When I was in California last November, I stopped into a liquor store. The guy running the place was pretty friendly, and he was a really good salesman, too. I’d have a clutch of things I wanted to buy, and he’s just add another bottle to the stash, of something that he thought I’d like, and that he wanted to sell me.
One of the bottles was Kentucky Owl. I’ve never tried that one, but it’s not a cheap bottle anywhere, let alone in California where liquor is part of good old fashioned capitalism, and every vendor is potentially on the secondary market. (In Ohio the liquor is very heavily regulated, but no matter where you go, a bottle here is the same price as a bottle there, and selling alcohol without a license, even to a buddy, is illegal.)
The other bottle he kept pushing on me is Yellowstone. There are different levels of Yellowstone, and I have two of them. One is the bottle you see here, and the other one is one that comes in a cardboard tube and is a lot more expensive. I haven’t opened that one yet, but I did open the one you see here.
The 93 proof bourbon used to be a sourced bourbon, meaning the mash was created in one placed and then shipped to Kentucky to be aged in newly charred white oak barrels, but now the bourbon is all made at Limestone Branch Distillery, and I have to tell you, I like this one.
The nose is very nice, with hints of caramel and brown sugar, pepper and corn. It didn’t seem overly sweet in the olfactories, thankfully. On the palate, the oak was present but not overly woody, the pepper was not as heavy, it had a very slight hazelnut taste, perhaps a darker caramel, and I detected a slight hint of citrus, which is always a nice surprise.
It’s not a super-expensive bottle in Ohio, about $35 for the 750ml bottle. I can happily tell you to give it a try. It’s not up in my top ten, but it’s good enough to buy more than once. Or twice. Or uh, more.
Enjoy! 🥃