If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Robb Report may receive an affiliate commission. If you’ve been busy hunting down unicorn bottles and looking for higher-age-statement whiskeys over the past few years, it may have been a minute since you’ve tasted the core Jim Beam lineup. But the James B.
Beam Distilling Co. just provided a good reason to revisit it by upgrading Jim Beam Black with a seven-year-old age statement, and we got an early taste. Jim Beam Black has gone from being an “extra-aged” bourbon matured for five to six years and bottled at 86 proof, to being a seven-year-old bourbon at 90 proof with a new label design.
And this is indeed an improvement on the liquid. The core nutty, grainy Jim Beam character is still present, but it’s augmented by notes of toasted bread, fresh berries, black pepper, rum raisin, cocoa powder, and caramel. I had a chance to visit the distillery recently to spend a couple of hours with master distiller Fred Noe, an icon in the Kentucky bourbon industry, to discuss the relaunch of Jim Beam Black.
We met in one of the distillery’s many warehouses to taste some seven-year-old bourbon at cask strength straight from the barrel, and at around 125 proof this was an impressive whiskey . Noe told me that one of the reasons they were able to add an age statement to the bottle is that the market has actually slowed down a bit coming out of the coronavirus pandemic. “Right now the m.