This is officially the second bottle of Booker’s I’ve ever opened and had first taste out of. The batch 2024-03 is name “The Master Distiller’s Batch” and is meant to honor the group of master distillers, including Booker Noe, that turned the bourbon industry on its head in the 1980s and ‘90s, creating small batch and single barrel products, showing off their creativity and ingenuity.
It is made of 4 distinct bourbons blended together, the youngest of which was 7 years, 8 months, and 7 days from barreling to dumping. Like all Booker’s, it is presented uncut and unfiltered…it sits at 65.15% ABV, or 130.3 proof.
The color in the glass is a dark amber. How dark? Yesterday I tried some bourbon that was the color of used motor oil. This isn’t that dark, but is more of the color of motor oil that has spent a 1,000 miles in your engine…and that engine wasn’t totally pristinely clean when it went in. It’s not burnt and ready to be replaced, but it’s definitely not the “new motor oil” color of many Scotch whiskies.
On the nose, I got honey, vanilla, and stone fruit notes. An initial sip was sweet on the tip of my tongue before the alcohol burn started to set in. Once that settled down just a bit, I got cherry, oak, and copious vanilla notes. This one was not as spectacular to me as that first bottle I opened, the 2024-04 batch, but it is still a very special bourbon when just sipped neat.
A whiskey this big needs a “big cigar” to go with it, so I opted for an Eladio Diaz 71st Anniversary (or LXXI Aniversario, if you prefer). I did decide to cut the whiskey just a bit with a little water, to see if that allowed more flavors to come through. This did allow more rye spiciness and baking spices to come into play.
