Evan Williams Extra Aged with Dan, Steve & Alex

Evan Williams Kentucky Straight Bourbon Extra Aged. What is it with bourbons and using their full name? Must be an American thing. There’s another Evan Quentin Williams the fourth or whatever bottle at the LCBO right now, a White Label that is “bottled-in-bond”, which I have discovered is kind of a weird thing.

Bottled in bond means to make your whiskey to meet standards of and be vetted by the government. It means that if you meet the production standards and use specific government warehouses to age at least four years, the government takes responsibility for the quality of your whisky. This was an early answer to product quality issues and is sort of a precursor to modern food regulatory agencies.

But the White Label government regulation hooch is more expensive than this bottle, which means the Black Label Extra Aged at 5-7 years is probably, the literal bottom of the barrel. It’s the entry to the brand, so we can’t expect too much, but we ended up quite enjoying it. Here’s what we thought:

nose
Steve – pastry, raspberry, cinnamon
Simon – sweet, spicy, candy cane, smoke, apple cinnamon, maple
Dan – light, musty, salt with hints of wood and a decent amount of sweet, bad burn, dill
Alex – sweet, spice

neat
Steve – thick, vegetable pasta, carrots, burn
Simon – caramel, honey, baklava
Dan – great umami taste admist clove & cinnamon
Alex – spicy

finish
Steve – medium, no burn, warm
Simon – longish, lingering burnt sugar, warmth
Dan – slightly astringent & spicy
Alex – spice & sweet

splash
Steve – sweeter, no burn
Simon – fire floats to the top
Dan – same as neat with no burn
Alex – sweet

overall – a good budget bourbon
Steve – 8/10
Simon – 7.5/10
Dan – 7.5/10
Alex – 7/10

Evan Williams Kentucky Straight Bourbon – 43% 750ml $ – Kentucky

Try it? Yes. Buy it? Yes.