Tasting Notes

Producing WhiskyCast has given me the opportunity to taste some really amazing whiskies, and I’m pleased to share my tasting notes with you here. You can search my entire database of tasting notes from this page, and I hope you’ll find it useful.

Old Forester: The President’s Choice

Country: USA

Region: Kentucky

Type: Bourbon

Bottler: Distiller

ABV: 59.3%

Score: 98 Points

Old Forester: The President's Choice. Image © 2013 by Mark Gillespie. This is a rare whiskey…the first Bourbon to be sold as a single-barrel expression. It was sold by Brown-Forman to select connoisseurs by the barrel until the death of company president George Garvin Brown II in 1968, and Brown personally selected each barrel.

This bottle comes from a barrel sold to North Carolina banker Edward Schottland, and was filled at some point during the 1950’s (the exact details are buried in the company’s archives) and matured for 8 years in what was then Warehouse “A”, but is now the Brown-Forman conference center. Schottland’s family sold the final case back to Brown-Forman in 2013.

The nose has mild cinnamon, cocoa, a mild oakiness, orange peel. and a hint of dried flowers. The taste is amazingly full and rich, with spicy black pepper and cinnamon notes, oak, dried flowers that come out on top as the spices fade, and a hint of orange peel. The finish keeps building, then fades slowly with hints of oak, pepper, and cocoa. Simply outstanding! (September, 2013)