Late final yr, Denver’s Legal guidelines Whiskey Home dropped two new installments in its Particular End Collection, and so they couldn’t be extra completely different. Each begin with Legal guidelines 4 Grain Bourbon (60% corn, 20% heirloom wheat, 10% heirloom rye, and 10% heirloom malted barley)
… after which down the rabbit gap we go.
Legal guidelines 4 Grain Bourbon Honey Cask Completed – This can be a collaboration with, of all locations, a honeybee apiary referred to as Bee Squared Apiaries. After ageing in new charred oak barrels for two years and eight months, Legal guidelines 4 Grain Bourbon goes into barrels beforehand used to retailer Bee Squared honey. (These barrels are, in flip, former Legal guidelines bourbon barrels, so that they’re coming full circle.) The bourbon spends an extra yr and a half within the ending barrel, for a complete ageing time of 4 years, 2 months. Legal guidelines has produced some excellent whiskeys up to now, however this can be my favourite so far — and I don’t even gravitate to honey barrel ending all that a lot. Right here, the mixture is nearly excellent, the nostril wealthy with earthy honey and tea leaf notes, pairing splendidly with the vanilla and spice of the whiskey. The (preliminary) barrel affect is properly built-in, offering a sedating, vaguely wintry high quality. The palate is even higher: Wealthy and candy, vanilla and honey offering a base in equal proportions towards which extra conventional whiskey parts can finally play — char, some herbaceousness, a number of contemporary cinnamon, coconut, and toasted almonds. The tea leaf reprise on the end is intense and beautiful, with a dribble of candy honey to maintain issues chewy and sunny. It’s a fantastic journey from starting to finish, however the robust through-line of earthy honey retains you on a straight and slender path. Like it. 95 proof. A / $80
Legal guidelines 4 Grain Bourbon Completed in a Cognac Foeder (2023) – What’s a foeder? What’s a foeder with you? Sorry, dad jokes. This whiskey has been produced a number of instances by Legal guidelines, beginning in 2017, and it’s now an annual launch that’s evolving as a solera type bottling. We’ve but to evaluation it, nonetheless. The 2023 bottling is a mix of whiskeys aged between 4 and eight years, then completed in Cognac casks. It’s really a tertiary ageing that’s used for the solera vat: it is a 50-year-old French oak mixing vessel (the foeder), which was sourced from Alain Royer, additionally in Cognac. This cuts a extra conventional profile than the Honey Cask launch, with a extra closely charred high quality on the nostril, a weightier cereal factor, and extra peppery punch. A lot the identical on the palate, although right here the notes of raisins and darkish cherries come into focus only for a bit, earlier than retreating right into a extra sultry character of cola, brewed tea, and moist leather-based. A touch of bay leaf on the end provides an natural punch earlier than the darkish/dried fruit character comes rolling again into focus. It’s the end the place this whiskey shines the brightest, although I invariably wished for extra of that fruit on the nostril. 95 proof. A- / $85
Legal guidelines 4 Grain Bourbon Honey Cask Completed
$80
