Paul and Merry Beth of MB Roland are my friends. Because I might be biased, I have decided to disclose that bias so that you can decide how much to trust the review. In the spirit of the upcoming holiday, I am reviewing a bottle that they gave me as a gift. This was not intended by them as a review bottle, but I like it and wanted to share.
Hey Bourbon Folks,
This is going to be the last post of 2019 as I take a little time to spend with my family over the holidays. BourbonGuy.com will be back to its regularly scheduled twice per week posting as of January 2nd, 2020.
Holy Crap! 2020?!? I’m getting fucking old! In a little under two weeks, it will be the start of the sixth decade in which I have been alive. That’s nuts. But it makes sense that I feel the passage of time especially hard as this decade ends and another begins. I mean, my life has changed dramatically in the last ten years.
When the decade began, I had never traveled east of my home state. I’d been to a majority of the states west of the Mississippi, but my home state of Wisconsin (and a tiny bit of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan) were my only forays east of it. I’ve now traveled to every part of the country except the Northeast. And I’ve been international a couple of times. I even decided to move away from Minnesota at one point and spent a lot of time exploring new locations to live, both digitally and in person. But then my daughter had a pregnancy scare, and we decided that it might be best to stick nearby for any future grand-kids that might happen to pop out.
As 2010 arrived, I was happily employed in Corporate Marketing. And I honestly couldn’t imagine doing anything else with my life. These days, I run three separate businesses of my own, and the majority of my money no longer comes from the only employable skill I had in 2010.
I fell in love with spirits in general and bourbon in particular shortly after the turn of the last decade. For most of the first half to two thirds of the decade, I wanted to start a craft distillery and set about learning everything I could about distilling. Instead of that, I now have this site and all of you who share my bourbon journey with me. Not only that, but I also get paid to write the occasional article for other publications and to host a tasting now and then, which is not a bad gig if you can get it.
During the last decade, my wife got sick with cancer and beat it. I’ve lost many friends and family members due to age, sickness, and time; but I gained a lot of new ones as well. Many of my new friends live in Kentucky, which is nice because I have fallen in love with Louisville. I’ve gone at least once a year for most of the last ten years.
This list is only scratching the surface of the changes that my life has gone through during the last decade, and even though I decided on a different life direction than starting a distillery, some of the friends who I’ve met over the last ten years do, in fact, own distilleries. And in fact, the bottle I am reviewing tonight was a gift from one of them. It is a wheated bourbon from my friends at MB Roland. They gave my wife and I this bottle as an anniversary present back in September. Obviously, I sat on it for a while before enjoying it.
MB Roland Wheated Bourbon
Purchase info: This was received as an anniversary gift from my friends at MB Roland. I image the price is somewhere in the mid $50 to $60 range.
Price per Drink (50 ml): No idea for the reason stated above.
Details: Batch 7. 55% ABV. Mash bill of 74% white corn, 6% malted barley, 20% red winter wheat. Barrel had a #4 char. Aged stated as “at least two years.”
Nose: Dried corn, mint, cinnamon, cloves, baked apples.
Mouth: Spicy cinnamon candies, caramel, chocolate.
Finish: Warm and long with lingering caramel, cinnamon and chocolate notes.
Thoughts: I really like this one. I've been very impressed with both the wheated bourbon and the wheat whiskey that MB Roland has made. I guess I like their wheat. Both of them have had very nice chocolate notes that I wouldn't have expected to find in a whiskey that is age-stated at about two years old. That said, there are still some young notes in here, but once again the proof helps to push them aside.
As stated above , before I got distracted by the end of the decade, BourbonGuy.com is going to take the holidays off to spend time with family. Regular posts will return January 2nd, 2020. (2020!?!)
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