Here, we have something different. This is not actually a bourbon (nor a Tennessee Whiskey), but rather a MGP-distilled (that would be in Indiana) 95% rye whiskey that has been subjected to the above charcoal chill-filtration process. I am now obliged to point out the bald-faced hypocrisy of a label that…
Unlike the other animal references, which are slang phrases that evolved from whiskeymaking, Pig’s Nose refers to the whisky being as “smooth as a pig’s nose”. I’ll have to take that one on faith, having never personally felt the nose of a pig. The blend contains 5 year-old grain whisky from Invergordon as well as 5 single malts…
All Balcones whiskeys are pot distilled in batches and bottled without chill-filtration or added coloring. This particular bottle (which sounds downright placid next to siblings like Blue Corn Whiskey and Brimstone Oak-Smoked Bourbon) is distilled from a mash bill of 100% rye, including Elbon Rye from Northwest Texas and crystal, chocolate and roasted rye malts.
There is still independent whisky to be bottled, even if the pickings are slimmer, and some tempting things show up on shelves. Here, a Mortlach (one of my favorite distilleries, but hard to find) was distilled in September 1997 and spent some number of years in ex-bourbon before being transitioned to a Pedro Ximénez sherry butt to finish, for a total of 18 years in cask.
The Small Batch is bottled in bond and (therefore) is 50% ABV and at least 4 years old. It’s appropriate that this whiskey is bottled in bond, because its namesake Colonel Edmund Haynes Taylor, Jr. was one of the first proponents of the Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897, which protected American bourbon from unscrupulous retailers and counterfeiters.