Harry E. Wilken 15 Years Old Pre-Prohibition Era TASTING BOTTLES 50% 1917

Distillerie	Elk Run
Embouteilleur	The American Medicinal Spirits Company
Serie	X
Mise en bouteille pour	For medicinal porposes only
Date de distillation	Fall 1917
Date de mise en bouteille	Fall 1932
Pays	États Unis
Région	Kentucky
Age	15
Cask Type	Virgin Oak Casks
Numéro de fût	X
Alcohol percentage	50
Volume
État	dans son emballage d'origine
Étiquette	Parfait
Stock	0

Avis professionnels

Serge Valentin (90)

Colour: rosewood.

Nose: deep, intensely polished and brimming with incense, pot pourri, orange bitters, cloves, liquorice, dry wood spices, cola cubes and fruity red chilli heat. There’s also this medicinal aspect as well, a kind of concentrated, very spicy cough medicine. Given time it unfolds with notes of mint leaf, old pipe tobacco, unlit cigars in cedar boxes, blood oranges and some soft notes of caraway. Really beautiful. Not just an emotional old whisky, but aromatically majestic and technically brilliant. The kind of aroma that makes you realise just how spectacular and idiosyncratic American whiskey is when its at its best. A style you just cannot replicate anywhere else I think.

Mouth: the level in this one was pretty low but you still feel the power and the sinew of the distillate and the quality of the wood even after so many decades in that tiny half bottle. Orange oils, sharp spices, textural citrus fruit pastes, rinds and oils. Menthol tobacco, leather, very distant dried herbal aspects and a sooty, earthy and almost greasy quality. More of these cough medicine notes, boot polish, bay leaf, strong black tea and an intensely peppery, clean wood spice quality.

Finish: long, earthy, sooty, camphory, waxy, peppery and wonderfully spicy. Big, echoing mulled spice notes. Some chamomile and herbal teas. Hardwood resins.

Comments: I know shamefully little about American Whiskey but I feel that I know enough to recognise the level of balance and complexity and power in this wee slice of liquid history. An embarrassingly pleasurable whiskey.