Controlled Alcoholism

Maker's 46

I remember the original Maker's Mark being one of my first bottles of whiskey that I ever had. I purchased that bottle on semi-impulse at the Habitat, citing the fact that I was lazy to go onto Carousell and purchase the same bottle at the same price but at 1 litre size. Fast forward a few months, and that bottle is downed, and I was looking for a new bottle to replace that.

Maker's Mark

Photo by John Fornander on Unsplash

Full Maker's Mark Lineup

Source: https://www.makersmark.com/

After looking around for a bit, I stumbled upon a variant of Maker's Mark, called Maker's 46. This version has an interesting backstory. So due to how strict the regulations are on naming a whiskey "Bourbon", there are only so many ways to innovate on its taste. Maker's Mark chose to experiment with the finishing of the whiskey. Finishing roughly refers to taking an already aged whiskey, and dumping it into another barrel with different characteristics for the whiskey to "finish" aging in that new barrel. This enables the bourbon to gain new characteristics and tasting notes. So, the distillery experimented with finishing in french oak. When they found a profile that they were after, they named the whiskey after the name of the stave profile. This was where the name "46" arose from.

I thorougly enjoyed the original Maker's Mark, both neat and in simple cocktails like the Old Fashioned. However, I remembered not really liking the new Maker's 46 initially due to some off-taste that I did not enjoy tasting. As such, I only really drank this sporadically. Until one day, when out of nowhere, I actually started to enjoy drinking it. However, by then, the bottle was less than 25% full already. So, I started "rationing" my pours of this to lengthen my enjoyment. The pour that I have pictured is easily the second last pour of the bottle, and I am not looking forward to finishing the bottle.

The dram

On the nose, the alcohol vapours does not sting the nose at all. Instead, what stands out is its sweetness, something akin to the caramelization of white sugar. It is actually pretty pleasant to smell as it does not sting the nose as much as other whiskies that I have tried.

The taste is really about the same as the smell, with a very strong caramel-ly sweetness, that engulfs my whole mouth. The alcohol burn then slowly creeps up on the tongue, which actually makes this not as unpleasant. Instead, it complements the sweetness quite well.

Somehow, the finish gave me a flat coke note. This was not the first time that I have had this note, but it is pretty interesting considering that this was the first time I had that note on this whiskey in recent memory.

However, I probably would switch back the regular Maker's Mark after this bottle, since it's cheaper and more versatile in both drinking neat and cocktails, and it's more available as well.

Written on Saturday, 16 May 2020.