Jim Beam Signature Craft 12 Year Old

I was fascinated when I saw this Jim Beam 12 yo Signature Craft Bourbon, because Beam had always seemed to sell their whiskey with an age statement under 10 years. I own a bottle of this bourbon, but I am reviewing from a sample from @JeffC. The reviewed bottle has been open for 3 weeks and is 60% full

Nose: a very nice nose, strong intensity, with lots of vanilla, caramel, oak, and oak tannins. This is quite sweet overall, with just a hint of balancing sourness

Taste: this tastes like prototypical Jim Beam, only with stronger oak flavours, and a little extra sweetness. The oak is just at the tolerable upper limit...any more would be too much

Finish: the sweetness on the delivery continues, but the tannins from the oak just seem to build and take over the finish. This finishes oaky, and a little bitter

Balance: this is quite a pleasant bourbon, but this particular batch flirts with too much oak. For me it is just within the acceptable range of oak influence; others may find it already a bit too much. I was skeptical about this one because I consider 43% abv to be generally too low to give a satisfactory concentration of the flavours of bourbon. This Signature Craft 12 yo comes across as a fairly mild and mellow bourbon at 43% abv, but if it had the 50+% abv which I usually prefer, it is probable that that would further concentrate the wood influence and probably make it even more noticeable...and probably too much

Interestingly, a little water, which I am generally loathe to add to a 43% abv whisk(e)y, lessens the wood influence in both nose and mouth. Water added makes the palate unacceptably dilute

It will be interesting to see whether later batches of this one taste very similar. My guess is that most of them will be very close to this profile. The US pre-tax price point for this, $ 30-35 retail, $ 25 sale price, indicates to me just what I have already diagnosed: that I am tasting very standard very average barrels of Jim Beam, just aged 12 years, instead of 4 years or 8 years. So my advise is to stick to the previously available (other)'Small Batch' expressions of Jim Beam, rather than being tempted by a few extra years of age statement. Cherry-picked barrels trump three to six years of additional aging every time. This is not bad bourbon, far from it. It is quite enjoyable...but I'll take Booker's, Baker's, or Knob Creek Single Barrel in preference to it every time

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