Last night at the Brown-Forman bourbon dinner at the Bourbon's Bistro, Dave Scheurch was the guest speaker. Dave is the plant manager at Woodford Reserve and a very knowledgable speaker. He also spent the morning bottling the edition of the Master's Collection so he brought some bottle to the Bistro for the diner's drinking pleasure. From the reaction of the crowd, it was a hit. Many people thought it a superb drink. Personally, I think it was a very tastey drink, but not something I would buy on a regular basis. Here are a few mental notes made as I tasted the product:
The color was nice, with an amber hue slightly orange instead opf red.
The nose had some of the same "yeasty, bread dough" aromas I found in the Four Grain, but there was some fruit and caramel as well.
The taste was nice with rich caramel and fruitiness from the wine finish. I personally don't care for wine finished bourbons because they cover a lot of the bourbon flavors I do like such as apple and pear and other fruit flavors. I could still get a hint of apples in this product that was not overpowered by the wine flavor and that just made me sad for what I was missing.
The finish was long and sweet with caramel and wine fruitiness.
The good thing is that Brown-Forman is not calling this a "Bourbon" but a whiskey. The used barrel and added flavor disqualifies this as a bourbon. I do hope that another one of their experiments might be a new charred red oak barrel, just don't put wine in it first and let us see what flavors red oak has in its wood.