Jacob’s Pardon 18 Year American Whiskey Review (Small Batch #3)

As part of our job, spirits writers do a lot of splitting of hairs. It’s our duty to search for the factors that make any new product unique in some way, something easier said than done when you’re tasting the 100th modestly aged bourbon from a new craft distillery in any given year. In those cases, you end up poring over the details, looking for something to key upon as the defining aesthetic of a new release–something to make it distinct. But then, every now and then, you have a release that shows up that is genuinely unique in pretty much every way imaginable, and it makes the job embarrassingly easy. Jacob’s Pardon 18 Year American Whiskey is one of the latter.

This is a pretty freaking weird concept, right here. This is, for starters, light whiskey, the history of which we’ve written about several times. But to the uninitiated, what is “light whiskey”? Well, it’s a category that was created in 1968 when the short-sighted distillers of the industry attempted to change the definition of bourbon, wanting to be able to distill to a higher, less flavorful and more neutral proof, and age their spirit in re-used barrels rather than newly charred ones in pursuit of a cheaper, “lighter” spirit. The predecessor to the TTB thankfully nipped this attempt in the bud, safeguarding bourbon whiskey as we know it while establishing a new category of light whiskey for the products the distillers were envisioning. The subsequent light whiskey boom never really took off on its own, but they’ve been produced and used ever since as part of cheap American blended whiskeys.

In recent years, though, there’s been a trend of non-distiller producers (NDPs) acquiring well-aged, sourced light whiskey–MGP of Indiana seems to still have big stocks of it available–and releasing it on its own, or blending it with their own whiskey. But even in these cases, I’ve never seen a light whiskey release nearly as old as this one from Jacob’s Pardon, a brand from Palm Bay International. Oh, and did I mention that this monster is presented at a cask strength of 71.35% ABV (142.7 proof) as well? In every way, this is just totally unlike any of the sourced MGP light whiskey releases I’ve encountered in the past.

It does make one wonder what kind of market there is for this niche, and whether there are really a lot of people out there champing at the bit to spend $195 on an extremely mature, cask strength light whiskey. But who knows, there’s always a chance that this category continues to grow into the next big thing. In the meantime, let’s taste this very unique juice.