Review #7: Jack Daniel's Tennesse Honey


I was trying to clear some space on my bar cart tonight by transferring a the last servings of low bottles into tiny sample bottles, and I ended up with enough left of this bottle in particular to do a review. Going in, I remembered liking this better (though not very much) than the standard Jack Daniel's Old No. 7 (Black Label), but that I found it really difficult to do anything with, so it stuck around entirely too long. I'm glad to finally be done with this bottle and to see it off with a review. (I'd meant to do this review on April Fool's because I felt it's a bit silly, but I didn't end up having the time. Oh well.) A side-by-side with standard Jack Daniel's may still be in the future because I kept a serving of this in a sample bottle.

Name: Jack Daniel's Tennessee Honey
Brand/Distiller: Jack Daniel's
Brand Owner: Brown-Foreman
Strength: 35% ABV (i.e. not whiskey anymore; it's a blend of Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey and honey liqueur)
Color: 0.3 pale gold

Nose: Honey, banana peanut butter milkshake (Elvis!), vanilla, faint nail polish remover (still present, even after all this time in the bottle and the dilution of the honey liqueur). And a mix of cloyingly sweet and bitterness that I eventually decided was from very overripe bananas (smells like it's time to make banana bread).

Palate: Feels syrupy and burns a bit despite the very low proof. It's very sweet, then barrel bitter joins in. Taste: Bitter unsalted peanut shells. Overripe banana I really shouldn't be eating.

Finish: Short in terms of any desirable flavor but the unpleasant and cloying aftertaste of a dark-brown overripe banana and a hint of acetone linger for an unfortunately long time.

Overall: This is somehow both better and worse than Jack Daniels Black Label. I'm not surprised that bananas made a prominent spot in my notes given how much banana I get from the standard Jack Daniels. This bottle was pretty much useless to me because it's too sweet to enjoy unless you mix with enough unsweet ingredients to completely hide it. Rocks doesn't really improve it but serving this to party guests, or -- with apologies -- on the rocks to curious dinner guests as a digestif was how I managed to clear out most of this bottle.

Rating: 2/10 - poor, seriously flawed.

Value: 0/5. I don't recall know what I paid for it (actually I think a house guest bought it and left it here). Either way, my personal feeling is: don't buy this. Even if you like honey liqueur or whiskey blended with honey, you owe it to yourself to find a better option. Or, to be honest, just make a cocktail with actual good whiskey and some honey.

This bottle kicked around for entirely too long. I'm very happy to reclaim the spot on my bar cart and move in some other, more useful liqueur that earned a spot there.

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