The I. W. Harper Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey

200 ml Bernheim mini

IW-Harper-Kentucky-Straight-Bourbon-WhiskeyTasting notes:
Jew hear? The I. W. Harper Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey is available again! Yes, the whiskey first distilled in 1872 by Isaac Wolfe Harper, née Bernheim, is back in stores.

Jew mean it? Really?

Yes, indeed! And it’s just like your Bubbe and Zayde remember it: Scrimshaw carvings of raccoons in walnut shells—because  while you were out buying absinthe, your roommate turned the walrus tusk into a giant bong, which he claimed was a nouveau Meerschaum pipe. Grass and pine needles plaited together into a tea cozy that’s dusted with acorn powder that was sautéed in clarified butter and schmaltz. There’s also plum wine with chilled buttered nutmeats being aerated by a geisha coyly blowing through a hand-hammered silver straw. Maybe it’s not like your grandparents remember, after all.

Like Lionel Messi, it’s light and nimble and has a powerful kick. There are cough drops lurking there; cough drops that if they were available over the counter or from the Wells Fargo Man, you’d gladly become consumptive just to keep them coming. 14 year old me is retrospectively sad to have been saddled with Ricola Natural Herb Cough Drops™.

Tangy and bright, like a halogen spotlit china cabinet with shiny brass fixtures. Brassy, brazen, and brash, like a spotlit boa-draped burlesque dancer in a part of New Orleans your iPhone could never find again and that maybe you visited only in a whooping cough fever dream. Voodoo Crenshaw melon rinds strung up alongside the Spanish Moss and licorice whips, twisting slowly, slowly in the wind blowing off the bayou.

Rating:

On the scale of miraculous resurrections–
The I. W. Harper Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey is Matthew McConaughey’s career due to Magic Mike–I know he’s not a Jew or even Jew-ish, but he was a shirtless stoner punchline! A nobody! A one-time megastar who sank below the horizon. And now? A full-fledged McConaissance. Welcome back, I. W. Harper; my grandparents missed you.

 

                                                                      –Bill
   
       

 

–Our thanks to Diageo for the sample!

 

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