Weller Full Proof Wheated Bourbon review: The hype, incredibly, was correct - USA Today

A confession: I've been writing about booze and especially beer and whiskey at For The Win for more than five years now. But, in all that time, I'd never tried Weller.

It was on my periphery rather than front and center. It was a bottle that was hard to find and pricey, which made it easy to write off as a product of hype. But when I had the chance to join a handful of other bourbon writers in Tennessee to tour Jack Daniel's and try new expressions there, I noticed something. At dinner, they all ordered pours of Weller.

Well, that was all the prodding I needed. This Buffalo Trace bourbon is a wheated offering which promised bold, fruit flavors and a sweeter, softer profile. Let's see how it holds up -- and if there's some substance behind its demand amongst whiskey nerds.

This bottle came courtesy of The Liquor Bros., who have a tremendous scope of bourbons including plenty of hard to find stuff (and, finally, a chance for me to complete the full lineup of Blanton's bottle toppers. Just one N away!). I was impressed with their tracking and selection, and that's not sponcon. They seem legit, though you're trading low costs for availability and reliability amidst a growing market of Sneakerheads who ran out of Jordans to buy and turned to booze instead.

It's remarkably light and enticing off the pour. You get the elements of an American whiskey right off the top -- vanilla, sugar, apple and pear -- riding atop a steady current of wheat underneath it. It lacks the boozy sting of other barrel proof whiskeys, letting you know right away this is going to be a smooth ride.

Despite that smoothness, there's a ton of flavor lurking underneath. It settles into the sweet receptors at the tip of your tongue to start, as is tradition. From there, it crackles outward like the tendrils of a lightning strike. The flavors are calm but potent. The most noticeable is that apple, pear and a little bit of cherry that strike with a nice sugary balance.

The wheat clocks in toward the end to provide some balance. It's a bit sour, like a wheat beer, but nothing overwhelming. Instead, it's a useful cantilever to those big, smooth fruit flavors. Despite its 114 proof, there's nothing approaching a burn here. It's incredibly sippable, something you can tip all night long without getting sick of -- and something that probably won't leave too much of a dent on your hangover brain the next morning.

I understand the hype. This is awesome.

This a pass/fail mechanism where I compare whatever I’m drinking to my baseline cheap beer. That’s the standby from the land of sky-blue waters, Hamm’s. So the question to answer is: on a typical day, would I drink Weller Full Proof over a cold can of Hamm’s?

Yes. Finding it at a reasonable price will be tricky -- if you're lucky you can find it for around $60, but many places will have it in the $100 range. It's a steal at that lower price, but worth the splurge even if it's marked up a bit.

This is part of FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.