Last Night's Tipple

After tasting some Jim Beam Black Label on Thursday night, I thought that it might be interesting to contrast it with another Jim Beam product, Knob Creek 9 year old Bourbon. Knob Creek is another of the four Bourbons in Jim Beam's Small Batch Bourbon Collection, and it's the cheapest, most heavily-promoted, and most readily-available of them. It has one year of age and 7% alcohol on the Jim Beam Black, which would lead one to think that the two would be very similar given that they have the same mashbill, are distilled using the same methods, and are aged in identical barrels with identical char levels in the same warehouses.

And there are elements to both that are in fact very similar. Both have the orange peel flavor that I alluded to yesterday, and both are a little rough around the edges -- the JB Black more so, which is surprising given that it's lower in alcohol. Neither one ever evidenced much of the vanilla that is so common in Bourbon, even after a long time in the glass. But there are a lot of differences, too: where the JB Black's dominant aroma was char, Knob Creek's is maple syrup and brown sugar. In fact, there's not much char to be found in Knob Creek at all. Too, there is much more alcohol on the nose with Knob Creek than with JB Black. This is logical given Knob Creek's higher proof, but I haven't noticed it so much with other Bourbons of similar age and strength. Wild Turkey Rare Breed, for example, which is about 8 years old and bottled at 108.2 proof, doesn't burn my nostrils when I smell it like Knob Creek does. Some of the alcohol blows off of the Knob Creek with some time in the glass, but it's not that pleasant to smell at first.

I first bought Knob Creek several years ago, and it didn't really do much for me. I thought that it was rough, and it didn't have the flavors that I like in Bourbon. It took me a long time to finish that bottle, and I didn't think that I would buy any more when I did. What can I say? My will is weak, but I'm not sorry that I caved and bought this bottle. It's not my favorite Bourbon by a long shot, but it's not bad -- certainly better than the JB Black. It's also an example of how two whiskeys can be made and aged in exactly the same way and have significantly different characters. Every barrel is different, and this fact is what allows distilleries to have lots of different brands that all taste differently out of a warehouse of whiskey that was all made in the same way from the same recipe.