Booker's 2017-01E

I really didn’t know anything about Booker’s when I bought this. I saw that it was a reasonably priced and easy to find bourbon that was usually well regarded, so I picked up a bottle on a recent trip to London. I really like it as a sipper usually, and I feel less guilty about pulling from this bottle than from the Blanton’s bottle. I would have predicted that this would get a middle of the road (3.75-4kind of review before the tasting.

Source: Own bottle.
Price: £65/$86 from The Whisky Exchange, London
Setup: Blind in a trio tasting with Eagle Rare (Mikkeller Pick) & Bulleit Bourbon
Drank: Neat, in a Glencairn. Rested 15 minutes.

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Nose: Clean oak char, coconut, some dark syrup. An edge of bay leaf, sour cherry and acetone
Palate: Thick and punchy, drinks almost like a red wine with heat.
Finish: Drifts into cherry, fig, brown sugar, with some mulchy complexity. The finish is long and delicious
Overall: Magnificent! Great nose, punchy flavour, long and somewhat complex finish. I would love some more herbal notes though.
Blind guess: Blanton’s SFTB

Rating (given blind): 7

Thoughts: Well, well, well. I struck out a bit there. I didn’t get any of the peanut funk that I usually associate with Beam products and thought that I got from Booker’s. Perhaps that was all psychological? I enjoyed this significantly more than I would have predicted, so I guess I’ll be spending some quality evenings getting to know this bottle a little better.