Blanton's Original

A friend of mine dropped by after his trip to the US, and he brought back a bottle of this and was kind enough to let me have a glass. This was my first top shelf bourbon, so I was really intrigued! I also loved the bottle, and the very cool stopper (and there is a fairly cool story behind the stoppers of the various Blanton's bourbons - head to the Blanton's website for more info).

The nose was very fresh, rich and creamy, but not overly powerful - if my nose was more than about a foot from the glass I didn't get very much. Any closer though, and it was wonderful. Cut grass, caramel, sweet corn, old leather, tarry tobacco with hints of orange zest. Very nice, I could have taken whiffs of it for hours.

The taste was more subtle and smooth than the nose, and took a couple of sips to really open up. All of the ingredients from the nose were there, but with more emphasis on the orange zest, caramel and tarry tobacco with a bit less cream and cut grass. I found myself wanting to keep sipping this one - really engaging.

The finish was fairly short (which made getting back to the sipping very tempting), and started full of orange zest, caramel and sweet corn, before creamily fading.

A longer finish would have bumped this up by a half point or so, but this was very easy to drink, and wonderfully tasty, and as a result I now have a hankering to start looking into top shelf bourbons!

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