Up on the top shelf of the Bourbon section of your friendly booze-mart should be a selection of "premium" whiskey, several from the Beam distillery, one from Jack Daniels and some others, mostly slightly smoother and more flavorful selections from records of tastings of various casks on the aging racks. Knob Creek comes to mind. There are two general categories, those labelled "Sour Mash", most with a sweet yeasty back note, and the ones that ain't.

A good place to start....(Below the premium shelf). Dickel makes two mass- but not very mass - market products. The older and better comes with an ivory parchment label, and is a whisky of some character, not near so sweet as Jack Daniels Black, once a premium, now more "up-market redneck", or Maker's Mark - a lot of hat and a few cattle in my eyes, an extra $2 for the red wax.

Bourbons(and Tennessee whiskeys) lend themselves to side by side comparison, with a modestly priced label as a "benchmark" for comparison.

The traditional "baseline" for comparing Bourbons used to be "Old Crow", a harsh, edgy inexpensive bottle, but today's drinkers look for smoother results, and Jim Beam is likely a better place to work up from. There are literally dozens of Bourbons, from cheap to heftily overpriced "single barrel" bottlings. "Wild Turkey" has always seemed to me to be an "over-promoted" whiskey, quality ranking well below price.