For a long time on the internet, I have heard the buzz around Smoke Wagon, which is a whiskey sourced from MGP in Indiana and bottled and possibly partially aged by Nevada Distilling Company, LLC, doing business as Nevada H&C Distilling Company. The first bourbon batch was released in 2017, and Republic recently picked up distribution rights for Louisiana. However, the bottle I have my friend Ken Brown picked up from Binny’s in Illinois, and I am waiting for Hokus Pokus to get one in. But, the Louisiana bourbon Facebook groups in which I participate already have photos of this whiskey popping up, so I thought I would review it for the blog. This bourbon costs about $75 a bottle, and Batch 171E, whose label is hard to read, appears to be 136.28 proof (68.14% alcohol by volume). Which is stupid high.

The color on this is (unfortunately) very straw like. Given that this is labelled straight, it has to be at least four years old, and given that Nevada Distilling also releases Smoke Wagon Unfiltered and Uncut the Younger, I am pegging this at five years old, although the six year old Red Line Bourbon distilled at MGP I reviewed in my previous post was MUCH darker. The nose is pretty much traditional bourbon, with some nice notes of vanilla and fruit, but its really not impressive on the nose. On the swirl there is a nice film and some really nice long legs. On the palate, there is some nice vanilla and some baking spice and a hint of clove and oak. It’s not bad, and it’s pretty smooth despite the super high proof, but I really expected more flavor from this whiskey at this price point. After letting the bottle rest a few days, the whiskey actually got a little worse with some bitter notes on the palate. On the finish are baking spices, but this is pretty one dimensional, although it lingers for a good bit (probably due to the proof.)

So, this bottle is ok, but not great. So, what happened here? So many posts in bourbon groups raved about this bourbon in the past, and I am really not sure why this bottle isn’t living up to my expectations that built up by reviews I read. I looked up the batch history at the producer’s website. Between 2017 and 2020 Nevada Distilling issued a mere 25 batches of uncut and unfiltered bourbon. After 2020, each individual batch has the bottling date and the batch number on a sticker on the bottle, and they no longer record the batch numbers on the website. So, in the last three years Nevada Distilling has increased the number of batches six-fold. I suspect Batch 171 E is a far cry from say Batch 25.

I can’t help but draw a comparison with the last bourbon I reviewed, Red Line, which is a six year old MGP bourbon sold for the same price as Smoke Wagon but miles ahead as far as flavor. I will probably buy another bottle of Smoke Wagon when I find one in Louisiana just to see if Batch 171E was somehow off. But Batch 171E did not live up to the hype as there are lots of better whiskies that are available at this price point.