What we’re drinking: AJ Bond Straight Tennessee Whiskey
Where it’s from: Located in La Vergne, TN, this marks the first release from the AJ Bond Distillery and the first Tennessee Whiskey from drinks giant Sazerac.
Why we’re drinking this: Tennessee Whiskey is a popular but rather sparsely populated category, at least compared to bourbon. You’ve got Jack Daniel’s, Uncle Nearest (currently in business limbo but still popular) and Dickel, with a few other specialty players.
So when Sazerac — home to Buffalo Trace, Weller, Pappy Van Winkle and Blanton’s, among other iconic American whiskey brands — releases an inaugural Tennessee Whiskey, people take notice. And it’s exciting to have a big whiskey release during a current drinks climate where everything feels like bad news, even if the project dates back to 2016 (with whiskey, obviously, aging means there’s a serious time gap between ideation and drinking something out of a bottle.)
The first thing to note is this isn’t a bottled-in-bond whiskey, as the name may suggest. It actually represents the bond between Master Distillers Allisa Henley and the late John Lunn. “Myself and my distilling partner, John, who passed away unexpectedly three years ago, worked together for 20 years, and it was all in Tennessee Whiskey,” says Henley, who called me the morning after a huge launch party in Nashville (“I had a late night last night,” she admits. “This last week has been all launch parties, trainings and tastings on repeat.”).
While Sazerac excels at bourbon, they noted they had a hole in their whiskey portfolio, so they entrusted Henley and Lunn to build a new brand. Buying an old moonshine distillery, the duo needed to figure out everything from a name to a taste profile. “We wanted to be a true Tennessee Whiskey,” Henley says. “We didn’t want to buy the liquid from anyone else, and we wanted everything to be as local to Tennessee as could be.”
That idea manifests in several ways. The corn hail from a 200-year-old family-owned farm in Murfreesboro, just southwest of Nashville. All the wood for the barrels is Tennessee oak, a first for the category. And the whiskey follows the category’s traditional charcoal mellowing process with sugar maple charcoal created by the AJ Bond Distillery team.
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This year’s coveted whiskey series sees a new bottle and a new favoriteHenley and her team also employ both pot and column stills in their distillation process. “The column still gives us cleaner, crisper flavors and some really nice fruit notes,” she says. “Pot stills are a bit funkier, and you get a lot of earthy notes.” The two distillates are aged separately and then married together just before bottling. It also plays into the brand’s name: AJ Bond stands both for Allisa and John’s bond but also the melding of two types of distilled whiskey.
So what’s going to make AJ Bond different from other Tennessee Whiskeys? “With a category like Tennessee Whiskey, I feel like consumers may only think of one flavor profile,” Henley says. “I really wanted to create something that has complexity, is palatable enough to sip on and enjoy for the night, but is also be something that can hold up in a cocktail.”
It’s been a 10-year process. Was it worth the wait?
How it tastes: Bottled at a robust 95 proof (so it will indeed hold up in a cocktail), AJ Bond’s initial release offers a lot of butterscotch on the nose and a little chestnut. As it hits the palate, I found a rich and velvety texture with notes of caramel apple, lemon meringue and a subtle oak spice. It’s unique among its Tennessee Whiskey contemporaries, an easy sipper and a strong entry in an underappreciated category.
Fun fact: Henley isn’t opposed to actually releasing a bottled-in-bond whiskey. “We’ve talked about different variants that we can do under the AJ Bond name,” she says. “We do have a couple of nice things we’ve made in the past years that are aging and will eventually be released. A bottled-in-bond could potentially be one of those.” (Future releases may also include different mash bills, too.)
Where to buy: AJ Bond Tennessee Whiskey was released in Tennessee this month at a suggested retail price of $39.99, with broader U.S. distribution set for later in the year (if you’re not in state, you may be able to find it online).
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