The Story

It didn’t take much convincing for us to grab a bottle of Larceny Small Batch Bourbon. Back in 2019, we went on a tour at Heaven Hill Distillery and got to walk through one of their rickhouses, got the historic rundown, and at the end made our way to the tasting room. One of the samples was Larceny and we really enjoyed it. To be fair, we’re suckers for a wheated bourbon but this one was legitimately good. So we snagged a bottle for the home bar and went on to sip it neat.

Honestly, we never even considered how it might be in an Old Fashioned until we were picking candidates for our Best Bourbon in an Old Fashioned video. We wanted to add a couple ‘wheaters’ in the test, so we went with the obvious Maker’s Mark and decided Larceny would be a good option as well. It’s cheap and pretty delicious on its own. But truthfully we figured it might be middle of the pack, at best.

Boy were we wrong, and served ourselves a slice of humble pie when it shook out as the #1 option in our blind taste test. It was perfect.

So let’s break down why it’s so great on its own, and why it ends up working so well within an Old Fashioned.

Nose

Classic vanilla and caramel on the nose, with a touch of oak. Not much else to report here.

Palate

Smooth and sweet. Lighting up all the sweet receptors on the tongue, but not a lot of particular sweet notes. I get more of cinnamon roll icing than anything else. There’s a touch of barrel funk mid-palate and a nice, light pepper spice lingers near the end.

Finish

Here’s where we get interesting. It definitely has a prominent orange peel note at the finish. Orange lingers with light pepper spice and the sweetness slowly vanishes to leave you with a pleasant and dominant bitter peel note. Which is not off-putting at all.

Verdict

As I reviewed my notes on this one I thought that maybe this bottle would come off as not so good, but in reality it’s excellent. Sure, the sweetness is a bit one note, but the balance with the spice and the orange note hits the sweet, spicy and bitter parts of the tongue which result in a really nice experience. No wonder this does so well in an Old Fashioned; it complements everything that makes the OF what it is; sweet with the sugar, spicy with the bitters/bourbon and bitter with the bitters/orange peel. In our estimation, this is a staple bottle in your home bar.

We’re giving Larceny Small Batch Bourbon an 8.1/10.

Cheers friends!