Chesapeake Kentucky Straight Bourbon

Nose: Light and very sweet. It has scents of sweet corn, honey, and a touch of brown sugar. Palate: This is an easy drinking, smooth bourbon with a very nice sweet edge to it. The mouthfeel is a bit watery and pretty light and the finish is on the short side. It has only the very mildest warmth in the finish but it disappears rather quickly. This is pretty mellow and definitely on the sweet side, and it delivers the honey and sweet corn flavors hinted at in the nose. I didn’t pick up any rye spice at all. If I had to guess, I’d say this has either very low or no rye in the mashbill and perhaps it is even a wheated bourbon. It is youthful, without tasting moonshiney. It isn’t very complex and doesn’t smother you with competing flavors. It is just a nice, basic, every day, sipping bourbon. It is completely inoffensive and would make a good choice for serving to non-bourbon drinkers as an introduction. It really has all the characteristics of a good daily drinker. If anything, it is TOO easy to drink…..you can keep taking sips and not need to worry about trying to determine what flavors you are getting. Comments: Bardstown! Says so right on the label. Once again, the magic burg comes through! If you haven’t read other reviews, I’ll let you in on the fact that I seem to like just about every bourbon I’ve ever tasted that comes out of this town and its multiple distilleries. This particular one is 80 proof and three years old (as stated on the label). I think I paid somewhere in the low $20 range for this (and, maybe, less?) and it fits nicely into that price category. I consider it a good buy for the money. Although it states Bardstown on the label, I wasn’t able to determine for sure (either by the bar code or Internet research) who makes this. It says “Atlantic Distillers” on the bottle, but I suspect that it is either Barton or Heaven Hill and that it is a “standard” juice which they sell with a ton of different labels and this one has just had a label slapped on it to sell it in a local market (in this case, Maryland). “Atlantic Distillers” used to be in Baltimore and they put out “Military Special” Bourbon, which Internet guesses put as coming out of Heaven Hill (but one also says Barton!). Military Special is/was a name that most Internet sources believed was only available in military Class 6 stores (OK….military readers….can anybody verify this?) The downside of all this is, I wasn’t able to find the mashbill AND I didn’t find any other reviews of it. If you want something not too complex and you like wheated bourbon, I think this is a good choice (although…..I don’t know how easy it will be to find).