It’s National Bourbon Day which means a quick trip to Kentucky via Ocado and a dram of Yellowstone Select Kentucky Straight Bourbon to celebrate.
Named after the National Park, Yellowstone Bourbon was first named in 1872, based on an 1854 bourbon produced by J.B. Dant Distillery. Thanks to its ‘medicinal’ qualities, it beat the Prohibition ban and continued to be produced and sold in the 1920s and, in the 1960s, Yellowstone was the best-selling brand in Kentucky. There were several owners over the years but it was time to bring it home to the original family.
In 2010, Stephen Beam, the seventh-generation master distiller in the Beam and Dant whiskey family, founded the Limestone Branch Distillery with the intention of resurrecting his family’s link to the Yellowstone™ brand and, five years later, around a century after his great-grandfather, M.C. Beam, sold his distillery to Yellowstone™, the brand was back with the family.
Yellowstone Select is a mix of four and seven-year old Kentucky straight bourbons and the small batch whiskey is distilled at the Limestone Branch Distillery in Lebanon, Kentucky. Bottled at 46.5%, it’s a very quaffable dram and great value at £52 and, according to the Ocado website, you ‘may’ be offered free delivery for standard orders over £75 – so tempting to order two bottles to save money and get free delivery. For those who celebrate Father’s Day, it also makes a great present for good fathers with good taste. For those of us who don’t, we can treat ourselves instead!
The colour of apple juice, the nose has corn-on-the-cob with lashings of melted butter with a pinch of nutmeg and paprika, Jamaica ginger cake (also available from Ocado…), Bounty bar, Maltesers, cherries dipped in milk chocolate, pumpernickel sandwich with ripe tomatoes, sliced gherkins and spiced brisket served on an oak platter. It’s making me hungry!
Water softens the spices on the nose and increases the fruitiness. There’s a pecan wood bowl of ripe peaches, blackberries and cherries, Maltesers, Lindt chocolate rabbits, leather gauntlets, lavender soap and a beeswax-polished oak chiffonier topped with a silver bowl of potpourri.
Smooth and creamy mouthfeel and the rye is front and centre in front of the corn. There’s a buttered rye bread sandwich with seasoned pulled pork, tarragon mustard and gherkins served on a chrome dish alongside buttered corn, crème brûlée and dark chocolate truffles at an oak refectory table. There are oak spices with cinnamon, mace, black pepper, cumin and cardamom. The finish is spiced teacake with a choice of fig jam or ginger marmalade. It’s very more-ish.
With water, it’s very woody with that lavender soapiness coming through, plus face powder and a big hit of rye with dark chocolate-enrobed ginger, chocolate maltshake and a long and lingering rye and spice finish which tapers to floral gums and gherkins, and leaves you wanting more.
Buying a bottle not only warms your heart and spirit but helps save America’s very first National Park, Yellowstone. I love their logo, ‘Preserve the Parks 1 Bottle at a Time’ as the distillery is donating a portion of the bourbon’s proceeds to NPCA (National Parks Conservation Association), a nonpartisan organisation seeking the save the National Parks for future generations. Buy two bottles and you’ll help them even more!
To buy Yellowstone Select Kentucky Straight Bourbon for £52, go to https://www.ocado.com/products/yellowstone-kentucky-straight-bourbon-552783011
With thanks to The Whisky Wire and Chapman Poole PR for the sample.
Quaffed 