Ancient Age

"Aged at least 36 months" quoth the age statement in very fine print on a small piece of paper ringing the neck of the bottle. The age statement was almost in hiding, as though ashamed to be seen.

Additional reflections on this reviewed bottle: 1) the nose is amazingly good--I really couldn't argue with 23/25 points good, but, 2) the whisky is still pretty bad in the mouth. Don't take a chance on buying this is you want a sipping-quality whiskey. Should be OK for a mixer. Its better sibling, Ancient Ancient Age 10 Star 45% ABV, is a very pleasant ultra-light bourbon, and a much much better sipper than is this standard Ancient Age 40% ABV.

Scotch malt makers take their inferior casks, dilute them down to 40% ABV and mix them into Scottish blended whiskies; Americans take their inferior barrels, dilute them down to 40% or 40.5% ABV, and sell them for making cocktails. The inferior barrels still have useful life as cocktail-makings.

Revisiting standard Ancient Age 40% ABV bourbon 15 months after opening, to see if it has benefited from air exposure. Nope, this is pretty much the way it was to begin with. There is still too much bitter tannic oak influence to enjoy this as a sipper. This batch shows well just how intense the flavours contributed by new oak can be, even at just 3 years in the barrel. This bottle continues to have a surprisingly good nose.

Checking in on this most basic of all bourbons sold which is distilled at Buffalo Trace Distillery. The bottle is open 3.6 years.

Some progess!! Decent high-pitched sweet-sugar nose, with some vanilla and varnish. Not outstanding, but certainly OK. Tannin still strong in the mouth, but no longer overpowering. At this point this would be excellent cocktail whiskey, and fair, but no more than fair, as a sipper. I'd rate this up a few points now from the 70 I originally gave it to 74 points. Even Buffalo Trace makes some lesser quality products, though not under their own brand name. On the other hand, if all you need is some cocktail bourbon, it is hard to beat this at $ 11.44 per 750 ml. That's the current price here. When I bought it it cost me about $ 9.50 for 750 ml all told.

The other important points to make about the Ancient Age and Ancient Ancient Age brands are these: 1) the brand is not owned or controlled by Sazerac Company or the Buffalo Trace Distillery. It is a contract brand, and 2) all of the Ancient Age and Ancient Ancient Age bourbons other than this, the 40% Ancient Age, are much higher in quality than is this one. You might get lucky and get a good batch of this AA 40% ABV, but you cannot count on that happening. This is where the lowest tier barrels of aged stock go, the ones that are getting too tannic at just 3 years in the barrel.

After 5.6 years of the bottle open, the change of taste from this bottle has been most favourable and most surprising. The oak influence is relaxed and enjoyable in the mouth now. There is a very pleasant very noticeable floral influence which comes to the fore at this point. I would score this bottle at 86 points now, which is a very far cry from the dismal opinion which I had of it for the first 3+ years which the bottle was open. The moral of the story? The "same" bottle of whiski morphs into several different bottles of whiski given long air exposure. Sometimes the changes are very appealing, and sometimes they are not.

5.7 years after opening this bottle of standard Ancient Age bourbon, and 19 days after the last post on this comment trail, I served some bourbon from this bottle to a group of 7 people at a tasting yesterday. The idea was to show Buffalo Trace Distillery from the least expensive (currently $ 10.99 plus 9% sales tax here) mass market product which they make to Pappy Van Winkle wheated bourbon, which is the most sought after bottle of whiski in America, and costs about $ 100 at suggested dealer price and as of today on wine-searcher.com averages $ 2,582 world asking price on the secondary market. Your odds of getting Pappy Van Winkle bourbon for $ 100 are about 1 in 10,000.

The Ancient Age bourbon was VERY well received yesterday. This was open bottle flavour evolution, I assure you. It took over 5 years of the bottle open to get this to a very good point. Yesterday I would have rated this bottle at 88 points, compared to the 70 I gave it in the original review. I would never have rated this much above 70 for the first 3, or 4, or maybe 5 years it was open. But I would NOW. Same bottle, different taste, and different quality, as it has evolved.

This is much of the reason why I don't post many reviews anymore. They are brief moment-in-time snapshots of an ever changing underlying reality. Which was "right"? My 70 score 5.7 years ago, or my 88 score yesterday? They both were. And neither had any validity whatsoever outside the narrow context that it was one man's taste in a field of many variables of time and circumstance. What was useful information today about this bottle may become completely irrelevant by next month. That said, I am always interested in sharing face to face whiski tasting experiences with my friends in the NOW.

@Victor I also prefer face to face tastings and I'm looking forward to our next such session, whenever that may be.

@Victor, that most excellent $11 Ancient Age escaped me, but the 1.5 liter bottle I purchased, although it did not contain top shelf juice when opened, it did not go to waste. I made a Copper Cliff Mule with it, copper chalice not required