scoring Reference
1 - Abysmal - Maybe I'm the monster? This is a war crime.
2 - Inferior - So preoccupied with the knowledge that we could, we didn't stop to think if we should.
3 - Neutral - A simple average of its parts. At least we did no real harm.
4 - Superior - "Jinkies Gang", we might be on to something here. Target whiskey is improved.
5 - Genius - Mad Science does have it's perks; this is a breakthrough. Better than all inputs.
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