JW Dant Bottled-in-Bond Bourbon Review

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Joseph Washington Dant started his distilling legacy during a period of time when copper and money were both scarce. His ingenuity and grit (and possibly his desire to get crunk) saw him hollowing out the stump of a poplar tree to build his first still. That same ingenuity kept the distillery growing up through the 19th-century whiskey boom and the Prohibition shut down.

The JW Dant brand managed to survive through a series of takeovers (Chuck Cowdery talks about it in depth here) and buyouts up to 1987 when it was purchased by United Distillers. After that, its fate was in the hands of big business and saw Heaven Hill scooping up the trademark and remaining stocks in 1993.

Modern JW Dant Bottled in Bond Bourbon

Nowadays, production of JW Dant occurs where all other Heaven Hill products are made: the Bernheim facility in Louisville (DSP-KY-1). The Dant name is technically a subsidiary (“The Dant Distillery Company” sits on the label), but everything inside the bottle is classic Heaven Hill. That means the mash bill is the same 78% corn, 10% rye and 12% malted barley as the rest of the labels. After distillation, it’s put into 53-gallon white-oak barrels with a Char Level #3.

I wish I could tell you which rickhouses or floors it was aged in because I think that would go a long way in understanding what separates it from its close cousins Evan Williams BiB and JTS Brown BiB. All of these BiB’s are aged for at least 4 or 5 years and probably no more than that. I assume they were all aged on the top floor of some set of rickhouses seeing as how that would get them to mature faster so they’d cost less money to make (less age = less cost). My friend James told me that he had heard from a Heaven Hill event that JW Dant was supposed to be different from Evan Williams or JTS Brown by using barrels that tasted more “rye-forward.” They might all use the same mash bill, but its up to the tasters to separate them based on taste, so it’s not totally unbelievable.

After almost a decade, the JW Dant bottle design remains generally unchanged and can always be found under the $20 price point. This is a great value and one that I’m surprised hasn’t gone up with inflation over the last 5 years. So how is the taste-to-value ratio anyway? Let’s find out. I sampled this neat in a glencairn.

Tasting Notes

Nose: Warm caramel and a pinch of cinnamon spice lead the introduction to what this bourbon is all about. There’s the unmistakable profile of a melted candy bar complete with nuts, nougat, chocolate and caramel. Rye spice – something Heaven Hill bourbon isn’t really known for – is a very small part of the experience but includes some mint and green apple. These could also just be the youthfulness exposing itself. Finally, vanilla and ground cornmeal round out the list of scents.

Palate: Caramel and brown-sugar syrup coat the tongue before some youthful rye spice (green peppercorns) pricks the mid-palate. I find much of the same candy bar flavors as I did scents on the nose. There are roasted peanuts, salted buttered popcorn and a swirl of baking spices like cinnamon and clove. The oak hasn’t fully developed yet, but it isn’t as young as I would expect. It tastes maybe 6 or 7 years old. Outside of some vanilla and a hint of a cherry, there’s not much else here. If you like simple, straight-to-the-point bourbon, this is for you.

Finish: Medium length on the finish. Oak and pepper lead the finish after my sip is complete. It gradually gives way to caramel, cooked corn and vanilla. The heat is present and generally I think it’s unobtrusive, but a newer drinker may complain that JW Dant is too hot for their liking. They’ll learn.

Score: 5.7/10

JW Dant BiB is the bourbon equivalent of a used Toyota Camry: no frills, a little rough around the edges and acceptable to a majority of the population. At 100 proof, it would stand up great in a cocktail and its inherent sweetness makes it great in an Old Fashioned. It’s also a satisfying pour if it’s the well pour at your local bar. My score of 5.6 out of 10 shouldn’t detract anyone from buying it – it’s on the upside of being average – but it should at least rein in expectations.

Final Thoughts

JW Dant Bottled-in-Bond proves that heritage and affordability don’t have to be mutually exclusive. You’ll never see this bottle on a secondary market page, but you’ll also never have to hunt to find it. For many drinkers out there, that’s all they want.

A word about the pictures for this review

I don’t usually include a section like this, but I wanted to take a moment and nerd out about the lens I used to take the main pictures in this review. If you know a little bit about photography, you already understand what “bokeh” is – the blurred background that shows up whenever you focus on an object that’s close while the background is far away. Sometimes you’ll see reflections of light that create small, blurry dots of light. If you look closely at the cover picture, you’ll notice that the bokeh in the background has dozens of tiny rings. This was not photoshopped in, it’s how it looked through my viewfinder.

Photographers call this “donut bokeh” due to the distinctive pattern this lens makes. What lens is it? A Maksutov f/10 1000mm mirror lens that was made in Soviet Union back in the 70’s (a more common f/8 500mm version is widely available on eBay). If you look at it head-on, you’ll notice a small circular mirror in the center. I could get into specifics on what this does and how it is used to magnify incredible focal lengths in a relatively compact size, but I’ll let Wikipedia do it for me.

A friend and coworker of mine just so happened to have this lens with a Canon adapter and let me borrow it for a weekend. My camera is a R5 Mark II and I’m used to having all sorts of features like autofocus, Image Stabilization and easy-to-focus rings. None of that worked with this lens. I had to manually set the focus, aperture, find the right ISO, tinker with the shutter speed and switch to a 10 second timer to ensure there were no wobbles after I pressed the shutter button.

Setting the picture up was a comically long process of walking about 30 yards back and forth to make tiny adjustments to my table so I could have it centered on the exact background and foreground spot I wanted in the frame. I positioned the table and bottle on the sidewalk in front of my house. The flowers you see in the background are about 15 yards behind it. Then I walked across the street into my neighbor’s backyard and set up my camera with a tripod that wasn’t really meant for this (I was using it as a monopod earlier that day for baseball). Finding the right angle and focus took about 30 minutes.

In the end, I found a spot that was good enough and got my picture about as clear as possible. Using a Snapspeed App, I did some quick editing for contrast, sharpness, ambience and a bit of saturation. This was my final result. I know it’s not totally in focus and lacking in true depth, but it’s acceptable for now. Once I learn Photoshop, I’m sure I could get a much better result.

I don’t recommend this lens for product photography – save it for shooting the moon at night or spying on your neighbors so you can report them to the KGB. But the donut bokeh is a fun change of pace in a bourbon review like this and I hope you enjoyed hearing about it.