The Eagle Rare 10 Year Old Single Barrel Kentucky Straight Bourbon (750 ml Kentucky tallboy bottle)

Tasting notes:
     The gorgeous, classic nose on this dram is positively aquiline, with hints of persimmons pickled in Pine-Sol®.  There are also notes of bank lollipops fresh from the pneumatic tube, casually parceled out by the patient and loving driver of the minivan.  Of course, you probably wouldn’t remember that last aroma so distinctly if you’d had any idea who that driver was.  Anyway…have I mentioned the mouth?  Wow, what a round and smooth but nonetheless peppery taste this has!  It’s fiery, but sweet and subtle and so controlled and beautifully restrained, you’d think you were drinking a J. M. Coetzee novel (ok, not Elizabeth Costello).  It’s like licking a Stradivarius, variously.  The finish is delicate and fiery and generally a continuation of the mouth, only finer: like a thousand pink paper Japanese lanterns filled with synchronized fireflies hovering over a ripe red grapefruit glazed in pecan oil sitting on the edge of a hot tub containing Jessica Alba.  John termed this a “breast pressing drink”, though when he said it, I hadn’t said anything about Jessica Alba, so he didn’t mean it in that way.  (And for God’s sake, don’t Google that term.) Think more nice party, crowded room, beautiful people all around you, and you press the Eagle Rare to your chest to protect it, to cradle it, to remind it that its love is reciprocated.  You get my drift.

Our thanks to Jobie Smith and Sazerac for the sample!