Yellowstone Select Kentucky Straight Bourbon

Yellowstone is an old bourbon brand, dating back to 1872, the year its namesake national park was founded. Since 2014, the producers behind it have been hard at work rehabilitating the brand. Limestone Branch owners, brothers Steve and Paul Beam, are descendants of both William Dant - whose brother, J.B., was the original distiller producing Yellowstone. Select is a blend of Limestone Branch’s own 4 year distillate and sourced 7 year Kentucky bourbon, from which distillery remains a mystery. Reportedly, it’s a higher-rye blend, but no specifics on the mash bill are available. It’s bottled at 93 proof.

On the nose, Yellowstone Select is full of classic bourbon notes, showing brown sugar and pralines with new shoe leather and a touch of apricot. It’s also peppery with a bit of cream corn in the mix. On the palate, things are light but with a well-balanced heat and good depth of flavor. Like the nose, most of those flavors are fairly straightforward: caramel and brûlée sugar, orange peel and cinnamon, lumber and peanut brittle. The black pepper spice on the mid-palate cools quickly into a medium-length finish with notes of Nilla wafers and ripe tangerine.