Review: Time & Oak’s Whiskey Elements

. It’s been a long time since I last tasted Evan Williams, and perhaps never with the full-minded intention and focus of constructing real tasting notes. Black pepper, honey, and reddish fruits like plum and Bing cherry segue to an honest, grain-forward finish with a hint of oak astringency. With the Element, I think a lot of that dimension is lost. The smoke character is pretty unappealing. The level of the smoke is good, but it’s much more like an extinguished campfire than iodine-rich peat smoke. The lightness in the front palate of the untreated whiskey is gone, replaced with a more straightforward and undifferentiated flavor dominated by oak vanillin. My other taster detected more sourness and astringency in the Element-treated spirit than in the Evan Williams, and I too noted a harshness in the finish that wasn’t present in the original spirit. Verdict: The Smoke Element seems considerably more potent than the Signature, but neither of us enjoyed its contributions to the spirit. While the Time and Oak Elements are an interesting novelty, I don’t think they will be replacing good old-fashioned barrels any time soon.