Bourbon Review - Isaiah Morgan Distillery, Summersville, WV

Outside of Summersville is a small distillery and winery, Kirkwood Winery and Isaiah Morgan Distillery. which sells rye, moonshine, and bourbon in addition to an exceptionally wide selection of sweet wines - although they no longer sell mead, to my great disappointment.  Their distillery looks pretty much what you'd expect from a still in West Virginia, and they play up the country moonshiner angle as much as they can.  The entire operation is rustic wood and low-slung cabin and barn construction, a far cry from the slick, industrialized-genteel kinds of places that you find in Kentucky.  I cannot speak for anyone else, but I find the big distilleries a little impersonal, and therefore appreciate the smaller places.  There are other reasons for this; buying two bottles of Jack Daniels, for instance, will make no difference, but buying two bottles of Isaiah Morgan (or Black Patch, or...) feels like you've helped keep someone in business.

We picked up two bottles of spirits and four of wine.  The spirits were their six-year bourbon, Snake in the Grass, and their Red Neck cinnamon moonshine.  I mostly consider moonshine fit as an ingredient in other things - you can see why cocktails were made out of cheap whiskey when you start drinking shine, because even good stuff tends to be incredibly raw and harsh.  Thus, the cinnamon shine goes in my coffee, and it goes quite well.  I was pleasantly surprised at how it smoothed out with even trivial additions.

Bourbon, on the other hand, I consider a general-purpose liquor.  A good bourbon should be able to stand on its own, with or without ice, at any temperature.  The same, incidentally, is true of most spirits - a good whiskey of any grain, whisky, rum, or tequila should sustain being drunk neat or on the rocks, should taste pleasant to the palate, and should sustain interest across multiple tastings.

How does Isaiah Morgan stack up?

Well, that's hard to say.  I haven't had their small batch, but Snake in the Grass is 94 proof, about five to seven percent by volume stronger than most shelf bourbons.  It's also aged six years, a good age for bourbon.  It is also very pleasant to the nose, very aromatic, sweet, with a hint of smoke.  Unfortunately, even in small sips I find it very harsh.  The alcohol flavors have not smoothed out in the barrel - which says that at cask strength, it would have packed one hell of a wallop.  It is not overwhelmingly woody or smoky, both good traits, but it is much closer to its moonshine roots than most bourbons.

Will it stand up on its own? I haven't tried it over ice, but the aromatics are excellent without ice to free them up, so it has that in its favor.  The harshness, though, makes it more suited for cocktails than neat drinking.  That also impacts the palate test.  It is difficult to get past that harshness to detect the more complex flavors that you pick up in the nose.  It is very interesting to the nose, and I expect that I will try it out again.  At the very least, it's a good coffee bourbon or a good cocktail bourbon.  It would absolutely make an excellent Old Fashioned.

Given the harshness of their bourbon, I wish I had picked up a bottle of their rye as well.  Rye tends to be spicier and more aggressive than bourbon, and in that case I suspect that some of the rye flavors would have overcome the harshness of the alcohol.  The other possible solution to this problem, given that bourbon tends to settle down at a rate of about half a percent ABV a year, would be to lay down a couple barrels - say, a thousand bottles, about four barrels - and sit on them for about twenty years.  It would probably turn out amazing, given the nose complexity of this stuff, but that's four barrels a year that you're not selling when they're first ready.  Their small batch, which is four years older and 46% ABV, probably benefits from this, so they're already aware of the issue.

If you stop by the distillery, I'd recommend spending the extra money to try the small batch, picking up a bottle of moonshine, and picking up the fruit wine.  The Snake in the Grass is good, and is going in the cocktail end of my liquor shelf, but there are other things they do better, and other bourbons at similar prices that do the bourbon job better just down the road in Kentucky.