Bonded, single barrel
& cask strength
These aren’t mash-bill styles — they’re the label words that tell you about age, origin, and proof. Reading them is how you find quality and value on a crowded shelf.
The label-tier map
Click through the terms that actually carry legal or practical weight:
Why Bottled-in-Bond is the sleeper
Because Bottled-in-Bond is a legal standard — one distillery, one distilling season, aged ≥4 years in a federally supervised warehouse, bottled at exactly 100 proof — it guarantees age, provenance, and proof in a way "small batch" (which means nothing legally) never does. BiB bottles are frequently the best quality-per-dollar on the shelf. Learn to spot the phrase.
Questions
Flashcards
Lock it in
From memory:
- What does "straight" bourbon require?
- List the four requirements of Bottled-in-Bond.
- How does single barrel differ from small batch?
- What does cask/barrel strength mean?
- Why is Bottled-in-Bond often the best value signal?
Comparative
technique
Everything you’ve learned becomes real when you taste bottles side by side. A well-built flight teaches more in twenty minutes than a month of solo pours.
Building a flight that teaches
The rule is the same as wine, cacao, and cheese: hold everything constant except the one variable you want to study.
Pick one variable
To study grain: three bourbons at similar proof/age but different mash bills (high-corn, high-rye, wheated). To study proof: one mash bill up a proof ladder.
Order gentle to bold
Lower proof and sweeter first; higher proof, spicier, and older last. Bourbon’s proof punishes the wrong order fast.
Small pours
Half an ounce each. Whiskey fatigues the palate far quicker than wine — discipline here is what keeps session three’s pours as readable as the first.
Reset between
Plain water and a neutral cracker; rest a moment. Re-nose nothing from the previous glass.
Log against the instrument
Score each pour on all six axes before reading its label, then check yourself.
Run a grain flight
Line up a high-corn, a high-rye, and a wheated bourbon. Taste in that order. The differences you fixed one-by-one in Sessions 8–10 should now be obvious side by side — that side-by-side clarity is the entire point of comparative tasting.
Questions
Flashcards
Lock it in
From memory:
- Why hold everything constant except one variable?
- In what order should a flight be poured, and why?
- Why are small pours especially important with whiskey?
- How do you reset the palate between pours?
- What variable does a high-corn/high-rye/wheated flight isolate?
The proof &
age ladders
Two of bourbon’s variables — proof and age — move on clean ladders you can learn to read blind. This is where the tasting method becomes a genuine skill.
The proof ladder
Click each rung to see what it typically delivers:
Reading age, and tasting blind
Age has its own arc: young bourbon is bright, grain-forward, and light on oak; middle-aged bourbon integrates vanilla, caramel, and spice; old bourbon shows deep oak, dark and dried-fruit notes, and — if pushed too far — drying, bitter tannin.
Blind tasting is the whole course distilled: assess structure (proof heat → bottling proof; oak depth → age; sweetness/spice → mash bill) before you dare guess a brand. Getting the structure right is a genuine skill; guessing the exact bottle is mostly luck. Blind tasting also strips away label and price bias — the direct antidote to the hype you’ll meet in Session 19.
Questions
Flashcards
Lock it in
From memory:
- What proof range do many enthusiasts consider the sweet spot?
- Describe how a very old bourbon typically tastes.
- What structural clue points to bottling proof?
- In what order should you assess a whiskey blind?
- Why is blind tasting the antidote to hype?