Belle Meade Single Barrel 10 - Review
Belle Meade Single Barrel -- all I need to pack for a trip!
Age: 10 years
Barrel type: Standard bourbon (charred fresh oak)
Region: Indiana/Tennessee
ABV: 52.3%
Price: $68 ($58 + its share of the $20 shipping cost)
Belle Meade is a bourbon from Nelson's Green Brier, a relatively new distillery in Tennessee. To make a long story short, Charles Nelson founded the distillery a long time ago, but it shut down before Prohibition. In the early 2000s, Nelson's fifth-generation grandsons resurrected the brand and the distillery. While waiting for their own whiskey -- a wheated bourbon using the old family recipe -- to age, the Nelsons sourced whiskey from MGP/LDI/Seagram's distillery in Indiana, the high-volume maker which is the source of the vast majority of bourbons and ryes turned out by non-distilling producers (NDPs) in the States. They bottled this sourced whiskey under the Belle Meade name, which is now a full line that includes a bourbon, a single-barrel cask strength offering, and multiple unusual finishes (sherry, cognac, and Madeira).
NDPs incite some passionate opinions from whiskey lovers. The downside of NDPs is that they can rebottle bourbon produced at high volume and low cost while affixing their own arbitrary labels ("small batch") and jacking up the price. So a fancy bottle and label, and a little known name, may conceal the fact that you're really buying a jab ("just another bourbon"). The upside of NDPs, however, is that guys who know what the hell they're doing are going to a warehouse with a massive selection (like MGP/LDI), picking out the best barrels they can find, and giving us the benefit of their palate and selection. Smooth Ambler's Old Scout line made that distillery famous, even though the bourbon in the bottle didn't come from their own distillate, because of how good their scouting abilities were.
Thankfully, the same holds true of the Nelson boys.
Additional details: non-chill filtered, natural color, barrel number 1422, bottle number 55 (exclusive to DC's Potomac Wines)
Appearance: This bourbon assumes a rich, mahogany hue and has a velvety texture, clinging to the sides of the glass and dropping many evenly spaced legs. The bottle itself looks like turn-of-the-century America, with two horses on each side and a P.T. Barnum circus-style banner above that says "Belle Meade." In that old-school way, the label throws a lot of text at you in a dozen different fonts, along with handwritten notations that indicate the barrel-filled date (9/27/06), the proof (104.6), and the barrel and bottle numbers. The back label tells the Nelson's Green Brier story.
Nose: Just about everything you want in a bourbon nose is here. It resembles Elijah Craig Barrel Proof, which I worship, just with the intensity dialed down from 11 to 9.5 or so. Hanging in the balance are oak, vanilla, toasted coconut, barrel char, cherry, coffee ice cream, and some cologne-esque musk or oiled leather. There is a lot intermingling here, but it's like the perfect party, where everyone's different personalities mesh together.
Palate: The experience is interesting. This bourbon enters stealthily, if that makes any sense. The first sensations are of a delicate sweetness, with no burn, but then there is a warming rush of oak, tannins, toffee, honey, vanilla, and corn. It is a rich swirl of flavors, which tails off into a stimulating combination of cinnamon, pepper, and baking spices. It has a creamy rather than oily texture, and it is so gentle I would have pegged its ABV in the 45% range rather than the 52%+ it actually is.
Finish: Belle Meade ends with a lovely coda of oak, butterscotch, rye bread, and cinnamon. This bourbon is for someone who enjoys a lengthy, languorous finish, but one that doesn't light the tongue, throat, and esophagus on fire. Belle Meade is a high-rye bourbon (64% corn, 30% rye, 6% malted barley), and it has that spicy character, but every flavor sings in harmony. This reminds me of a higher-oaked, higher-vanilla offering of Four Roses Single Barrel.
Value for Money and Final Impressions: This is one of the better bourbons I've had in my life, so I'm going to go ahead and say it's a pretty solid value for money at $68 (which includes its half of the $20 shipping cost to get this and a bottle of Lagavulin 12 from DC to Miami). It is ideal for someone who wants more flavor than a regular ABV bourbon, but doesn't want the heat and challenge of the true heavy hitters in the 60%+ range. Does Belle Meade have a flaw? Two minor criticisms. First, by virtue of the lower ABV, it doesn't have quite the explosion of flavor that I find in higher proof bourbons. My second is that the boys at Nelson's Green Brier play it safe and go classic with its flavor profile, and I don't have any of those, "Woah, what is that? Tiramisu? Huh, I kind of like it!" moments. Nonetheless, when it comes to playing that classic overture, this bourbon's a virtuoso.
Rating: A