Bulleit 10 Chars Nostril Follicles
At first, the fluorescent green color of Bulleit 10 – the new 10-year aged bourbon from Bulleit – threw me off, but maybe that was just the hallucinations of Ferdinand Magellan talking or Theodor Geisel or some combination of the two. Okay, all joking aside, Bulleit 10 is not really fluorescent green – though I do think it would be an excellent marketing ploy to grab that uber-millennial, short-attention spanned, 18-34 hepcat demographic loved by people who love pulling significant amounts of wool over other people’s eyeballs so they can make more money. But I digress.
The color is really a hue of brown, like nearly every other bourbon and its grandpa and his crazy, flat-footin’ brother. Yes, yes, I’ve heard all the dainty marketing synonyms for the color of bourbon – amber, blonde, caramel, dusty, russet, tan, whatever – the liquid is essentially a derivation of brown, let’s move on to the more important elements like, will it toy playfully with my taste buds before singing off my nostril follicles in a burst of S&M energy? Perhaps, Mr. Floyd, yes, perhaps [he says rubbing his chin thoughtfully in that mad scientist kind of way].
Even though it’s only 91.2 proof – and I say only with the full understanding of most males that it will take triple digits of proof to raise our eyebrows a quarter inch – Bulleit 10 comes raging out of the bottle like a scorned female ready to inflict some heavy emotional damage upon the first male she sees. In other words, the first whiffage of Bulleit 10 is not raw, intense or any other superficial word seeking to cover up its bad intentions – it’s alcohol, it’s coming to get you and it knows where you live.
So damage control is probably your first thought after two sips of Bulleit 10, but suddenly things begin “smoothening” [a word I invented after the second sip] out by the third sip and while it will likely never be mistaken for a sultry temptress, the Bulleit 10 did, after a few gentle caresses and whisperings of sweet nothings to the glass, produce hints of chocolate and lava as opposed to the pure magma of the first two sips.
Seeing this a good sign of progress, I decided a series of unorthodox tests were in order – how would Bulleit 10 fare when imbibed while wearing a hockey glove, hockey helmet and, the toughest of them all – a glove and helmet? The answers were alarmingly refreshing. The glove test was smooth – pure butter – though this was obviously helped by the pristine nature of a new glove and absence of noxious old hockey glove gasses. The helmet-only test was similarly startling as the Bulleit 10 deftly made it past the cage and into the mouth with virtually no spillage. He shoots, he scores! The remaining glove-and-helmet test was not the messy disaster you are probably thinking it was. In fact, again, there was only minimal spillage and nearly all the Bulleit 10 made it past the cage and into the mouth and you cannot blame the bourbon for the spillage.
In the end, Bulleit 10 began with an aggressive approach, threatening to rip your head off, but inevitably “smoothened” out somewhat so that you could at least talk sensibly to it, calm it down and explain where things went wrong and how they might be open to improvement in the future.
Color – Brown, let’s not kid ourselves…
Nose – Fire and brimstone in the first 30 seconds, only brimstone after a minute.
Taste – Fiery magma out of the chute…but “smoothening” out to lava and chocolate later
Alcohol – 91.2 proof [45.6%]
Price – $45 to $50 [Does not compare favorably with our good friend Woodford Reserve, Double Oaked, which is approximately the same price and much smoother]
WC Rating – 6.9
