Whiskey Review: Winchester Bourbon

Size: 750mL bottle
Price: about $25
Purchased at Total Wine

Background

Much has been made lately of the issue of “sourcing” spirits. New whiskey brands pop up all over the place it seems and if you read the fine print, a lot of them seem to be coming from the same place. Some feel like this may be diluting the marketplace. I’m more inclined to say it’s a matter of “feed the need.” Bourbon is one of the fastest growing segments of the spirits industry worldwide. While Jack Daniels may be the only brand a lot of non-Americans know (it is the top-selling whiskey in the world), it is frequently being joined on the shelves by other brands. As long as the new brands of whiskey are good…what do I care who makes them?

That brings us to today’s featured Bourbon Whiskey, which I picked up on my September trip to California. Winchester Straight Bourbon Whiskey is listed as “Small Batch” and bottled at 90 proof by the good people at TerrePURE Spirits in North Charleston, South Carolina. Wait…who? When I looked up TerrePURE on Google I was directed to a “Terressentia” site where it appears TerrePURE is the name of a process they use. They claim to make the “cleanest spirits made by man” and they specialize in bulk spirits and getting you your own private label.

Besides that, the only information I could fine online was from the Total Wine website which states:

Distilled using a completely natural, process. The process removes a greater amount of harsh tasting minor alcohols and free radicals, providing additional taste enhancements, and yielding top quality small batch bourbon. Gold Medal – San Francisco Spirits Competition.

So it won a Gold Medal and it’s reasonably inexpensive…that’s why I bought it. At the time I finally sat down to write this review, I had drunk 2/3 of the bottle, so…yeah, it’s good.

Notes

Winchester Bourbon is a light amber color int he bottle, almost a burnt orange rather than some of the darker hues you might see in Bourbons with more age. It’s possible that this has the federal minimum 2 years of age in the oak barrels which would explain the color.

Swishing it around in the glass, I saw that it had pretty thin, fast-moving legs. The aroma was of sweet corn mash with an abundance of vanilla and a touch of oak. The aroma was rich and pleasing, without much in the way of stinging alcohol vapors.

I took a small sip and held it toward the front of my mouth. It took a good 8 or 9 seconds for any fire to build, so this there probably isn’t a lot of rye in the mix here. I detected notes of honey and vanilla, with a touch of graininess underneath. The finish had more honey.

I found this to be a superb sipping whiskey. It had a nice roundness and balance to the flavor; just a little bit of the bite I like in a whiskey, but not so much that I felt like it needed to be mellowed out. It wasn’t the most complex dram I’ve ever had, but at $25 or so a bottle, I wasn’t expecting it to be.

This is one of those great Bourbons that’s almost automatic…you could pair this with almost any cigar and enjoy the results. I decided to pick something at random…I literally opened my humidor while looking away, reached in and grabbed the first loose cigar I could find. Turned out to be a GTO Pain Killer Corojo. The Dominican Corojo was medium in body with a little pepper spice and mild sweetness, all of which paired well with this whiskey.

In conclusion, I think it’s important not to be too snobbish when it comes to exactly where your whiskey comes from. Yes, I enjoy a story of family and tradition as much as anyone, but when some of those “old school” whiskies are now owned by huge multi-national conglomerates, do those stories have any more weight than the new stories being told? While I might prefer that every company set up their own micro-distillery and build it as needed, I can’t argue with the quality of a lot of sourced whiskey.