You might have heard that old saying, “you can never go home again.” On one hand, there's a good chance you're home right now, in which case the statement is a little dumb. At least metaphorically, however, it refers to it being impossible to perceive the world around us now as we did at some point in our distant past.
Getting to the point: I realized there's no going home for me when it comes to Basil Hayden. Not to get all sentimental on you, but it was the first bottle of “good” whiskey I ever bought for myself. Though I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time, there was something special about that purchase. In reality, it marked the first time I didn't think an upgrade would simply be wasted on me, and at long last I had confidence in my own taste.
The Basil Hayden bottle, incidentally, has always commanded presence. You can spot it from across the room, either in its current version (which I think is hip and elegant), or back when it wore its little paper bib. What other whiskey has natural wood and copper accents, for god's sake? Putting it into one's cart is retail therapy at its apex. “You’re worth it,” the bottle whispers. “You are a person of class and distinction. Consider this an investment in yourself.”
Of course, the plain truth of it all was that Basil Hayden didn't really open a direct portal to flavor town once I cracked that first bottle. There was no transformative, eye-opening experience to be had: It was still bourbon, more or less. In retrospect, if it tasted a little better to me then than Maker's or Knob Creek at that time, it was probably only because I wanted it to.
“Basil Hayden’s whole reason to exist was to give Jim Beam a lighter style of whiskey, so don’t be surprised if your old standby Bourbons blow it right out of the water.”
About a month ago I found another gorgeous bottle of Basil Hayden calling to me, and I wondered if it held a little of that old magic. Since that first purchase some fifteen years ago, my tastes had shifted from being a guy who started off on bourbon, to someone who realized he liked just about any other brown liquor better, and then—shock of shocks—I turned into someone who actually liked bourbon. Today, I’m older and wiser. I can confidently say I know my ass from a hole in the ground. What better time than now to try Basil Hayden again?
Unfortunately, this new bottle of Basil Hayden joined the ranks of too many other bottles to count: I ran through it fairly quickly, because I had no reason to savor or ration it. After giving it a fresh chance and being underwhelmed, it went into cocktails or was poured over ice while I was working on some piece of writing and didn't want to think too critically about things. Were it not for my history with the brand, I probably wouldn’t have written about it at all.
Served neat, Basil Hayden provides a familiar one-two punch of corn and oak, to which my readers might clap in mock applause and say, “Great job, detective: you've discovered it's a bourbon.” The problem comes when you try to dig deeper into the secondary flavors. Sometimes there's a nice bit of milk chocolate, but in general the two main notes I picked up were lemon and cinnamon, which is a weird flavor combination for just about anyone on the planet earth. It also has a musty, dusty quality to the finish that I don't love.
There’s a mixed blessing with respect to these negatives: one really needs to go looking for anything past the oak and corn funk, as Basil Hayden is shier than just about any of its competitors. The dissonant flavors don't shout at you from the glass, but neither does just about anything, really.
Part of this may be by design. Basil Hayden's whole reason to exist was to give Jim Beam a lighter style of whiskey that would cajole scotch drinkers into giving bourbon a chance. Regular readers might remember I'm certainly not a “Give me 120 proof or give me death” sort of guy, and I'm not going to kick a spirit to the curb simply because it's 80-proof. That said, the cask strength bros are constantly droning on about 80-proof whiskeys being weak and indistinct by nature, and I'll be damned if Basil Hayden doesn't add an exclamation point to their argument.
I should mention that Basil Hayden's failure to impress was oddly unanimous among a group of me and two of my best drinking buddies. Now that we're all in our late thirties, we'd made plans to cook instead of going out, and the Basil Hayden seemed like a fun, nostalgic treat to accompany dinner. My first sips of the bourbon in more than a decade were alongside those who’d held similar feelings of the brand.
All three of us agreed that my old standbys, the Four Roses Small Batch and the Old Grand-Dad Bonded, completely blew the Basil Hayden out of the water. (Fun fact: the man on the Old Grand-Dad label is actually Basil Hayden Sr., which is to say Basil Hayden's old grand dad.) Neither of those two whiskeys look nearly as special as the Basil Hayden, but they cost less and taste better.
My final analysis is this: fifteen years later, the Basil Hayden bottle is still writing checks the juice can't cash. If you’re like me—which is to say that you had it years ago and thought you missed something—it could be you had more taste and discernment than you gave yourself credit for.
