Little Book Chapter 10 Is One of the Best To Date

Welcome to Taste Test, where every week our critic Jonah Flicker explores the most buzzworthy and interesting whiskeys in the world. Check back each Sunday for his latest whiskey review.

Could you call the new edition of Jim Beam‘s Little Book whiskey series an infinity blend? Maybe not exactly, but eighth-generation master distiller Freddie Noe did combine the entire Small Batch Collection (along with a little something extra) into this latest release, Chapter 10: All the Wiser. Infinity blend or not, this is one of the best Little Book editions to date, even if it does kind of repeat an idea that’s been used before.

Noe launched Little Book in 2017 as a tribute to his grandfather, the legendary master distiller Booker Noe. The elder Noe created the eponymous Booker’s brand, one of the first widely available barrel-proof bourbons, as well as the rest of the Jim Beam Small Batch Collection. Each batch of Little Book is a unique construct, as Noe and the blending team at the James B. Beam Distilling Co. select different components to use in each blend—and there is certainly no shortage of whiskey maturing at the distillery to choose from. Chapter 10 does bear some similarity to Chapter 3: The Road Home, however, which combined all four Small Batch Collection whiskeys at cask strength—nine-year-old Knob Creek, nine-year-old Basil Hayden, 11-year-old Booker’s, and 12-year-old Baker’s.

Chapter 10 expands upon that idea by adding an extra whiskey and switching up the ages. Specifically, the blend consists of the following components: 14-year-old Basil Hayden (the distillery’s high-rye bourbon), 11 and nine-year-old Knob Creek (pretty standard age statements for this brand), 10-year-old Booker’s (much older than usual), nine-year-old Baker’s (a bit older), and four-year-old Jim Beam bourbon that was finished in sherry and toasted bourbon casks. The final blend was bottled at 122.6 proof, which is a reasonable cask strength and goes a long way towards making this a successful project. I reached out to the brand to find out what the proportions of each whiskey used in the blend were, but that is information it will not reveal.

When you’re working with a group of whiskeys of this caliber, you might assume it would be hard to screw up. 14-year-old cask-strength Basil Hayden? I would drink that whiskey on its own. But the formula is not as simple as: good whiskey + good whiskey + good whiskey = good whiskey. There’s an art and a method to blending—pick one whiskey to use as the base, then flavor it with the other components in exacting proportions. Test and repeat. Surely, one of the most interesting elements here is the youngest, the four-year-old White Label bourbon finished in sherry and toasted oak. I have no idea how much of that was used in the blend, but it makes its presence known by adding interesting notes of dried fruit and aromatics to the mix. The palate leads with Beam’s signature nutty flavor, along with large doses of oak, vanilla, caramel, custard, and maple, and then leans into flavors like ripe berry, orange, molasses, and dark chocolate. There’s a bit of spicy heat on the finish as each sip lingers on the back of your tongue.

Longtime fans of Little Book will enjoy this latest chapter, but it’s not going to win over any detractors (and they are certainly out there). I count myself in the former category, although there have been a few misses along the way—something that is bound to happen when a whiskey series is about experimentation and not consistency. Little Book Chapter 10, however, hits a high mark and fulfills the mission that Noe set out on nearly a decade ago: respect tradition, but always look to the future.

Score: 92

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