About the Bottle:

It’s Blantons. You know Blantons, I know Blantons. It’s got a cool bottle with a horse on top. What more is there to know? Lots, you ignorant drunk.

Blantons is aged for 6 to 8 years, each bottle comes from a single barrel, and apparently the warehouse gets hotter than other warehouses because its made of metal, and so the whiskey ages faster. Now you know the rest of what there is to know.

Wallet Feel:

At MSRP, Blantons retails for $65. And in Atlantis, mountains of gold pile high for the picking as mermaids noodle your nethers.

In the real world, if you want to find a bottle, you’re going to need to fork up. Around me, liquor stores have it on the shelves for $150 minimum. If you want to spend that much, by all means, no judgment! But FYI, whiskey gospel says every dollar you spend above MSRP is an ounce of dignity you’ve just whored out and you’re a lesser person for it.

How’d I get my bottle, you ask? Let’s just say I was at the right place, at the right time. The place was the liquor store around the corner, and the time was moments after making an impulse decision to spend $150 on a cool bottle, dignity be damned.

Nose:

Ah yes. That smells like bourbon all right. I wouldn’t say it has a particularly distinct nose. Smells about how most non-cask finished bourbons above the $30 price range smell: Sweet. Good. Desserty.

Palate:

I was right! It is bourbon. Again, classic bourbon taste–if you’ve ever had bourbon before you know the taste I’m tasting. If you haven’t, I can’t help you. There’s nothing really distinctive going on in the palate. It’s sweet at first, then some spice. Pretty smooth, which is nice.

Finish:

Medium finish. It doesn’t end on a bitter note like some whiskies do, so that’s good.

Bottom line:

7.5/10 for the whole shebang, 6/10 for the liquid standing alone.

It’s good, but there’s nothing really interesting or distinctive about it to me. Throw this in a blind taste test with a couple other classic bourbons and there’s no way I’d pick it out (I’ve tried).

Is it worth paying above MSRP and enduring the associated shame? Good question. For me, there’s absolutely nothing distinctive going on with the liquid inside the bottle. It’s good bourbon, but it’s not blowing anyone’s minds. Despite that, I don’t regret buying it. Even at the jacked up MSRP price I bought it at, I think I got my money’s (and dignity’s) worth. Why? Because I bought this bottle over a year ago and it’s less than half gone. In that time its made my bar prettier and satiated the curiosity of a lot of friends who’ve “heard of Blantons” but never tried it. That’s quite a bit of value in its own right.

To sum: for me, the best thing about Blantons is that it’s in a pretty bottle that I don’t feel compelled to ever finish. That beautiful metal horsey gets to make my bar look nicer for years to come.

And that, folks, is how you rationalize a poor financial decision.