By Richard Thomas
Ranking: B-
(Credit score: Sazerac)
The twist for this explicit installment of Benchmark Bourbon, a Buffalo Hint whiskey made out of the #1 bourbon mash invoice and supposed as a mass market, cut price shelf product, it attracts from barrels aged on the highest flooring of their rickhouses. In describing Benchmark High Flooring Bourbon, Buffalo Hint Distillery wrote “prime warehouse flooring are inclined to age quicker as warmth rises.” That’s broadly talking true, if over-simplifying issues.
The thermal and air circulation properties of the rickhouses be sure that the highest flooring are sometimes fairly toasty; in my expertise, the highest flooring of a four-story rickhouse shall be effectively above freezing even on the iciest of Kentucky winter days. On a sweltering Kentucky summer season day, you would possibly have the ability to fry an egg as soon as the skillet heats as much as the ambient air temperature up there. That warmth tends in direction of two maturation outcomes: enhance water evaporation, thereby elevating the alcohol content material; and enhance the absorption of wooden flavors from the barrel. Different processes that happen in maturation usually are not accelerated, and a few (which require that misplaced water to happen) may very well be retarded. So, it’s not really turning out older than its numerical age suggests, however it actually has essentially the most barrel affect of any of the Benchmarks.
The Bourbon
Benchm Bark High Flooring is believed to be aged for 4 years, so just like Bonded in that sense with out really being bottled in bond, and one purpose why is that it’s bottled at 86 proof. The colour of the pour is mid-amber.
Holding all that in thoughts, I used to be stunned by how mild of a bourbon it’s. In most respects, it’s very very like the usual Benchmark–brown sugar, vanilla–however with some added notes of butterscotch and cherry cola, plus a stronger word of oak.
The Value
Most on-line retailers have this marked at $25 to $30, so the Buffalo Hint fever mark-up has troubled Benchmark as effectively. That is regardless of an MSRP of $17. However the bottle generally pops up for as little as $15, so I counsel by no means paying greater than $20 for it. That is meant to be a cut price, so don’t give the worth gougers the additional revenue.
