Old Charter Charter 101

Charter 101 is produced at the Buffalo Trace distillery. Buffalo Trace calls this a "rye recipe" bourbon, which, in their language, means using a higher rye content than they use in their standard line, exemplified by Buffalo Trace bourbon. The colour is very impressively dark, and, frankly, beautiful. There is no age statement. This review is from a new bottle. The review will be in sequential format

Nose: strong fragrant and perfumed vanilla, spice, and additional flavours of oak and maple. High quality in all elements

Taste: piquant delicious spice, beautiful honey sweetness, with a strong backdrop of wood flavours. Excellent quality of all the parts. Crisp and very tasty

Finish: strong wood flavours with a mellow sweetness to the end; long finish

Balance: what a surprise! I had never seen this bourbon locally, and it took my niece bringing back a bottle of it from Kentucky to get me a taste of it. This is focused and delicious. Charter 101 is another excellent example of how good bourbon can be once you cross the line at 50% ABV. Jim Murray liked this bourbon so well that he rated it 95.5 in his 2013 Whisky Bible. Charter 101 is a full-blooded example of the genre of bourbon whiskey, and, I suspect, very representative of the traditional style of bourbon whiskeys made 50 years ago. The quality is much better than it is for the Old Charter 8 yo which comes from the same stable. This is not an expensive bourbon, costing $ 25 in the US, but unfortunately it is apparently unavailable outside the US, and has very limited availability within the US

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