Melrose Rare 12 Diamond Blended

Melrose Rare 12 Diamond is an American "blended whiskey", composed of 40% 12 yo whiskey (bourbon, or the used wood parallel using bourbon mash) and 60% grain neutral spirits. "Back in the day", i.e. the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s, when vodka was becoming king in the US spirits world, and Canadian Club was in the US the whisky model for "hard" liquor, there were a lot of these "mild" "mellow" "smooth" bourbon cousins on the market. There are still a few of these fossils around nowadays, but they have almost no popularity anymore. (They typically cost about $ 8/750 ml)

The reviewed bottle was probably purchased in the period 1968-1970, and was given to me, unopened, in about 2007. To the best of my knowledge, Melrose Rare 12 Diamond was discontinued in the 1970s. I opened the bottle in about 2009 and have consumed about 20% of the bottle since then. If anything, air time has improved this Melrose Rare 12 Diamond a bit

Nose: high-pitched flavours, vanilla, varnish, and spice. This is not repulsive, but it is no 'come-hither' beauty either

Taste: stronger flavours in the mouth, with strong spice both from wood and from rye grain; light caramel, and varnish. Sweet. There are some good tasty elements here, albeit the flavours are a little rough. Surprisingly this has a very good, pleasant, very smooth creamy mouthfeel

Finish: medium length; continues sweet and goes a little bitter by the end

Balance: reasonable balance. Sure, if this were all I had in a cabin in the Yukon for the winter, I would be happy to drink it. Otherwise:

This is a great example of a happily near-extinct genre: American blended whiskey,...not whiskey blended with other whiskey, but whiskey blended with grain neutral spirits

I think that they typically took some of the most raucous rough-edged bourbon barrels they had on hand to flavour these various blended whiskeys. I am generally impressed by these blended whiskeys, that, even though they are going for "smooth", that the whiskey components usually taste sharp-edged, rough around the edges, and gamey. I think that they were relying on naive inexperienced consumers not to notice that raucous whiskey at low volume is still by its nature raucous