MartyV wrote:Jack sucks and doesn't even belong on a real bourbon website. The entry level, mainstream...I drink it to be cool whiskey. Garbage.
Wrong. I am cool and I choose the drink it
Seriously I choose to drink all varieties of Jack Daniels from time to time because they have a very unique flavor that I enjoy. I find that a bottle of the black is a good bargain when it's on sale for under $20. It's just a simple drink that one can kick back and enjoy on the rocks. It's highly accessible and something you can always count on being available at a bar.
A good lesson to learn is price, perception and exclusivity really don't make one bourbon/Tennessee Whiskey better or worse. Ultimately it's all about personal taste and what we are after in a drink. Just because I enjoy a more refined complex bourbon doesn't mean I'm not allowed to enjoy the simple pleasures of a less refined mainstream beverage.
The comments that trash JD seem to suffer from a false notion that the success of the brand somehow causes harm to the brands they prefer. In actuality Jack Daniels has probably introduced many a bourbon enthusiast to whiskey and encouraged several of us to further explore American Whiskey and Bourbon. It was pretty much a bottle of Jack Daniels Single Barrel that got me started as a bourbon drinker.
If you don't like JD, why not elaborate what flavor aspects about it that turn you off and give examples of bourbons you do like. These kind of critiques are useful and often I'll look for someone with similar likes and dislikes to help me narrow down where to focus my limited resources for sampling new bourbon. Trashing a whiskey blindly comes across as snobbish in my book. I would never claim that my sense of taste is better than someone else's and when I run across a bourbon I don't like I don't blindly assume no one else should like it. Now sometimes bad is bad but to call a product that is legitimately crafted with a high degree of quality and care "garbage" is highly insulting to not only those that produce it but those who enjoy it.