Parker's Heritage Collection Cask Strength Bourbon (Release #1)

1996 bourbon that has mellowed over 48 Kentucky seasons on the fifth floor of Rickhouse Y in Bardstown. The bottling was drawn from a lot of 68 carefully selected barrels, which were dumped in three "very small batches" of 22, 22, and 24 barrels each. The bourbon is then dumped at barrel-proof marking the first time that Heaven Hill has released a barrel-proof bourbon in the U.S. This cask-strength whiskey will only fill about 6,400 750 ml bottles, and the proofs of the three batches range from 122.6 to 130.9. Parker Beam personally selected these barrels for their superb nose, robust flavor and long smooth finish.

While the heat's definitely there, it's not burning the nose. Plenty of vanilla, sweet burnt sugar, a drying hint of oak. The flavors puddle and linger on the tongue and soar and loft in the palate: sweet corn, hot vanilla, a touch of cinnamon and a crisp fleeting peppery note, and a long, lingering finish that twists through sweet notes of maple and corn, spicy oak dryness, and the solid authority of overproof whiskey. Mighty fine stuff indeed.