Review #47: Elijah Craig 12yr "Small Batch" Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, 47% abv

I remember this dessert

This is the standard Elijah Craig, one of infinitely many labels produced by Heaven Hill. I'm sure I'll get around to writing up Evan Williams and Rittenhouse one of these days, too. Maybe even Larceny. I don't have much else to say except: ever since a big fire, they distill and bottle in different locations, I think, and everything they produce is a huge bargain. This is about $24 for a 12 year old ...

nose: polenta, and some spicy candy -- like those Brach's hard candies (cinnamon, butterscotch). huge amounts of butterscotch

palate: I'm not sure how I didn't notice this before, but this is a coconut rice pudding I once had. I sort of remember it: coconut, rice, maybe condensed milk, vanilla, some cinnamon and cardamom. This is that. Well, maybe this one has some corn to it, a bit of dried fruit, and woodiness, and well, it's a bourbon and not a rice pudding, but otherwise it's the same.

finish: long, on coconut rice pudding and oak.

I like this a lot, but I'm not sure how often I want to drink that pudding. (My almost certainly faulty sense-memory is probably getting in the way here.) I'll drink it often enough.

score: 83

update: with the bottle having been open a while now, there's less coconut cream up front and more rye on the finish. same score.