The Four Roses Small Batch (750 ml jumbo-sized nip)

Tasting notes: 
The first thing one notices in this hot water bottle-shaped bottle is the large mahogany-topped cork.  (Note to self: Retain cork; serviceable as a binky for a reflux-addled infant.)  A satisfying pop draws out wisps of honeysuckle and some other flower, perhaps ox-eye daisy capers in a marinade.  There is a gentle bite from the alcohol but little of the charcoally tang in most bourbons.  But what really excites is the long, lovely woody finish, like a Lionel Hampton solo in your mouth, mallets hammering the keys of a marimba pushed into a hotel bathroom, creating so many notes on top of notes that one staggers back with the slightly concussed feeling one has after an endo.   
   

Rating:

--On the scale of things shaped like a hot water bottle--
The Four Roses Small Batch is the Four Roses Small Batch--the top choice, just edging out the Hoffmeister hot water bottle, and a world better than either Gummy Haggis or Vegetarian Haggis. 

                                                                                     --John