We laughed about Heaven Hill waxing the 12 year Evan Williams and charging $130 at the gift shop. Then we cried about how they released a $200 9 year Bardstown disappointment at the gift shop. But what about when you go on the special TOUR of the distillery and buy a $200, 14 year bourbon, at the Heaven Hill gift shop?

YOU. DO. BOURBON.

So this is a distillery-only release and, like spicy New Jersey beer laws, you gotta do an entire tour to get it. Select Stock is the clandestine line from Heaven Hill where they release items that are basically Shasta Parker’s Heritage. Marshmallow Matey Elijah Craig.

This one is aged 14 years and only 26 barrels with TAPERED STAVES were used, so we already have circumstances hemming those cornhusk jeans in tightly. Add the fact that this is aged in WAREHOUSE Y BRUH ITS PARKER BEAMS FAVORITE SPOT. Parker would go there and update his Myspace while this was aging, I heard in 2009 Parker had H1n1 and rested in warehouse Y, it’s the honeyhole, Obama-surviving rickhouse.

At the You Do Bourbon experience “you can taste, bottle and personalize your very own bottle to take home” so you get to pay to become a distillery intern and package your own juice. You get some ECBP, Larceny BP, Bernheim and after you’re elote-buttered, they ask you if you want to bottle your own $200 barrel proof offering from the barrel.

It comes with a janky lil metal screw top that guarantees it will leak if shipped, which will make “collectors” furious so I automatically love that.

“Why not just buy Elijah Craig Barrel Proof”

Like “squirting is mostly pee” I am so tired of hearing this nonstop you buzzkill. This markedly better, than ECBP not squirting. Look at that “wandering the desert, recycled urine” deep amber color to it. It is drier than ECBP but not excessively tannic, cuties peel, Darjeeling tea, and pecans on the nose. Taste is spearmint, candied walnut, and ethanol gingerbread hitting your lungs like Kentucky corn dabs.

It’s exceptionally good and worth sitting through a tour. You’re gonna be smelling like Armagnac graham crackers yelling at the Herbalife presentation “HOW DO I BECOME DIAMONG WORLD TEAM LEVEL” with nipples harder than Lion King for the SNES.

I am fascinated by breweries that seek out and attempt unpopular styles. Sometimes it is back of house getting a dunkelweizen hall pass, other times it’s a smaller place that’s content to have a mild on tap for nine weeks. That stubborn dedication fuels me. It’s never spots that have taken on leveraged debt or needlessly expanded into saturated markets that are the ones churning out Baltic porters.

Wren House has seized upon the sizzling hot hypestyle of ESBs for their summer crushers. Part of me wonders if that rare Phoenix Arizona water somehow mirrors the Burton upon Trent profile. This is not bland enough for the “AARP My Pillow Reverse Mortgage” Scottsdale subset, they love amber ales. It also isn’t crushable enough for dudes who roll through for Spring Training and absolutely destroy their air Bnbs.

ESBs are for guys who own a boat and regret it. People who guffaw at Bill Burr and go “he gives it to both sides!” and take a deep sip of that coppery, ester wash. Pierced nipples taste like coins and ESBs provide that refreshment.

In 2018 memes were deep fried, had no punchlines, and were forgotten. That’s how this style exists. You get the malty refreshment of wheat toast, scones, minerality and currency, with a marmalade closer. It’s a beer for someone who has not read a book since the middle of undergrad buy wants to talk about Kleiner’s laws and film theory. People who either genuinely do not care, or who once cared too much and now don’t have cares to give.

Modern craft beer is predicated on styles like this, because this is what homebrewers dabble in. Landing the red fruit and merging it with the grassiness in a low abv context is hard. As a result homebrewers are a more worn out punchline than “Ska” and “NICKELBACK.” Listen, it’s fine to have nothing to contribute.

This beer is good and no one will care about it. If you send it as an extra, they’ll be confused. That fine because somewhere, there’s a leathery skinned, recently divorced guy climbing out of a GMC Acadia who loves them enough for everyone else. He sends me Biden gas memes and that is pretty okay.

It’s tough for me to articulate how shitty this bottle is and what a colossal waste of money it was. I don’t mean that “relative to $200, distillery only, 2 barrel blends” I mean like relative to something you can get at Hyvee for $38.

It makes it even worse when you see this bottle flipping for $400 on secondary. The contents not only don’t justify it, but it puts you in an existential crisis.

Heaven Hill has the capacity to make some of the best bourbon on the planet. The PHC bottles when they hit, absolutely crush. Even their regular old Elijah Craig barrel proof absolutely destroys this 9 year 120 proof corn charlatan.

So how did this happen? Each of the five distilleries in Bardstown held a release to celebrate the “Bourbon Capital of the World.” In reviews I saw, the Heaven Hill was in second place out of the five bottles so I can only imagine how nightmarish that Log Still bottle is.

The box and tiny “premium booklet” is probably the best part of this release. I’m not saying master distiller Conor O’Driscoll was actively like “take those barrels of regular old HH 7 year that we left lying around but make sure they are worse” but this bottle is rough.

All proceeds were donated back to the Bardtown community so I mean, I guess drinking ammonia and Advil coating is worth it.

It’s amazing how dry and thin this is. The solvent peanut skins mix with high gloss enamel, you get caramel popcorn and turpentine. You both reel from the sun tea acrid notes but then it just keeps going endlessly like some Phish concert you only attended as a favor.

The closer brings aniline leather, lemon pledge, and the experience of eating bread pudding next to an idling diesel engine.

I guess the fact that this was extremely limited is a blessing in disguise. It’s tough to dunk on charity bottles but only fitting that resellers flipped them for a profit and likely never even tried them. It’s the financial equivalent of catching a hot dose.

The hype soaked staves of the bourbon world are in shambles and nothing demonstrates this disparity between price and quality more than this bottle.