Review: Blade and Bow Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey

In the hunt for a new bourbon to try for the Bourbon Mash-Up, I scored a bottle of Blade And Bow Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey this week at an undisclosed location for $15.99 because the shelf was mislabeled. One should normally expect to pay around $50.00 for a bottle. There was only one bottle left, so I couldn’t really take advantage of the situation. Luckily, this is a bourbon I had yet to try, even though it’s been on the market for a few years.

The Stitzer-Weller Distillery operated in Louisville from 1935 until 1992 and this bourbon is distilled in that facility by Diageo. The name Blade And Bow is a tribute to 5 keys that were said to hang in the original distillery. Every bottle has a skeleton key hanging from the top. The name is a play on the two parts of a skeleton key, the blade shaft and the ornate bow. The 5 keys represent grains, yeast, fermentation, distillation, and aging, the five steps of making bourbon. 

The standard Blade And Bow is 91 proof and is aged using the solera system, which fractionally blends different whiskeys over time, transferred from barrel to barrel, top to bottom, newest to oldest. Diageo claims to still “mingle” some of the whiskey from the original Stitzer-Weller Distillery. This is uncommon in the whiskey world, which makes Blade And Bow is unique.

I found Blade And Bow Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey to be a easy drink, very light, slightly sweet, and perfectly suitable for sipping.  It’s generally affordable, even when you haven’t stumbled upon a retail mistake. Branding and marketing might push the price point up a bit by linking it to the Stitzer-Weller name, but the fact that they use a process unique in the bourbon industry makes it certainly worth a try.
As a side note, I have a huge dream that the key on the bottle is a golden ticket of some sort, that will one day grant me access to my very own distillery that is ran with the help of Oompa-Loompas that I can walk around all day and be an eccentric bourbon savant in.

Another lesson to learn is to make sure you are looking for special deals when you are out the searching for that next addition to your collection.

Cheers, Y’all!