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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.

I do hope that another one of their experiments might be a new charred red oak barrel

Is anybody using red oak barrels? I would have thought they would be too porous.

Brown-Forman actually applied for and received a new designation from the TTB, which I don't remember exactly but it is something like "Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey Finished in Wine Casks." So it's not quite correct to say "the used barrel and added flavor disqualifies this as a bourbon." When a whiskey meets the standards to be called bourbon, you can't un-bourbon it. But you can make it a bourbon+, which is what this product is. To offer a perhaps crass parallel, when you sell a pre-mixed bourbon and cola, does the addition of the cola make the bourbon not bourbon? Of course not. The bourbon is still bourbon, just mixed with cola.

You'll have to excuse me as a new-B but WR is not the first to make bourbon with a wine finish. Booker Noe pulled this off in 2001 with his Distillers Masterpiece 20yr. finished off in a Geyser Peak Port wine cask for the last 2 years...still called bourbon (ultra premium) and even a better combo 2 years prior with the 18yr. cognac finish.
I also heard rumors of an experimental BT chardonnay finish. I think its funny WR is getting all the media hype over this new offering which to me doesn't seem so new!!

Then again what do I know as a new-B

ACDetroit wrote:You'll have to excuse me as a new-B but WR is not the first to make bourbon with a wine finish. Booker Noe pulled this off in 2001 with his Distillers Masterpiece 20yr. finished off in a Geyser Peak Port wine cask for the last 2 years...still called bourbon (ultra premium) and even a better combo 2 years prior with the 18yr. cognac finish.
I also heard rumors of an experimental BT chardonnay finish. I think its funny WR is getting all the media hype over this new offering which to me doesn't seem so new!!

Then again what do I know as a new-B

WE know that, but WR is counting of the fact that few non-aficianados know that. What WR HAS done is get the feds to allow them to call such a whiskey 'bourbon', though not 'straight bourbon'. I believe Jim Beam's Distiller's Masterpiece notes that the bourbon is 'finished' on the label. BT's experimental Chardonnays -- of which I own a set -- just calls it 'whiskey', not 'bourbon'. And BT's spent 6 and 10 years in wine barrels, not the couple of months WR admits. It will be interesting if Buffalo Trace is as modest with the Zinfandel-finished bottling they will soon release.
Marketing is what you can get away with, and Brown-Forman has managed a coup in that regard here.

The WR is easily distinguishable from the BT, not so easily from the Distiller's Masterpiece. "Finishes," as the term is commonly understood in the scotch world, involve a few months in the second wood. And the term is only used, I believe, to refer to a first refill or "fresh" cask. That that sherry cask might then receive new make for normal aging would not be identified as having a "finish." Whatever the BT experiments were, they were not finishes.

Distiller's Masterpiece would seem to be essentially the same thing, at least in principle, as what WR did. Beam in both cases chose extra aged whiskeys, WR went in the opposite direction. I don't believe Beam identified the source of its casks, which is a big part of the WR story, as it is a sister producer.

As for publicity, every producer seeks as much as it can get, and essentially that is the purpose of this and all "limited edition" products. Beam got plenty of pub for DM and BT has gotten plenty for its. I don't see a PR differential here at all.

I also think too much is being made of the terminology. The point is not some nebulous "authenticity," the point is truth in labeling. Learning from those who came before, Brown-Forman went a little further in getting a more suitable designation.

Fair enough on designation I'll buy that, and a couple bottles when they hit Michigan.

FYI Beam did identify sources for both bottlings. I'm not positive but I believe a bit of nepotism here as well.

DM 18yr; Booker Noe and Alain Royer, the renegade Cognac maker and cigar aficionado from the Fussigny house. The trick was an extra year or more of finishing in a Cognac barrel.

DM 20yr; Beam took 20-year-old Bourbon and turned to Daryl Groom of its California Geyser Peak winery for the finishing touch. Extra aging in Port barrels created another refined flavor bomb.