William Larue Weller Bourbon bottled 2010

Nose: You can smell the wheat, like buttered wheat crackers, creamy and buttery corn, cooked vinilla, some burnt sugars and supermarket marshmallow's melted over a fire.

Palate: Big and Powerful (it is 63.% alc) but not too hot. Big notes of creamy vinilla, creamy latte, lovely note of buttery wheat crackers, piny and spicy notes.

Finish: Very long, cooked vinilla, buttery wheat crackers, some spices, prickly on the tongue and left my mouth watering, creamy.

I thought this was a fantastic bourbon, some other wheat heavy bourbons I've had have tasted a little too mellow for there own good. This problem does not present itself here, this is a powerful and robust whisky that would be a treat to bourbon fans everywhere. Great Stuff.

Ok, I don't submit many reviews here. But when I do write a review, it's because I've just sampled a spectacular whiskey and I just gotta share. Either spectacularly bad (like AZ High Spirits Mesquite) or spectacularly good (like Macallan Signatory 20). Well, this review falls into the latter category.

Now, for full disclosure: I'm still learning Bourbon. I understand single malt Scotch pretty well, and I'm not too bad with Irish's. But I'm still learning Bourbon. (Don't get me started on Tennessee sour mash's). Nonetheless, I do consider myself a bonafide student of whisk(e)y, and can identify a gem when I see (nose/taste) one. I've added bourbons to my personal collection as "homework". Let the grading begin!

So, with that in mind, let's commence. WL Weller is part of Buffalo Trace's "Antique Collection". As near as I can tell, this is about 13yo (give or take a couple of months), 2010 vintage. I'm not a big fan of typical Buffalo Trace, but perhaps that's because I'm not a fan of their "budget labels" you get in the local grocery store. Will a $160 "connoisseur’s label" be worthwhile to my discriminating palate?

(Full disclosure again: I think the "value" or "budget" labels you get in the grocery stores are usually crap. I've commented in a previous posting about this, using cheap vs. $$$ Bowmore as an example)

The nose: malt extract, chocolate fudge, cherry juice. Maybe some fruitcake. Hmm, the karo syrup note, so typical of cheap bourbon, is balanced here. Must be the wheat in the mashbill.

The palate: extremely oily & buttery, perhaps the most viscous whiskey I've yet sampled. Mmmm, I adore viscous/oily scotches, so I approve. I don't faint around feints! The nose is replicated: dark chocolate-covered black cherry cordials. The sticky white goop in the cordials is the bourbon corn sweetness! It is not off-putting. The EtOH burn goes great with the flavors.

The finish: long, long, long. Again, more cordials, with a bitter chocolate that lasts forever, along with faint black tea leaves.....

For those familiar with my other reviews, then you know I give extra credit points for whisk(e)ies that elicit memories from me. In this case, I get memories of my grandfather ordering his beloved Manhattan. He died a few years back; I do miss him.

WL Weller, thank you for reminding me how much I miss Grandpa!

Nose: Total banana-bread goodness. Dark chocolate truffle, burnt marshmallow, corn candy, honey and ginger. Just a festival of sweet indulgence, yet underneath there's a level of complexity that really confirms this bourbon as the rolls royce of its league. Eucaplyptus, wet cardboard, fresh paint, wood sap, and kahlua-infused coffee. Sumptuous.

Taste: A big oak wave of spice to wake the senses. Leather, tobacco smoke, raw yellow pepper and jalapeño sting. And as if in reverse of the proceedings on the nose, this beautiful layer of spice is underpinned by a sweet bed of caramel, banana sherbet, mocha, mint chocolate, almonds and burnt marshmallow. This is bourbon at its complex best, operating very much on a world-class level.

Finish: Long and expansive with a chilli-spice kick. All sorts of new flavours also coming to the fore - raw courgette, cold cigar smoke, date paste, aniseed spice, strawberry liquorice, burnt caramel and salted almonds.

Balance: Despite its high strength and immensely dense flavour profile, it's actually quite light-bodied and even refreshing. There's a lot of wonderful facets to its character that can be endlessly explored upon each new sip, and the invigorating spice kick is both entertaining and complex within itself, as there is a subtlety and layered quality to the Weller spice. This is a truly great bourbon that has everything, almost combining all the best elements of a great corn whiskey, as well of those of rye whiskey. Exceptional.

This is third post featuring bottles from the B.Trace Antique collection bottle share organized by Sjoerd.

This baby is a wheated Bourbon, and as such offers a milder , yet rich Bourbon not as bity as the Rye, but very different from the standard Bourbon profile. It’s aged for 12 years, having been distilled in 1998, and aged on the fourth and ninth floors of Warehouses I and P of Buffalo trace.Bottled at CS of 63.3% it promises a lot. Let’s see what kind of treat we’re in for with this lovely dram

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Colour: Beautiful amber.

Nose : cloves, vanilla and cinnamon spice with some perfumed oak. Candy, maple and also some tobacco leaves.

Palate: Rich thick syrup,maple , some big coconut!! espresso , tobacco, sultanas , and spice. Hot. and very very complex. Wheat is great!

Finish: toffee, vanilla, moist oak.

Bottom line:

This is a Cracking dram. no less. the best I’ve had so far from the Buffalo Trace Antique collection. It’s well integrated, complex, sweet, and maple-y, without being much. It’s intensely good, and very elegant. Splendid stuff. Splendid. One word : Buy. especially in the US where it’s so much cheaper. I’d get a few of those to keep.

William Larue Weller is considered to be an early pioneer in the Kentucky Bourbon business. He has been credited with being the first to use wheat in the mash bill (recipe) instead of rye.

This is a wheated Bourbon, distilled in 1998 and from what I am reading, was aged in two different warehouses on floors 4 and 11 (plenty of summer heat on that upper floor).

Tasted for review with a 12 oz. snifter, first neat and next with a splash of spring water, hand warmed and nosed, sipped for 45+ minutes.

Nose: Light oak in the background while spicy, cinnamon vanilla on top delivers a nice ethanol enhanced punch with ripe fruit, sweet toffee cream. With a few drops of H2O it opens to reveal cotton candy, hint of tobacco.

Palate: Sweet and ripe fruit with a up front burn that gracefully gives way to spice and a sophisticated sweet dry edge. With water it seems more oily, caramel topping. Wow, so good.

Finish: Alcohol lingers with hint of tobacco, dry yet well balanced sweet wetness. The water provides a slightly more taste of the oak but still well mingled with all the disclosed flavors.

Balance: This is some experience for this novice. My first real tasting of a cask strength Bourbon with such a high alcohol content but seems to be so mellow yet complex and smooth while playful with water.

What a wonderfully well balanced and complex whiskey. I have done myself a favor in advancing my whiskey knowledge by having this bottle in my collection and believe others who enjoy Bourbon and/or whiskey would be well served to try this "well done" polished beauty.

William Larue Weller is one of the five whiskeys released each fall in the Sazerac Antiquities Collection. It is a bourbon containing wheat in the mashbill instead of rye, together with the mandatory 51% minimum corn content and the usually assumed 10% or so malted barley valuable for the enzyme content. Wheated bourbons comprise perhaps 5% of all bourbons, the rest getting their flavours primarily from the grain rye, plus the wood flavours. Wheat does have a stronger flavour than corn, so that is what you will taste in a wheated bourbon, along with the wood flavours. The sample being reviewed was released in the fall of 2010. This whiskey is released at barrel proof. There is no age statement on the bottle

Nose: wheat, oak, maple, honey, vanilla, caramel. This is fairly strong intensity in the nose, and a much stronger nose than most wheated bourbons would present

Taste: Giant intense exploding flavours of wheat, oak, maple, vanilla, and a little sweet orange. Delicious. The wheat here is spicy, in similar manner to the way that rye is spicy

Finish: This just lasts and lasts on the tongue leaving the taste buds writhing in ecstasy

Balance: William Larue Weller redefines the possibilies of wheated bourbon. This is high test knock your socks off kind of powerful flavour, the sort of thing that is usually left to rye grain, intense peat, or intense sherry to provide. This whiskey has a balance that employs many intense bass notes from the wood to accompany the more high and middle notes from the wheat. In this case it also seems that some of the bass notes actually taste like they came from wheat. This is highly unusual to taste bass notes from wheat, and I have not seen it from any other label of wheated bourbon. This is phenomenal whiskey, and one of my top 5 favourites

From the 2010 Buffalo Trace Antique Collection

Nose: Strong vanilla note, not just any vanilla, high quality Mexican vanilla, rich and fragrant. Creme brûlée, a hint of coffee, molasses, butter and brown sugar, like freshly made cookie dough.

Palate: Strong, creamy, and thick. Wow, so many of the flavors in the nose are present on the palate. The mouthfeel is amazingly powerful and the arrival is so rich that it makes me feel as though I'm chewing on a square of chewy caramel.

Finish: It evolves in and out of mild dryness and sweetness and eventually settles on vanilla. Delicious.

I really couldn't say enough good things about this bourbon. Unfortunately, it seems as though the William Larue Weller gets lost behind the Sazerac 18 and George T. Stagg. Do yourself a favor and get this at least once. It's such a sweet and luscious bourbon while somehow not being cloying in the least. I can honestly say that this is the best bourbon to date that I have tried and is absolutely one of the best whiskies I have tried. As Ralfy says, great whisky continues developing and leaves you behind. This is one of those.