What should bourbon taste like?

An advertisement caught my attention for cherry, spices, and honey tea flavored bourbon.  Having struggled to control my gag reflex, here's my take on this.  In some sense the Phactor understands flavored vodkas.  Ethanol is a colorless, flavorless, clear liquid that mixes totally in any proportion with water, another colorless, flavorless, clear liquid, so adding some sort of flavor to vodka makes a little bit of sense.  On the other hand bourbon tastes like bourbon, and some taste better than others, and some are better values than others.  Now if you do not like bourbon, fine, but apparently the whole point of flavoring bourbon is to get people who don't like bourbon to drink bourbon, and the assumption must be made that if the bourbon was any good to begin with, people would drink it for the bourbon flavor, not some other flavor.  And when it comes to flavored spirits, the Phactor doubts that these flavors are subtle. 
Great minds must think somewhat alike because over at the Garden Rant, someone is also in a tizzy about cocktails and what has happened to them when they become too, too fashionable.  We are on the same page; they call it an old fashioned cocktail that because it is, so don't mess around with some infusion of orange blossoms and cucumber slices. 
So this makes two problems to deal with.  First you have spirit makers trying to cater to a generation that grew up on sweet, fruity drinks, and then you have overly fashionable cocktails.  How the Phactor hates ordering a margarita and then being asked if it is to be frozen, sugar or salt rimmed, or on the rocks.  A margarita is served on the rocks with a salted rim.  Anything else is another drink which is why they call frozen margaritas frozen margaritas.  It's a different drink.  But some purveyors do get it.  One of the best small, locovore, farm to table, creative restaurants in our area always features a couple of classic, we-didn't-mess-with-it cocktails. 

Botanical booze

In case people missed Colin's info-comment, here's a beverage to be newly released in the USA, and of course, who wouldn't like the name? Squared shoulders, elegantly refined, clearly clear, why it's as if they had someone in mind! Here's the newsy link. While the Phactor is quite certain it should be shaken not stirred, he wonders if a gin flavored with "an unprecedented 31 botanicals, 22 of which were locally harvested, including rare subspecies of juniper, bog myrtle, wood sage, heather flowers, peppermint leaves and others", is as botanically friendly as one would like to think? Let's hope the demand for this pricey artisanal gin doesn't do something bad to populations of rare subspecies of juniper, etc.. Unfortunately gin is not the Phactor's drink, but maybe someone will do a Botany Bourbon.