Jack Daniels Single Barrel Bottled in Bond

Here we go. This is Jack Daniels’s more recent offering of a bottled-in-bond version of their classic Single Barrel banana whiskey bourbon Tennessee Bourbon. I don’t have a whole lot of hope for most things JD, but listening to their master distiller, Jeff Arnett, humbly and earnestly describe his product on a recent podcast made me want to give some of their single barrel stuff a chance. So what the hell, here we are.

This review was done blind in a set of 21 blind bourbon (and rye) reviews, tasted in sets of 3 (on different days). None of the whiskies were revealed until all 21 were drunk. More information about this setup in the first review of the series.

1. Old Forester 1920
2. Four Roses Limited Edition Small Batch 2017
3. Four Roses Single Barrel OESK (Brookline Liquor Mart pick)
4. Kentucky Owl Rye (batch 1)
5. Weller Antique 107
6. Rowan's Creek
7. Elijah Craig Barrel Proof #12 (136 proof)
8. Old Forester Statesman
9. Michter's 10yo Bourbon
10. Henry McKenna 10yo BiB
11. Weller 12
12. Smooth Ambler Old Scout 7yo
13. Rhetoric 23
14. George T. Stagg 2017
15. Four Roses Single Barrel OBSV (Loch & Key Pick)
16. Maker's 46
17. Jack Daniels Single Barrel Bottled in Bond
18. Little Book “The Easy” (2017)

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Distiller: Jack Daniels (Brown-Forman)
ABV: 50%
Age: NAS (>4 years as of BiB rules)
Setting: Blind, in a trio with Maker's 46 (#133/2019-02-07) and Little Book #1

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Nose: Banana, bay leaf, menthol, clove, corn mash, lactic sourness, peanut.
Palate: Banana candy, peanuts, quite a hot kick of heat, cinnamon.
Finish: Like sucking on a jolly rancher, if they had a banana flavour. Sweet, HFCS, banana candy.
Overall: This was a banana bomb, and I didn’t really enjoy it. It does have some redeeming spice complexity though, and some enjoyable (but not aggressive) heat.

Rank: 4
Guess: The only thing I really can think of that I know has that pronounced banana note in it is JD BiB.

Reveal: ✅. No surprises. It’s banana, it’s thin, and I don’t know how I’m ever going to finish this bottle. Moral of the story: don’t let podcasts buy your bottles for you.