WOODFORD BATCH PROOF
2022 Master’s Collection releaseMASH BILL – 72% corn, 18% rye, 10% malted barley
PROOF – 118.4
AGE – NAS
DISTILLERY – Woodford Reserve
PRICE – Free! (msrp $130)
WORTH BUYING? – This was a gift. But at msrp, knowing now how it is, I think I’d have been good with this as a one-time purchase, absolutely.
Uncorked and tasted in The Year of No Buying (The what? 🔗 here.)
Back in 2019 I enjoyed a Woodford Reserve Double Oaked Single Barrel, picked by one of my local shops. It wasn’t something I needed to buy again. But its pungent raisin and red wine notes were appealing in an autumnal, desserty way. Standard Woodford Reserve is too sweet for me. It’s a common bourbon in bars, often used for Manhattans, though for me the brand’s overt sweetness makes that cocktail’s vermouth almost redundant.
So I’ve generally not been inclined toward Woodford products. I’ve heard mixed things about the annual Batch Proof releases, though admittedly I didn’t pay terribly close attention, given my lack of interest in the brand’s flavor profile overall. So when a good friend I’d not seen in quite some time stopped by for a visit recently, and brought this 2022 edition of the Batch Proof as a gift, I thought to myself, Great, a chance to give Woodford another go!
My friend had selected the Woodford after going through this blog to see what I might not yet have tried. His research paid off. We cracked the bottle open right away, and to my surprise I did not find it overly sweet at all. We’d warmed our way up to its substantial 118.4 proof with some Wild Turkey 101 Distiller’s Reserve and Midleton Very Rare, so our palates were fully prepped. At uncorking, this particular Woodford release tempered its fruity sweetness with some solid oak and dark chocolate notes. And the hefty proof was dangerously easygoing!
The standard Woodford mash bill is fairly common Kentucky fare. But the mash ferments for six days, twice the industry average. As I understand it, this accounts substantially for the prevalence of fruit notes. They then triple-distill, rather than the more usual double-distillation, using both pot and column stills, and then combine the resulting distillates before barreling. Their entry proof is a cool 110, when most big mainstream distilleries now use the 125 maximum. And they char their oak barrels to a hearty level #4, one notch above the more common #3.
All these careful calibrations and combinations are no doubt a result of the generations of experience housed at Woodford’s parent company, Brown-Forman. Originally founded in Louisville, KY, in 1870, the company initially produced whiskey as medicine for doctors and pharmacies. But soon they expanded production for the general public. Today Brown-Forman oversees Woodford, Old Forester, Jack Daniel’s in Tennessee, as well as several international spirits brands. Perhaps it’s the company’s origin in medicine that makes Woodford some of the best cough syrup around. 😉🥃
Other Batch Proof editions have had bottling proofs around 125+/- on average. This 2022 edition used more barrels from the first floor of the warehouse, where temperatures are cooler and barrels experience less evaporation, resulting in lower proofs than with barrels on the higher, hotter floors.
Having never tried another Woodford Batch Proof release, I can’t say how this one compares. But I can say that Woodford’s attention to detail has paid off here. At least that was my impression at uncorking, with a sunset view of the San Francisco bay and in the company of a good friend.
So here we are now, a week after uncorking and five pours into the bottle. How has the whiskey aired out? These brief notes were taken using both a simple brandy glass and traditional Glencairn.
COLOR – rich russet oranges and deep cherry reds
NOSE – fine oak spices, cherry (fresh, baked, and in a candy syrup), raw chocolate chip cookie dough, molasses, brown sugar
TASTE – warm, a slightly gritty texture, with darker and more subdued variations on the aromas, some creamy peanut butter, and also a fleeting creosote note in the end
FINISH – dark chocolate like in a cake, a faint cherry aspect adding light, a minty-cooling warmth at the back on the throat, and a faint whiff of forest fire smoke passing through
OVERALL – cherry, chocolate, and oak, all as if submerged in a smoldering sunset
Here’s an odd image. This is like eating a black cherry chocolate cake at midnight while watching a forest fire burn just over the horizon. Not the emotions of that situation, of course, variations of which I know firsthand to be terrible. It’s more in the colors and aromas, and that feeling of a late, warm night.
Maybe because the friend who gave me this also grew up with the sights and smells of forest fires at night, that sense is further heightened here. For me, as a kid, these things were unnerving in an almost cinematic way. I knew there was danger. But my young sense for the breadth of that danger was entirely unformed. And so my childhood memories of these moments have a kind of dark romanticism to them, which more recent California wildfires utterly lack. As an adult I understand there is nothing romantic in these images and smells at all. Today when I smell smoke, my anxiety mushrooms like the rising cloud of a bomb.
Well that went real dark real fast. Back to the bourbon itself!
It’s good. Its heat is deeply warming. The flavors balance fruit and candy sweetness with the savor of oak and bready cake. There is both a decadence and a naïveté to it, like a dessert that’s really good but too extravagantly priced. But since I was treated to it, I can enjoy it without the weight of the bill hanging over my head. 😊🥃
I can’t say this bourbon has left me significantly curious to reinvestigate the Woodford oeuvre. I’m not surprised by what this Batch Proof release is offering. Tastes like Woodford Reserve—only more balanced in the ways I prefer. It’s dessert, and I will enjoy this bottle as such. It was the gift of a good friend, and I shall gift pours of it to friends who grace my table and who admit to enjoying the occasional sinful slice of dark and velvety chocolate-cherry indulgence.
Cheers!
The Right Spirit 