Raspberry | Cranberry | Black cherry | Concord grape | Walnut | Cola | Chocolate

Cotton candy grape | White grape | Peach | Raspberry | Sweet & fruity

Mellow oak | Honeycomb | Toffee | Touch of cinnamon | Light tequila aftertaste

American light whiskey is certainly having its moment, and a lot of it has to do with improved availability and knowledge about it. There has never been much demand for it, and producers simply forgot about it over time as bourbon's popularity was dramatically ramping up. Thanks to releases from Bull Run and later Penelope Bourbon, the style of whiskey finds itself in the limelight. Until recently, thanks to years of neglect, Seagram’s-produced, now MGP-owned American light whiskey stock sat aging. This is why so much high-age stock is suddenly available. That’s not to say World Whiskey Society 20 Year American Light Whisky is necessarily from MGP, as the bottle doesn’t state distillation origin, but it's very likely.

Leave it to the World Whiskey Society to take what is trending again and see how far they can push it. Releasing just a 20 year old American light whiskey would be one thing, but adding a “Cigar Blend” element to it hasn’t been done yet. However, as cigar blends are typically finished in 1-4 different types of barrels, WWS pushes that number to six.

The whiskey’s nose is overloaded with a plethora of scents, ranging from red fruits to walnuts, cola, and chocolate. The palate is pointedly sweet with candied fruits ranging from purple and white grapes to peach and raspberries. The finish is the whiskey’s simplest state, with mellow oak upfront that lacks any hints that this was aged for 20 years. It’s followed by light notes of honeycomb, toffee, and cinnamon with a light tequila aftertaste.

Given the range of finishing barrels, with two of them being tequila and Awamori (a Japanese spirit distilled from long-grain rice), you’d expect the resulting whiskey to be a bit of a mess. But as Bull Run proved so many years ago, American light whiskey is a great vehicle to take on finishes. American light whiskey is often sweet and on the simple side, but adding a range of fruit-based finishing barrels makes for an extremely sweet-tasting whiskey. The tequila and Awamori get a bit lost in the shuffle, but are probably more complementary to the American light whiskey’s natural flavor than the other finishing barrels. The proof is lower than many light whiskeys that have been released, making this a decidedly easy-drinking whiskey. Though the taste isn’t as boundary-breaking as the construction of this whiskey’s components is, it comes together very well in the end.

The bottle in review is number 1,418 out of 4,500.