Old Forester 1920 Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, Prohibition Style, Louisville, Kentucky

How, you may ask, does a bourbon house make whiskey during Prohibition?  This is one of the most amusing hypocrisies of the disastrous constitutional experiment.  One of the compromises of the Volstead Act was that certain whiskey companies could continue to sell off their barrel stocks even after Prohibition began in 1919, but only if they labeled it "medicinal".  Furthermore, selected distilleries could continue to make medicinal whiskey after those stocks were depleted.  A few years ago, when Old Forester began some legacy bottlings, the 1920 recipe was re-created by the distillery's craftsmen and a new whiskey was released alongside other historically-inspired bottlings from 1870 and 1897.  For me, the most satisfying of the trio has been the 1920.  Full of boubon-y sweetness and smoke, with hints of vanilla and caramel, a drop or two of water in this bourbon will bring out the best it has to offer.