This Week's Bourbon Edition - The Master's Part II

Last year, I posted a review of the Woodford Master's edition release here:

http://www.elitedawgs.com/showthread...light=woodford

This has become a yearly tradition with our group, and I picked up this year's release yesterday - Woodford Master's White Corn. They replaced yellow bent corn in the mash with white corn. We reviewed this side-by-side with the other three releases I have:

http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/o...psjvpnu00e.jpg

Last year, our ranking from favorite to least was -
1. Four Wood
2. Maple
3. Sonoma

This year's release was significantly better than the other Master's releases I have had that changed up the mashbill. The rye from 2011 and the malt from 2013 were not good at all?.matter of fact they still have some of the malts at our ABC store.

The nose as soon as you open the bottle smells of Jack Daniels, and I was a bit concerned at that point, however with some airspace it really opened up to a more traditional bourbon nose. There is a touch of sweetness to be expected with the white corn, but also some pepper on the back end I was not expecting. This one got much better the longer we sipped it.

The other three were significantly better than we can recall in the previous year tastings, and the bottle airspace is really doing them justice. Our rankings of these did shuffle a bit this year:

1. Four Wood
2. Sonoma
3. Maple
4. White Corn

The constant here is the first three are fully mature Woodford finished in different barrels, where the white corn has a completely different mash bill. I will be interested to see what a year does to the white corn, as I can definitely see it getting better with some airing out. It is by far the best release of the Master's Collection I have had with a changed up mash bill.

Recommendation: buy this is you have a collection of the Master's Series or want to start one to compare these year to year. Otherwise, pass on the $99 price tag.