Review #180 - Balcones Baby Blue
Roasted blue corn in the mashbill - that's the unique characteristic of this Balcones whisky. It's a corn whisky, meaning corn must make up at least 80% of the mashbill, too. Will that difference in corn variety make a major difference in flavor? This is a pot-distilled whisky, so hopefully more of that character is retained, and it comes through after the aging.
This whisky comes with a bold 1 year age statement, but we get it at a pleasant 46% ABV (92 proof), so it should at least present the flavor well enough. There have been a number of batches of Baby Blue - ours comes from batch BB21-2.
Balcones Baby Blue
USA - Corn Whisky
Price Paid: USD 40 (2022)
Current Locally Available Price: USD 42 (2023)
Age Statement: 1 Year
Strength: 46% ABV
Details: Roasted blue corn mashbill; batch BB21-2
Tasting Methodology: Reviewed 4 times over 5 months; bottles at 100%, 90%, 80% (blind tasting), and 70% (blind tasting) fill levels at times of review. Tasted in a Glencairn glass each time, rested 10-15 minutes
Nose: Quite strange and funky - musty, youthful spirit, herbal, dirt... just dirty in general. There is sweetness from flavors like candy corn, brown sugar, vanilla, and hard candies, along with more mature notes like leather. Decent dry oak influence, with baking spices of cardamom, cinnamon, and white pepper; later on, dry corn husks and cinnamon apples arrive.
Palate: Medium-thin mouthfeel, with quite a bit of grain and sawdust. There's still that funky, savory, earthy character - something like roots and wet wood. Just hints of spiced banana, but not much other fruit - this is all baking spices now: cinnamon, dry vanilla pods, clove, and hints of pepper. Later on, some canned corn flavors arrive.
Finish: Medium length, with lots of woody notes: vanilla, pepper, and some wood spice. There's sweetness from candy corn, and then some more harsh varnish and sour notes on the back end.
Final Note: This was actually quite challenging to rate. It certainly is interesting - it gets points for that. The funky grain character is very unusual, to the point where we really had no idea what we were tasting when it was blind. The flavors weren't always the most pleasant, though, and the novelty of the very funky flavors did wear off with time. Fun to try as an experiment, but we aren't likely to go back and sip it when we're looking for something easy and enjoyable.
Our Average Rating: 4.8 / 10
In the current whisky landscape of increasing prices and variable quality, we've added a value rating to our reviews that relates to the score and the available pricing of each whisky. This roughly equates to a 0-10 scale; no reviews so far have exceeded a score of 10, although it is technically possible for the formula to produce a value rating higher than 10 with a high enough score and low enough price.
Value Rating: 5.49
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