The New Booker’s Bourbon is One of the Best

Welcome to Taste Test, where every week our critic Jonah Flicker explores the most buzzworthy and interesting whiskeys in the world. Check back each Sunday for his latest whiskey review.

How do you review a whiskey release that comes out four times a year with only minor variations in terms of age, proof, and flavor? Can you really say that one expression is better than another without lining them all up side by side and tasting them? I’m not entirely sure what the answer is, but when it comes to a bourbon like Booker’s, which is consistently good despite (or perhaps because of) the aforementioned variations, it all comes down to the details. And the new Master Distiller’s Batch, the third release of the year, is one of the oldest, strongest and best… at least I think it is.

If you’re a bourbon fan, you’re already familiar with Booker’s. If not, here’s a quick primer: It was created by Jim Beam master distiller Booker Noe in 1987, a few years before joining the Jim Beam Small Batch Collection in 1992 which also includes Knob Creek, Basil Hayden, and Baker’s. Booker’s stands out as the uncut, unfiltered, barrel-proof member of the Collection. The proof usually hovers somewhere in the mid-120s–hot, but not hazmat level and not obnoxious—and the age typically falls between six and seven years old.

Which brings us to the newest Booker’s, Master Distiller’s Batch. According to the press release, seventh-generation master distiller Fred Noe (Booker’s son) named this batch to honor distillers he admired in the 1980s and ’90s, including his dad and presumably others like Jimmy Russell and Parker Beam. He talks about how the master distiller job has become more of an ambassador role: “Back in the day, being a master distiller just meant running the distillery. But these elder statesmen changed all that… The job went from spending every waking moment in the distillery, to traveling the world, all the while introducing people to our beloved bourbon.”

Master Distiller’s Batch was aged for seven years, eight months, and seven days–that is not the oldest Booker’s, but pretty darn close, and it is older than anything released over the past few years. It was bottled at 130.3 proof—that’s not the highest, but also pretty darn close and surpasses recent releases. According to Noe, the majority of this batch was distilled in 2016 on Booker’s birthday, and those who are interested in the minutiae can find the breakdown of exactly where the barrels were matured on the brand’s website.

RELATED: The 50 Best Bourbons of the 21st Century

Of course, age and proof don’t necessarily mean quality. The former point is obvious, particular when it comes to bourbon where younger is often better. Still, a nearly eight-year-old bourbon is a totally reasonable age statement that doesn’t run the risk of becoming overly oaky. When it comes to proof, well, that depends who you ask. Personally, I’m tired of extremely high-proof bourbons, and usually if I’m drinking a cask-strength whiskey I’d like it to be about 10 degrees lower than this. Despite this bourbon being 65 percent ABV, it is in fact delicious. Here are some of the tasting notes I jotted down: oak, brown sugar, leather, raspberry jelly, banana pudding, burnt custard, tobacco, and spiced apple. The banana note in particular took me by surprise because I’m used to finding that in a Jack Daniel’s whiskey, but not something produced by Beam.

So let’s consider the question again: How does this batch compare to other Booker’s releases? I always look at reviews claiming that any particular release of a whiskey that comes out in batches like Booker’s or Michter’s 10 Year Old or any member of the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection is really “the best,” although I’m sure I’ve gotten caught up in the moment and made such a claim before. Really, it’s about the moment or the situation in which you are tasting, unless you are actually doing a blind tasting of different releases side by side. But I can confidently say that this new Booker’s bourbon is one of the best that I’m tasting right now, in this moment, until I try another one (old or new) that beats it.

Score: 92