Whiskey Advent Calendar Tasting: Legent Bourbon

This is part of my series on tasting notes from the 2021 Drinks By The Dram Bourbon Advent Calendar.

Whiskey for December 22nd, 2021: Legent Bourbon

The distillery

So I'm going to call the distillery Jim Beam for this one, because this is a joint project between Fred Noe, the master distiller at Jim Beam, and Shinji Fukuyo, the chief blender at House of Suntory. We've talked about Jim Beam before when I tasted Knob Creek, so let's talk a little about House of Suntory.

House of Suntory is a distillery in Japan that makes some pretty amazing whiskeys. They make Yamazaki, Hibiki, and, of course, Suntory Whiskey (whisky?). Most of these are done in more of a scotch style, but Japanese whiskey is sort of its own thing. House of Suntory was established in 1899 by Shinjiro Torii. At the time he tried to introduce Japan to western wines. When this proved to be troublesome he started blending western wines to meet the Japanese palate.

Later on he started distilling single malt scotch with the introduction of Yamazaki whisky in 1923. Today House of Suntory, and Jim Beam, are part of the massive Beam Suntory spirits conglomerate. Good Job Shinjiro!

The whiskey

As mentioned above, tonight's whiskey, Legent Bourbon, is a joint project.
Fred Noe distilled the bourbon, aged it normally, and then finished some in red wine casks and some in sherry casks. These different casks were then given to Shinji Fukuyo who blended them, including some non-finished bourbon, into the product that I'm tasting tonight.

I've had this whiskey before and have given it as a gift to someone that's a big fan of Japanese whiskys. I really like this product and they did too. I'm happy to be having some more tonight without having to crack open a sealed bottle I'm still hanging onto.

The Legent webpage is mostly marketing fluff, which is fine, but their version of tasting notes is a little spread out and a mash bill is nowhere to be seen. That's fine, let's continue.

Look

Legent has a lovely orange and pink tinge to our normal bourbon brown. The highlights are rose-gold in the light. It swirls to sheets of glycerine that resist turning to legs.

Nose

The nose is bright and fruity with peach, apricot, tangerine and lemon. There's a little grassy rye hiding out in the background with a little oak there too.

Taste

The palate is sweet with dried fruit and berry jam flavors. It burns hot with alcohol in the middle to a spicy cinnamon finish that really lasts. As the finish fades away you get vanilla coming in to take the place of the cinnamon. Very nice and layered.

After water

After a little water the nose stays in the same character. It's a little less bright, because there's less alcohol assault, so you get the more rounded stone fruit flavors filling in a little.

The flavor stays in character too, with the spicy cinnamon showing that it was a core part of the burn, now that the alcohol has faded a little. The upfront fruit gains some vanilla and caramel, but the berry jam stays there too. The finish on this stuff just goes on forever.

Summary

So two whiskeys with intensely spicy cinnamon back to back. It's like my lucky day. I really love this profile of whiskey with lots of cinnamon, caramel, and vanilla. Legent is fantastic, especially at the price I used to buy it at. It's balanced and interesting and is both like a classic bourbon and exactly how I would expect japanese whiskey to influence bourbon. You owe it to yourself to try this bourbon.