Whiskey Advent Calendar Tasting: Jack Daniel's Single Barrel Select

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

Whiskey for December 23rd, 2021: Jack Daniel's Single Barrel Select

The distillery

I've covered Jack Daniel's in the past. You probably already know who they are.

The whiskey

Single Barrel Select was debuted in February of 1997. It's standard Jack Daniel's from select barrels that's bottled at 94 proof. The webpage for the whiskey suggests notes of caramel and spice and robust character and draws distinct flavors from barrel. Which is sort of useless information for a whiskey, but I'm not sure what else one might say.

Keep in mind I thought Gentleman Jack was good, earlier this month. It's not to say I'm deciding ahead of time this is bad, but I don't think people buy JD or any kind for real serious tasting. But let's find out!

Look

This whiskey is light gold with a reddish hue. It's bright and clear with yellow highlights. It swirls to a handful of decent legs that run fairly quickly.

Nose

The nose is bright with alcohol and citrus. At the back of the nose is some oak. It's sweet with maybe just a little vanilla hiding throughout.

Taste

It starts with sweet vanilla and swells into cinnamon and caramel. The finish continues with spicy cinnamon and sweet vanilla and lasts a surprisingly long time. There's even a little dried fruit and berry tucked into the middle. It's shows up and the poof, is gone to the cinnamon. I'm really surprised with how well balanced and good this is.

After water

The nose stays fairly close to the original after dilution, but you can start to get that cinnamon on the nose itself now. It was probably hiding in the brightness of the alcohol before. There's a lot less citrus and more vanilla. The sweetness becomes more like brown sugar.

This gets really sweet after water. It's lots of brown sugar, but most of the other flavors are now watered down and far away. If you aren't a big whiskey person this would be amazingly easy to drink, but I find it's lost a lot of character.

Summary

I like this undiluted, I find it flat and boring, though very easy to drink, after you add a little water. I was expecting just higher priced Gentleman Jack, but I was wrong. This is an interesting expression of Jack Daniel's that can be drank neat for a good, but not great, whiskey or can add a lot of sweetness to a cocktail without showing the rest of the ingredients up.