Texas Goes Down....Under!

Whisky: Balcones Baby Blue Corn Whiskey

Distillery/Brand:
Balcones Distilling

Bottling:
Balcones Baby Blue

Region:
American

ABV:
46%

Colour:
Amber

Review:
I'm starting to plan an American whiskey tasting for our club in Perth and being the odd man I am, I want a variety.  I don't want to do an American tasting based around just bourbons and ryes, I want single malts, corn whiskies and anything else cool.

With that in mind I gave the guys at H & R Craft Beverages, the importers of Balcones, a call about purchasing some samples.  A week later those samples arrived.

Balcones is the first whiskey to be legally distilled in Texas, and tends to be corn whiskies instead of bourbon and ryes.  The first whiskey to be tasted is Balcones Baby Blue, which is the entry level whiskey, made with Atole, a roasted blue corn meal.

In fact most of the whiskies in the Balcones range are corn whiskies, which makes me excited as variety is the spice of life!

The nose is young and spritely with the corn immediately evident!  My wife, brother in law and myself all blinked when we immediately picked up corn on the nose.

Corn, creamed corn, popcorn, toffee, bananas, toasted oak, and vanilla make it a nice and refreshing nose.

Time for a taste!

Baked apples, bananas, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, caramel, slight smoke and hints of corn make up the palate.

Very tasty whiskey! 

A surprisingly long sweet finis ends this whisky, with the caramel and vanilla seeing it through to the end.

This is a no age whisky, but I strongly suspect it's less then 5 years old and that's not a bad thing as those who know me will tell you, in fact it's an awesome thing.

This whisky is very smooth, a term that I honestly hate with whisky, but it's true.  There's no harshness that so many folks associate with young whiskies.  It just goes down so easily.

This Balcones normally retails for around $130 Aussie from everything I've been able to dig up, which isn't a bad price to pay for something a little bit different, but I don't think I'd ever use this whiskey as my normal every day session whiskey.

However now I'm REALLY interested in playing with the more advanced whiskies in the Balcones range!

Nose:      20/25
Taste:      20/25
Finish:     18/25
Balance:   19/25

Overall:    77/100