I was going to say something about the small batch collection in the Jim Beam White forum, but realised that what I had to say had nothing to do with Jim Beam White, so I thought I would start a new thread here.
When Jim Beam first released this collection in the early 1990's Chris Morris and I went to a tasting at the Seelbach Hotel with Paul Pacault and Booker Noe. We went though the collection starting from the lowest proof to the highest. I would assume that since that is the way they tasted the collection, then that was their "concept" of how it should be tasted.
The Basil Hayden, according to Paul and Booker, was the different mash bill using Old Grand Dad bourbon at 80 proof. This was designed to be the lightest tasting bourbon in the collection and was marketed to appeal to Canadian whisky drinkers. Knob Creek at 100 proof was to appeal to those who traditionaly drank bonded bourbon and Baker's at 107 proof was designed for cocktails with a flavor strong enough to handle its own with mixers. Booker's of course was designed as the first barrel proof unfiltered bourbon on the market since prohibition. The last three products were all the Beam recipe bourbon.
At the time the "small batch" concept was a way to jump on the "single barrel" bandwagon without making a single barrel whiskey, which involves a heavy investment in bottling facilities and labor costs. Over the next decade the definition of "small batch" was changed several times as Knob Creek became more popular. The fact is that by the present definition of small batch by volume bottled at a time as applied to Knob Creek would make most pre-prohibition bourbons "small batch". Once again everything old is new again.