What does bourbon taste like?
Generally, the taste of whiskey, any whiskey, is based on three factors: (1) what kinds of grains it is made from; (2) what kind of barrels it is aged in (as noted above, all bourbon is aged in charred new oak barrels); and (3) how long it is aged. As bourbon is made from corn, which has a higher sugar content than most grains used in whiskey production, it tends to have a sweet, syrupy taste. It’s not that it tastes surgary, like say a liqueur, more that it has an underlying sweetness as compared to other whiskies, such as rye or scotch. That corn-flavor is, to me, the essence of bourbon.
