Old Forester K&L Exclusive Single Barrel...

Old Forester K&L Exclusive Single Barrel (45.0%): This is a single barrel Old Forester bottled exclusively for K&L Wine Merchants. Like all the other Brown Forman bourbons it is distilled from a mash-bill 72% corn and 18% rye. The cask was sourced from the 5th floor of warehouse G and it carries the inventory number #3511. Apparently it was a leaky cask and yielded only 108 bottles... So that being said because of being exposed to oxidation more than other casks it might have developed slightly different characteristics than the regular Old Forester profile. Intriguing... Besides that it was also attractive sitting on the shelf with a price tag of $40 only...

Color: Medium amber, dark copper with firm legs around the glass.

Nose: Dark honey syrup, sweetened grape juice and linseed oil. Old school cream soda and allspice. Strawberry jam, vanilla and stainless steel lunch boxes. Waxed hardwood and furniture varnish. Very sweet and quite woody with all preserved dark fruit aromas... Concord grape marmalade and Jello fruit cake. At this point even I thought that I wouldn't need to add any water at this abv I decided to pour a few drops and voila..! It cut the sweetness, helped to open up with new floral notes: Less furniture polish and less wood. Gummi bears, Jordan almonds, rose petals and honeysuckles... Big improvement...

Palate: Maple candies, cherry pie and black currant marmalade. Cherry Coke, ground cloves and hint of cinnamon. Dusty, thick, sweet and spicy... A little to dense and muted but water works here as well: Rosewater, vanilla almond ice cream and honey roasted pecans. Still very sweet but much more tolerable and thinner now.

Finish: Long with baklava syrup, cloves and mixed berry jam.

Overall: If you like your bourbons sweet you have a bottle waiting for you here... Especially without adding water it is oozing sweet, spicy and doughy. I am not a big fan of high corn mash-bills and actually don't have that kinda sweet tooth required for this bourbon but it sure is pretty tasty. At the end like I mentioned above a few drops of water made it work just fine for me. It thinned the texture, cut the sweetness and added very pleasant floral notes. Decent everyday bourbon...

Price: $40

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