Bourbon Review: Corner Creek Reserve
Here is a guest bourbon review, written by Martin from WhiskyCritic.com. Enjoy!
Corner Creek is a small Kentucky-based distillery that makes only the one expression: Corner Creek Reserve Bourbon Whiskey. Unfortunately I couldn’t find much information on the distillery itself, which means we will just have to jump straight into the tasting. Well, I say straight, but before we move on to contents of the bottle I’d like to say a quick word about the bottle itself: I’m not a fan. It has deeply sloped shoulders and were it not for the label telling you that it’s bourbon, I would’ve thought it was a bottle of white wine I was holding in my hands. The label does save it a bit, though, as it’s a really nice design.
I won’t go on about the bottle any more, though. The nose is quite sweet and presents vanilla along with caramel and honey. There’s also a spicy rye note, and perhaps a touch of dried fruits? No great complexity to be found here, and the wheat that is supposed to be present in the mix isn’t very convincing, I caught an occasional whiff but I couldn’t swear that this wasn’t simply down to knowing that it was supposed to be there.
The palate once again starts out sweet with caramel and a fair bit of vanilla, the fruit is a bit more pronounced here than on the nose and brings to mind fried plantain, which is nice, and there’s a bit of oak in there as well. The spicy rye note from the nose is also considerably more pronounced on the palate, and any hope the wheat stood of making an entrance is firmly rejected by its dominance.
By no means a bad drink, and at around £20-25 quid I suppose it offers fair value – especially if you take into account the fact that it’s fairly unusual, at least in the UK – but there are far better, more balanced and more interesting whiskeys around in the same price range. It sort of feels like it’s about to get started, accelerating towards something, but fails to get there on account of a lack of horsepower.
Colour: Light honey.
Nose: Vanilla, caramel, honey, faint wheat (perhaps?), rye spiciness.
Palate: Caramel, vanilla, fried plantain, some oak, a good ole serving of spicy rye.
