Town Branch
“Maybe you are searching among the branches, for what only appears in the roots.”
If you were looking for a very specific bourbon, say one that came in a fancy bottle, and that fancy bottle was also so heavy that it could probably kill a man, then Town Branch is the whiskey for you.
A relative new comer to the bourbon scene, the distillery only opened back in 2012, Town Branch is the brain child of Dr. Thomas Pearse Lyons. Apparently (as their website tells it) he hails from five generations of coopers, and was the first Irishman to earn a formal degree from the British School of Malting and Brewing - which sounds like a fancy school but is actually now just a less interestingly named ‘biochemist course’ at the University of Birmingham (and by that we mean the original one in the UK, not the copycat Alabama version).
Considering what an interesting and great man Dr Lyons was, we wanted to like his bourbon more than we ultimately did. It’s a young whiskey and that comes through quite a lot on the palate, combined with the low volume (40%) this just leaves an overall thin and watery experience.
The nose is actually the real winner here and, although the Gents don’t give separate marks for nose, palate and finish, if we did then this one would have scored higher overall. It is quite an oak bomb mixed with lots of cherry and citrus. It’s one of those that you really need to let sit for a while before you put your nose in there, it’s a cliche but Town Branch really does open up if you give it the time.
Mav took a chance on buying this bottle while waiting for a flight in Dublin airport, possibly swayed by the bottle (for it being fancy, not for it’s man killing potential), but that gamble hasn’t quite paid off so, unfortunately, for us it’s not one we can recommend.
