Knob Creek 15 Year Old Bourbon Review

Updated January 14, 2022

By Richard Thomas

Average Rating: A-/B+

The sheer sucktitude of 2020 is the stuff of memes and jokes, and I’m left to wonder if the year will go down as a watershed to be fictionalized, romanticized and studied or if it will become the kind of thing we’ll all be so eager to forget that we never speak of it hereafter. Yet 2020 wasn’t all bad, especially if you are a fan of Jim Beam’s handiwork. This was the year that saw them break out of the gloomy bourbon shortage storyline by bringing back Knob Creek 9 Year Old, introducing Knob Creek 12 Year Old to the regular line-up (previously an annual limited release), and then crowning it all with a new annual limited release, Knob Creek 15 Year Old.

In most respects, KC15 is a straightforward story. Knob Creek 9 Year Old was part of the seminal Jim Beam Small Batch Collection in the early 1990s, which included Booker’s, Baker’s and Basil Hayden. It’s a late middle aged version of their staple 77% corn, 13% rye, 10% malted barley recipe, bottled at 100 proof.

The Bourbon
Knob Creek 15 is a middle amber pour, with a look that could pass for tea. The nose leads with oak, presenting a woody, nutty character that occupies center stage, but leaves some room for traditional bourbon notes of candy corn and caramel, plus a hint of raisins.

The flavor opens on those traditional bourbon notes of candy corn, brown sugar and vanilla, supplemented by hints of red fruit and berries, before being washed over by a wave of cedar and spearmint. The woody age continues to dominate on the palate as much as it did on the nose, but the nature of that woodiness has pivoted away from oak and nuts and to something that compliments that red fruit and berry note marvelously. The finish is minty at first, but as it fades it winds down to its roots of candy corn and vanilla.

So, despite leading with oak, being predominately woody and consequently a little out of balance, that wood-forward character evolves as the drinking experience progresses, eventually fading from the picture altogether to end on a sweet note. If Knob Creek 15 lacks a little something in balance, it gains from that in sophistication, and is a delicious pour for it.

Addendum by Randall H. Borkus

The whiskey color is a deep amber with a solid brown tint. The whiskey shows up oily and viscus in my Glencairn glass. The nose is full of aged oak with hints of fresh cut leather and a sprinkle of caramel dusk. With a few drops of water, I’m finding dark fruits and oven dried cherry sweetness. The aroma is solidly oaked in an attractive way. The palate leads with a burst of cinnamon spice draped in a mature oak wrapper. With a little water the oak parts and sweet flavors of candied cherry, burnt sugar with a hint of raw tobacco emerge. The oak aroma continues to dominant the complexity of flavors. The finish is dry aged oak dominant with bits of my grandma’s homemade graham cracker sprinkled with caramel and toffee essence and baked raisins all unfolding into a long bold rye spice warming.

Overall, Knob Creek 15 Year is what I would expect with its dominant aged oak overtones and spice with an underbelly of slight dried fruit sweetness, and hints of caramel. This bourbon is a wonderful representation of traditional Kentucky bourbon flavors heavily cloaked in oaked. Bean delivers a mature bourbon option here for today’s market that shows the maturation impact of aging in the barrel. I really enjoyed sipping this fine bourbon whiskey from Beam Suntory.

The Price
Knob Creek 15 still officially goes for $100, and as predicted, the market value is higher… but not much higher. Wine Searcher listed it (at the time of the 2022 update) as commanding a market average of $136.