Belle Meade Reserve is the premium expression of the multi-award-winning Belle Meade Bourbon, crafted to meet the growing demand among aficionados for elite, high-proof bourbon. Our distillers identify certain superior barrels from the Belle Meade inventory and combine them into separate batches that yield a richer, more robust, higher-proof bourbon that compounds and enhances the character, flavor, and feel of its source. This painstaking process ensures that each small batch of Belle Meade Reserve will be utterly singular, and singularly pleasing. Belle Meade Reserve is a bold, high-rye-content bourbon ideal for those who appreciate the finer points of the distiller's art, but equally accessible to anyone who enjoys the taste of whiskey straight from the barrel. Its strong, supple flavor distinguishes every glass—whether you serve it neat, on the rocks, or with a splash of water. And where other bourbons might recede when combined with mixers, Belle Meade Reserve's high bottling proof and mouthwatering flavor ensure that it will enliven any cocktail.
What you smell and taste in a whisky is highly subjective.
Even the pros do not always agree on the tasting notes. Therefore, we have combined the tasting notes from several sources into a cross-section Nose, Palate, and Finish to find the commonalities between two whiskies. We use the Aroma Wheel with its concentric circles of increasingly specific tastes and smells (general in the center; more specific the further out you go) to find Exact, Secondary, and General matches between two whiskies. We also take into account other important factors like mash bill, barrel type(s), ABV, region, ratings, price and more. We then weight each factor based on what we believe to be the approximate importance it has in determining whether two whiskies are similar.
We're all different.
Again, we cannot stress enough that what you smell and taste in a whisky is likely going to be different than the person you're drinking it with. Whisky Mates is meant to be a guide to help you find what you like drinking, using the best methodologies available. In the end, rely on your own palate to tell you what you like and don't like.