Four years old, and it does not drink like a four-year-old. Willett’s Family Estate bottlings come from one barrel at a time, with no blending and no batching to sand down the edges, and each bottle carries its own barrel number and proof marked on the label, so the one you take home is genuinely not the same as the next one on the shelf. The distillery has stood in Bardstown since 1936; the Kulsveen family, who married into the Willetts, brought distilling back on site in 2012, and this is their own whiskey. It comes out loud: caramel and toasted oak up front, then baking spice, dark cherry and a peppery kick that runs long. Proof runs high and shifts from barrel to barrel, so check what you are holding, and add a few drops of water before you decide what you think, because it opens up considerably. Neat, over one big rock, or in an Old Fashioned it can shove around.