Wathens Kentucky Bourbon

[Fnord5]

Normally not a Bourbon fan, too sickly sweet, but this stuff is good.
Anyone else try it?

[Not A Nice Person]

I tried a bottle of it when it showed up here a month or so ago . . . since I am a bourbon fan.

Definitely enjoyed it. Nice complex balanced flavors with more vanilla than caramel, I thought. A little short on the finish as I recall, but quite good.

NANP™

[Rughi]

I like Wathen's quite well.

It is a label run by Charles Medley, who until the early '90s was the master distiller for the Medley distillery of Owensboro. Seemingly every Kentucky (as well as some Pennsylvania and Mexican) bourbon has had a Beam, a Wathen or a Medley running the stillhouse at one time. The distillery was owned at times by Seagram's, United Distillers (now Diageo) and others, but it was Charles Medley running the operations throughout.

When the distillery was closed out from under him, he bought some of the inventory, some of which he sold in bulk to such labels as Buffalo Trace's Sazerac 18yo rye, and some of which he had bottled under his own Wathen's label. Since his own stocks for Wathen's have run dry, he has bought selected barrels of Heaven Hill's juice and had it bottled in San Jose, Ca.

The cool part of this story is that the Angostura company has bought and is bringing the Charles Medley distillery in Owensboro back - with Charles himself as the technical advisor. Wathen's may be filled with Charles' juice again, someday.

Roger