My initial experience with this whiskey went about how you'd expect. A friend recommended it to me and said, “You've got to try this. It's called Legent.”
“Legend?”
“No. Le-GENT. With a T.”
I don't know if you know this, ladies and gentlemen, but that's no known word in the English language. I'll admit that sometimes you can get away with this in ad copy. Take Krazy Glue or Buzzballz, for example. You can even name your company something that clearly doesn't mean anything, like Zoosk. Or take a page from Toyota's book and name your products after things that sound vaguely like English words, until you realize they definitely aren't, like Cressida or Yaris.
Legent though? I have no idea what they're on about. Maybe it's that they've brought “Two Legends Together,” sayeth the bottle, and there's some Ts in those words, and fuck it—sure.
Again, you can imagine my skepticism with respect to the Legent recommendation. I figured it’d taste as bad as it was spelled. Imagine my surprise when this stuff turned out to be good!
“Legent mellows out the aggressive core of Jim Beam, making it an excellent gateway bourbon for those who want to dip their toe into the category. ”
Those interested are invited to read more about Legent's history if they wish, but let's briefly tackle the bit about “Dwo Legents coming Dogether.” (See how stupid it looks to switch Ds and Ts indiscriminately?) Basically, Fred Noe of the Jim Beam distillery partnered with Shinji Fukuyo, a blender at Suntory, so we're getting American Bourbon blended and matured with Japanese sophistication. It's not as wild as you might think: Suntory bought Jim Beam in 2014.
But here's where this gets really interesting if you're reading between the lines. Apparently not long after the acquisition, Suntory pissed on the cowboy boots of all of the bourbon making Yankees by insisting that under this new ownership arrangement, Beam's bourbons could be improved.
This apparently wasn't personal: the Japanese think everything can be continuously improved and refined over time. They refer to this concept as kaizen. And yet, it sounds like more than a few Beam lifers grimaced beneath their ten gallon hats at the thought of some Japanese comin' in and kai-zennin' Poppa Noe's time-tested formulas hither and yonder. Tarnation!
In any case, perhaps Legent's reason to exist is less of a “partnership between two legends” and more of a “We own you, we're gonna try something, and by god you're gonna do it” situation.
So at long last, we get to the whiskey. If this is what Suntory wants to do with some Beam products, I'm all for it. Basically, Legent takes bourbon aged for five years, then sends part of it off to mature in sherry casks, while another goes to mature in red wine casks, and then finally the two whiskeys are blended together.
Taste wise, what I appreciate about Legent is that it's mellow and one of the more fruit-forward bourbons I've tasted. The wine/sherry finishing is very evident here, but not as ham-handed as I usually find it to be with a lot of scotches. Certainly, most American bourbons are known for having quite a bit of backbone, which means they’re at lesser risk of being bulldozed by the wine and sherry as a super light Scotch or Irish might be. To use a baseball phrase, this is strength against strength.
And yet, the whiskey is multidimensional. Beyond the fruit, there's a lot of character that comes through in the form of grain. It's a bourbon, so yes, corn is well-represented. But while the barley and rye only make up about 25% of the mash bill, they're very evident on the palate. There's chewiness and salinity that are very welcome here, especially when helped along by some ice. In the development and finish, there's a wonderful toasted quality that emerges.
In a nerdy sense, I think this approach is great. Bourbon is (by law) aged in virgin oak casks, which means the spirit takes on a lot of oak very rapidly. However, transfer the spirit to red wine or sherry casks after five years, and you won't get an over-oaked mess (i.e. Knob Creek) since the spirit is no longer aging in new barrels. However, it will continue to mellow in those secondary casks and take on some additional flavor.
That said, there's a very good argument this should actually eliminate Legent from being able to call itself bourbon any longer. Looking at this purely pragmatically, it still tastes to me more like bourbon than any other spirit. I like the effect, so I’ll personally give the chicanery a pass.
The jury is out if bourbon die-hards will find this to be an “improvement.” This is far more Japanese-tasting than I had anticipated. Bourbon tends to be a pretty rough-and-tumble spirit, and the Legent mellows out the aggressive core of Jim Beam bourbon. Then again, some people like being slapped in the mouth with an oak two-by-four and they'll take all of the corn funk and barrel char they can get. Some people—not me, but some people—might find Legent to be a little soft.
I'd say this is an excellent gateway bourbon for those who want to dip their toe into the category. There are so many mediocre products intending to serve as a stepping stone for bourbon drinkers to get into scotch. Well, here's an actually good one that goes the other way and has the ability to convert Scotch, Japanese, and Irish Whiskey drinkers into people who could see what bourbon is all about. As with any of these kinds of recommendations, there's always the possibility someone will interpret this as a backhanded compliment, but I mean it positively and sincerely. Again, people who drink bourbon and bourbon exclusively might not dig this, but whiskey drinkers in general probably will.
As a final thought to an overly-long review, ice really does change this stuff. It behaves more like a traditional bourbon at full proof, but more like a scotch or Japanese whiskey when diluted a bit; I think it does best with some chill and dilution, but as the saying goes, your mileage may vary.
