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It's one thing to detect hints of honey, caramel or vanilla in a whiskey. It is quite another thing to guzzle honey, caramel or vanilla straight out of a jar. Wild Turkey, a respected brand with terrific booze, has decided that someone out there needed more sweetness -- lots of it. So they dumped "pure honey" (according to the label) into their golden-hued bourbon and called it, appropriately enough, American Honey.
This stuff does not merely have a whiff of caramel. The scent flies through your nostrils and hits a part of your brain that normally registers desserts. It really tastes like a cream liqueur, with hints of citrus and banana. You could imagine someone cooking with this whiskey, or drizzling some over vanilla ice cream.
At 71 proof, it's a tad weaker than most bourbons, which makes it easy to pair with other ingredients in cocktails. But the real reason this spirit exists, one has to assume, is so Wild Turkey can compete with the Jägermeisters and Jose Cuervos of the world. Unlike most whiskeys, American Honey is not designed to be savored. It is obscenely, cloyingly, annoyingly sweet -- there is zero balance -- but at least it goes down smooth and does not burn. True bourbon fans will want to stay far away, but that's not who they made it for in the first place.
-- James Oliver Cury
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