Reuven Weinstein's Warm House... And The Killer Blind.

Hanging out on the Internet Bourbon forums you meet and befriend a lot of interesting people.  I love meeting these people in real life.  I've met Reuven Weinstein - a master dusty hunter out of New York - a number of times, but recently I had the great pleasure of spending the whole afternoon with him and his lovely wife Ilana (who was his public face of Facebook for a long time) at his home in Rockaway Park / Belle Harbor.   Ostensibly a house warming - the house has a real story of destruction and rebuilding.  The Weinsteins just recently moved into it.  There was a ton of delicious home made salads, hot wings, and world class smoked BBQ brisket.  Just delicious.  And there was also whiskey - lots of it.  The very best stuff.  Because Reuven is a master whiskey hunter.  The pictures and tasting notes below speak for themselves - but they aren't the reason for the post.  Not at all - but that will come later.

FYI - a different take on this smorgasbord was written up by my friend (and partner in crime) Steven Zeller, The Smoky Beast here:
http://smokybeast.blogspot.com/2014/07/rock-rock-rockaway-beach-tasting.html

Reuven is well known in the American whiskey world.  He is a prodigy - a talent at entering neighborhoods that others wouldn't bother with and somehow coming out with a trunk full of absolute treasures from the liquor stores there.  As Reuven toured us through a small portion of the fabulous whiskies he has collected I was amazed time and again by both the fabulous range - from dusty bourbons and the rarest issues to fabulous single malt - with a focus on spectacular and hard to find silent distilleries - and also by our hosts tremendous generosity.  What we tasted that day is not to be forgotten.  And it was but a peek into his fantastic collection.  Which only underscores a curious and oft remarked on fact: Reuven doesn't drink whiskey.  Nope.  He enjoys nosing it.  He produced a 1984 vintage single cask Yamazaki which he particularly enjoyed nosing.  I must concur - it had the most remarkable nose:  a complex and evolving aroma that started with dark cocoa with a hint of anthracite coal combustion (just a hint) and then moving into rich fig pudding baking in rum, and then on to a rich earthiness made farmy by a bit of animal skins.  I could nose that thing all day too.  But ultimately I want to take a sip.  I suspect Reuven will too, someday soon.  I can see the curiosity burning in him.  Meanwhile, his personal code and clean habits keeps him holding back. After Reuven and Ilana served a killer spread of sweet smoky BBQ brisket and lovely home-made sauced hot wings, with homemade slaw, potato salad, green salad and all the fixings,  I made the fatal error of pouring an award-winning Cotswald village Sloe Gin as an after dinner apertif.  Wrong stuff for that crowd!
But, before that happened a lot of whisky got tasted

When I encountered the spread of whiskey on the table my eyes lit on two things right away.  One The Parker Heritage 27 year old legendary PHC2 which I had never tried before.  And right next to it was a 1980s vintage octagonal Wild Turkey 8 year old age statement 1.75 Liter handle.  NOW WE'RE TALKING!  Parker Heritage 2nd edition 27 year old is a legendary statement product from Heaven Hill.  2008 Malt Advocate Magazine's American Whiskey of the Year.  I had tried and enjoyed a Wild Turkey 101 8 yo octagonal handle from the early 90s with Mike Jasinski a little while back.   Lately I've been going deeper with Wild Turkey, and there's a strong argument for the 8 year old WT101 of the 70s-90s as being one my favorite primary expression (i.e. not barrel proof) bourbons.

Parker Heritage 27 48%

Color:  Dark amber
Nose:  Rich rancio malt, sweet sherry nutty rancio, mead honey, deep iterated bourbon vanilla pods: sweetness.  Then tempered by buttery notes and oak incense.
Palate:  Sweet honey malt opening. Waxing into acetone-citrus with ripe cantaloupe, salted caramel with tannin spiciness on the finish.
Light texture on the mouth feel but big spicy finish.  This stuff is a lot like really old cognac with its darkly vinously sugared and oake loaded luxury.  Among the darkest, richest, most indulgent Bourbons I've ever tasted.  A really memorable pour (tasted both at the event and with a 1oz sample tasted at time of writing).

*****

Wild Turkey 101 8 1987 - Octagonal handle 50.5%

This is excellent Bourbon that I've been tasting in a number of contexts.  Here, it's a clear object lesson in the dangers of drinking something you really like immediately after an epic, world class whiskey.  Let's just say, the right time to enjoy a WT101 8yo age statement dusty is NOT immediately after tasting PHC2 27 yo.  Sweet and spicy as decently complex as WT101 was back in the day, it can't hold a candle to the glory cask selected wonder of that PCH2.  It's an unfair juxtaposition.

Color: medium coppery amber
Sweet and comparatively gentle stuff.   Nose:  warm and malty with herbal wafts and a oak sandalwood essence undercurrent.
Palate:  malty juicyfruit opening with both magic marker and candy dish notes.  The mid palate expands into brown sugar, herbal rye spice, warm honey, and sweet alfalfa turning into rye herbal spiciness and then a gentle oak tannin grip with a moderately long finish. Decent density in the mouth.  A perennial favorite, but completely shown the door in that head to head.

****

Lombard Jewels of Scotland Brora 22 50%

Distilled 1982, Bottled 2004, 22 years old.

Color: Gold
Nose:  Heather, honey, waxy
Palate:  Intense honey, turkish delight (powdered sugar, fruity, nutty)., paraffin, heather florals, meadow grass.  Not peaty or farmy.  Lightly tannin spicy finish is the only hint of age.  A heathery honey highland beauty.  With the waxy floral notes this came off like a Clynelish.  Light and beautiful - but oddly not complex considering it's age and method of manufacture.   I could sip and enjoy this one all day.  A true "session Scotch".  This bottling is all about the sunny, floral, honeyed beautiful side of Brora.  Missing is the earthy farmy animal manure aspects, the peat, smoke, and darkness you often see with that distillery.  I greatly enjoyed it.

****
(borderline *****)

Highland Park 25 48.1% abv.

Color: light medium amber with coppery glints.

Nose: Heathery wild meadow florals open up for rich malty rancio riding on dusky animal farmy warmth and some underlying peat and sea coast.  Fig cake and old sherry and leather notes play in the middle where the rancio lives.  As it opens, safflower oil and then marigold yellow florals join the heather, sherry, coastal light peat aroma show.

Palate: Sweet and rich on opening with black raisins, stewed black figs and malt sugars tempered by a whiff of brine.  The expansion brings vinous dark sherry notes of purple fruits and leather and tobacco.  It waxes into rich dark oak a satisfying warmth of gentle well integrated coastal peat and tails into a long, sweet, spicy finish with wood and smoke wrapped around the herbal tail of the malt and the lingering sweet of sherry rancio.  This is a full bore beauty of significant complexity and fills your mouth with a tour of the wide gamut of Scotch Whisky flavors - all of them.  Floral, honeyed, sherried, peated, and coastal all combine to make this beautiful spirit.  Like the 12 and the 18 - but with the darkness and intensity cranked up with maturity.  What a beauty.  Impressively, this stood up to the competition on the table with aplomb.

*****

Hirsch Single Cask Canadian 12 53.1%

The rear label only says Candian Whiskey * Single Cask * 12 years old * Lot 98-1 Bottled by Hirsch Distilleries Lawrenceburg, KY for Priess Imports, Ramona CA and bears a sticker in Japanese for sale in the Japanese market.  Rare and interesting as the odd-man-out bottling in the brief but now legendary association of Julian Van Winkle III's bottling operation with Priess Imports which had taken over the A.H. Hirsch lot of 1974 Bourbon from Michters and had started picking up odd lots and bottling those without the "A.H.".

Steve Zeller toasts w PHC2. Anthony Colasacco, right.

Color: light gold.
Nose: honey, herbal cedar with pencil shavings and mineral flint.
Palate, sweet and lean and honey-floral on entry.  Light and clean on the expansion where herbal spice, light clean mineral, and  a bit of grapefruit fruit and also pith astringency take over.  It tastes like a good Canadian blend of a corn base and rye flavoring whiskey.  I wonder what it actually is and which of Canada's distilleries it came from.  My guess would be Alberta distillery.  It has some of those Alberta Premium whiskey flavors.  Very refined for what it is.  Nicely balanced.

****

This somewhat legendary odd-ball bottling was a housewarming gift of Anthony Colosacco who is best known for his utterly fantastic whiskey bar in Mt, Kisco:  Pour Mt. Kisco.  It's the kind of bar where you can get a flight of Pappy Van Winkle Family Reserve - or all 3 Rittenhouse 21, 23, and 25.
http://www.pourmtkisco.com/


Pappy was well represented on the table with a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle Family Reserve 15 from 2006 and also a 2006 or prior (pre-laser stamped) bottle of Van Winkle 12 Lot B that Ari Susskind had been involved in locating.  Great guys and a great whiskey.  Soft and gentle Stitzel-Weller wheater flavors: mellow cherry root beer sandalwood incensed oaky loveliness.

Ari Susskind (left) Reuven Weinstein (right)

As the party was winding down, our host brought out nicely full glencairns with a mystery blind.  The aroma and flavor were clearly in the lightly sherried highland Scottish malt category.  Steve and I bothed initially guessed a  Macallan dusty.  I had to pull a chair aside and really focus.  My quick notes read:

Color:  amber
Nose, floral incense, hard candy, fig cake, sherry, leather

Palate. Intense (50+% abv) Honeyed, minted fig melon candy black plum with some apple skin waxes into big oak and spicy heat.  Hint of clean highland peat or just big oak tannins.  Maybe some active Spanish or French oak going on?  Inchgower?

That intense perfumed floral candy aspect of front, combined with a some of that unripe apple tartness put me in the mind of Inchgower - but also An Cnoc, Balblair, and Tomatin.  Yet this particular whisky clearly wasn't any of those.  I was purely stumped.  Later that evening Reuven texted the reveal:  It was

Convalmore 36 - 1977 Diageo office 2013 realease 58% abv.

(notes above) *****
A retail listing of this whisky at TWE (where the picture is linked from):
http://www.thewhiskyexchange.com/P-22036.aspx

Convalmore is one of the legendary silent stills of Scotland, founded in 1893 and closed in the glut days of 1985.  The story is well told on Malt Madness:
http://www.maltmadness.com/whisky/convalmore.html

When I got home I had to put it up against  this 10 cl sample of Connoisseur's Choice Convalmore 17 40% Gordon & MacPhail 1981-1998 (bottled by Van Der Boog, Holland - and brought to a recent tasting by my friend Bram Hoogendijk - thanks Bram!)

Convalmore 17 40% Gordon & MacPhail Connoisseur's Choice 1981-1998

Color: Gold

Nose:  Honey and floral heather with a hint of white white tartness, chalk mineral, and yellow grass in the Sun.

Palate: Sweet and gently honeyed on the opening with an immediate tart crisp apple skin quality.  Floral and tart fruit on the expansion with a dry perfume aspect on top of a rich barley-malt chassis.  The turn is all perfume and young sawn dried oak planks.  Beautiful - and very much in the Inchgower/AnCnoc wheelhouse - yet totally unique.  (Serge Valentin noted a touch of peat on the way to giving it a 76).

****

An amazing opportunity to taste a rare and special bottling of the rare Convalmore distillate in its very mature state.  In conversations on-line I speculated about the spicy heat on the back end of the 36 year old 1977 Diageo bottling.  Was it peat or spicy oak?  Rubin Luyten of Whiskynotes.be thought it might be a bit of peat (his excellent review is here):

http://www.whiskynotes.be/2014/convalmore/convalmore-36-years-1977-2013/

Angus MacRaild (Angus MacWhisky) - expert on ancient Scotch par excellence e.g.:
http://www.whisky-online.com/blog/ - thought it was the wood:

" I'd say it is most likely from the wood given that it's a mix of european and american oak aged for over 36 years. At that sort of age you can definitely get a certain amount of phenolic extraction from the wood which can come through as medicinal/spicy/smoky/menthol in varying degrees. I doubt that Convalmore had any regular or meaningful peating level during the mid-late 70s. The ones I've tried from that time reveal it to have a spicy/herbaceous quality which I feel is very much part of the house style and derives more from the distillate. Anyway, I'm very much in agreement about the 36yo, it's an absolutely stonking dram!"

Stonking dram indeed.  I can't believe it was just handed out as a blind tasting as the post dessert apertif.  That's class.  Thanks, Reuven, for a wonderful time and a fabulous education!

A Day With A Master Dusty Hunter ... driven by a pretty green liqueur and the Question of Bottle Maturation

Chartreuse, Bourbon, and Rye dusties.

Old dusties bring out the geeky and ornery as well as stupid and brave (all quintessentially American traits).   Part of the story might be best described by Steve Zeller's joke:

"How many whiskey snobs does it take to change a light bulb?  One hundred.  One to put in the new bulb, and ninety-nine to tell you why the old one was better."  

But what if the old ones really ARE better?  Not all of them.  Not all the time.  But some of them - a whole lot of them actually - and really, veritably better.  The question, as always, is WHY?  Production method changes?  Bottle maturation?  In the American whiskey world the story is complicated by the fact that the brands are shuffled around among corporations like playing cards at a poker game (which may be an apt analogy) and end up being made by one distillery after another - sometimes with respect for things like recipe and mash bill and at other times not.  In this situation it's very valid to say "Wow, I really liked Eagle Rare (for example) when it was made at the Old Prentice Distillery in Lawrenceburg Kentucky, but I'm not such a fan of the new stuff made at Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort Kentucky.  Other than sharing a brand name there's very little actually in common between them.

These facts drive dusty hunters into terrible neighborhoods to seek out the worst forgotten liquor stores to find hidden gems in the dust.  But old neglected liquor stores have a lot more than Bourbon lying around.  There's also other stuff - like Scotch & Chartreuse.  Chartreuse?   Chartreuse, the effete, French, and undeniably feminine after dinner liqueur that makes an excellent glass rinse when making high end Manhattan cocktails?  Yet Bourbon and Chartreuse all became wrapped up together this last week for me.  The tale involves dusties, ambition, and exploration and ends up in the living room of a new friend:  a man with whiskey knowledge, enthusiasm, and the kind of welcoming friendliness and whisky camaraderie that earns the twitter hash tag #WhiskyFabric in my book.

It starts with the tasting for the Sunday October 13th Bonhams whisky sale.  I was lured by a rumor that Joe Hyman might be pouring a bottle of Prohibition era Monongahela rye whiskey from Ruffdale PA brand Dillinger that was distilled 1913 and bottled in 1923.  FYI: Sam Dillinger's story and an amazing travelogue blog post describing a visit to the site today is amazing reading on EllenJay.com:  http://www.ellenjaye.com/hist_mono4ryewhiskey.htm#samdillinger

The rumor turned out to be true and that remarkable whisky deserves its own post - here I need only say that it is remarkable, delicious, historic and very interesting rye whisky both from a collector's and a whisky loving drinker's perspective.  But amazingly - in the face of this very compelling sip, I found my attentions yanked way to an unexpected flavor that I had never tasted before and wouldn't have expected to love: yellow Chartreuse.  Among the amazing things Joe Hyman was having the pretty Bonhams' women pour that day was a 1940s bottle of Yellow Chartreuse.  As later auction results showed - this is a pretty precious bottle.  But I wasn't thinking about that at the time.  All I knew was that I was bewitched by the rich dynamic liqueur that brought big notes of honey, exotic herbs, and an elegant balance that wasn't cloyingly sweet, but came close - packed with a dense, sophisticated, and delicious complexity.  I couldn't help myself, I kept going back for more.  I mean more of the 1940s Chartreuse, rather than the 1913 rye.  OK, I went back for more of both of them - but I tasted as much of the Chartreuse.  And let me tell you there were quite a few other compelling whiskies on that table, too, to distract a gentleman for even looking at a yellow liqueur from France.

I came to taste this: Dillinger Mongahela rye

Fell in love with this: 1940s Yellow Chartreuse

I tried to forget her.  She wasn't "my type".  For one thing, she isn't barrel aged (except that modern VEP editions that are allowed to mature for 8 years in oak.  For another - it's an herbal liqueur for goodness sake!  But I couldn't get it out of my mind.  A few weeks later Mike Jasinski put up some lovely pics of some old dusty chartreuse that he had found hunting for dusty Bourbon.  I got interested and ended up creating a whole pinterest board to help date the dusties.  

http://www.pinterest.com/cooperedtot/chartreuse/

I ended up bracketing the ages of Mike's bottles between 1965 and the late 1970s.  We struck up a conversation and proposed a trade.  But I knew I really wanted to taste Chartreuse from this era and compare it to the current stuff before going ahead with this madcap idea.  I described the situation to whisky/food blogger Susanna Skiver Barton and she suggested I visit an East Village bar called "Pouring Ribbons"  

1970s green & yellow Chartreuse at Pouring Ribbons

Jourdan Gomez executes precise pours.

Pouring Ribbons turns out to be perfectly suited for this exploration.  They have the full line of current production Chartreuse and an extensive selection of dusties by the ounce and half ounce.  They serve the good stuff in pro-level liqueur glasses.  The cheaper stuff come in shot flutes.  I brought Perfect Dram glasses (1/4 size glencairn shaped glasses).  All the Chartreuse was delicious, but the 1970s stuff was on a vastly different level than the current stuff.  All the areas where the current stuff runs a little hot or comes close to strident on the herbal flavors become honeyed, rounded, relaxed, and somehow better delineated - with tremendous flavor amplitude between the warm and honeyed backdrop an the powerful herb and fruit flavors that rise in sharp relief:  limes, bay rum, tarragon, lavender, oregano, rosemary, and verbena.

The barrel aged VEP version.

There have been quite a few recent discussions in the whisky blogosphere about the question of how much better whisky (generally Scotch - and blended Scotch in particular) was 40 and more years ago.  The questions tend to focus on the debate whether the public or the blenders bear the primary responsibility and whether production method changes or bottle maturation are why the old stuff tastes better.  Two blog posts that exemplify this debate to me are

• Billy Abbott (aka @cowfish)'s interesting view that consumer tastes are allowing these changes  http://bbblog.org.uk/2013/10/who-decides-what-we-drink/
• Oliver Klimek's essay on whether bottle maturation happens:  http://www.dramming.com/2010/03/21/does-whisky-age-in-a-bottle/
• And his refinement follow up with the compelling Kirschwasser example:  http://www.dramming.com/2010/03/27/learning-from-kirschwasser-a-new-look-at-bottle-aging/
• Oliver Klimek's post about why whisky has become less complex:  http://www.dramming.com/2010/09/06/has-whisky-become-better-worse-or-just-different/

Well, the Carthusian monks who make Chartreuse take special pains to make a constant product.  While history forced the monks to make their product in Tarragona, Spain for a while, the main French Voiron production's herbal component has been the same for centuries and the monks take special pains to keep it constant.  This is the antithesis of the situation with whisky- where distilleries modernized tremendously and changed production methods during the 1960s-1980s period both in the Scotch and Bourbon worlds.  Barreling proofs were raised.  Mashing periods were cut.  Higher yielding grain varieties were used etc...   Enjoying a Scotch from the 1960s entails a degree of uncertainty about whether the extra magic is in the old ways, or just half a century of bottle maturation.  Some debate whether bottle maturation even exists.  Oliver Klimek gives the excellent example of Kirschwasser as a place where bottle maturation is employed and is readily detectable.  Charbay's Marko Karakasevic famously devotes a portion of maturation time in this hopped whiskies to maturation in stainless tanks.  Presumably he has his reasons.  Well, Chartreuse is an excellent case study in the relative merits of bottle maturation because of the constant production methodology.   It does, however, enjoy the benefit of the way sugar enhances maturation according to Angus of Whisky-Online.  So the conclusion that I inevitably reached based on the Chartreuse tasting is that bottle maturation is a very real and significant improver of a given spirit given multiple decades to work its magic.

As Mike Jasinski and I spoke about old Bourbon - he kept pulling bottles out of odd corners and lined them up on the entry hall chest until it was packed solid (this picture was early in the process - less than halfway).  The bottles ranged in era from the 1940s to the 1980s.  An epic group of dusties.

So I paid a visit to Mike Jasinski out at his home in Pennsylvania to make our swap and to have a little visit.  Now, I've written about the warm and supportive #WhiskyFabric.  But the very active Bourbon community involves a cadre of dedicated dusty hunters and some of them come off as very business-like.  That's not Mike.  Mike is a true whiskey lover with an obvious depth of knowledge, experience, and passion for Bourbon and rye.  Mike isn't a hoarder (although his bunker is absolutely unbelievable).  No, first and foremost Mike is a drinker and lover of the juice.  He immediately welcomed me with unreserved generosity and a convivial whisky geekiness that we share and through which we instantly bonded.  And then ensued one of the best American Whiskey tasting sessions I've ever enjoyed.  And frankly it was about as luscious a tasting overall as any whisky from any part of the world.

We started with a nip of Old Ren, a bonded bourbon from Rockford, Illinios, distilled in the Fall of 1936 and  bottled in the Spring of 1944.  It has a rich, sweet, overloaded nose full of dark toffee, over ripe squash, parrafin, old books, and baking spice like pumpkin pie.  The palate is unexpectedly dry and lean, with a huge hit of rye spice.  The finish returns to the over-ripe caramelized squash note - but now it has morphed into malted milk balls and it's persistent.  The musky slightly winey malt flavor stays and stays.  Hour later - over huge burritos, Mike said, shaking his head, all I can taste even now is that Old Ren.  It is a titanic finish.  Schizophrenic?  Strange?  Yes - totally unique and kind of incredible.  I've since written a full post on this bizarre and compellingly drinkable mystery:
http://www.cooperedtot.com/2013/11/old-ren-bonded-bourbon-antique-and.html

Then on to Old Fitgerald Bottled In Bond 1966-1972 from a ceramic decanter (The "Irish Luck" bit of silliness).  Richly amber colored and a rich pudding of classic Stitzel-Weller flavors: caramel toffee baked apple with cinnamon, baking spices, and honey, rich sandalwood oak.  As it opens in the glass there are more layers of oak perfume and a complex interplay between the sweet candy and fruit flavors on the opening and the influence of tannins in the turn and the finish.  The mouth feel is rich and thick.  The wood management is a clear contributor to what was going right at Stitzel Weller at this time.  A wonderful and delicious dram.

1966-1972 Cabin Still decanter.
Stitzel Weller at its best. 

One of the most provocative things the Mike has said on line recently is that Old Cabin Still is both the best and worst Bourbon he's ever tasted.  He attributes this to the fact that it was sourced from Stitzel Weller glut stocks and, alternately, Seagram's lower end stocks.  My impression of this brand is the yellow-label stuff from the early 1980s which my college buddies and I used to shoot.  It's not a good impression so I was very curious to taste the difference.  Mike lineup up drams of both.  The 1980s Seagram NAS stuff was terrible.  Insipid, thin mouth feel, harsh alcohol bite, and a flavor dominated by wet cardboard notes.  The 6 year old age dated 1966-1972 Ducks Unlimited decanter Old Cabin Still, however, was very much in the mode of the contemporary Old Fitzgerald decanter I had just tasted - but if anything incrementally more honeyed, with a richer mouth feel.  All the classic Stitzel-Weller wheated bourbon flavors were in play:  caramel, toffee, butter braised brown Betty, demerara sugar and rum.  Sandalwood perfume, and, on the finish, a clear note of light and sweet coffee and cream.  Too much?  Not a chance.  Brilliance.

National Distiller's Old Grand Dad 114
 from the early 1990s

Next up was a shift into high rye mash bill Bourbon with an astounding duo of classic Old Grand Dad dusties distilled at the old National Distillers Old Grand Dad Distillery DSP-KY-14 (which is used solely for bottling by Beam these days): an 8 year old bottled in bond 100 proof from the late 1980s and an early 1990s bottling of the 114.  I've heard great things about the old Old Grand Dads but hadn't ever tasted them.   Rich, honeyed, with a complex and rich palate that melds herbal floral rye with bourbon caramel sweetness and blessed by a rich mouth feel.  The 114 was superb but the Bottled In Bond actually edged it with a more vivid presentation of the flavors and a bit more rye spice kick.

Not content to rest there, Mike brought out the imitation Old Grand Dads.  Check out Barton's Colonel Lee's label side by side with OGD.  Notice a resemblence?

Old Grand Dad BIB 8 year old versus 114 versus Barton's homage: Colonel Lee

Colonel Lee, represented here by a half pint with a tax strip and a "79" date mark in the bottom of the bottle was astounding.  Clearly a high rye mash bill, this had the same rich sweetness (caramel, honey, leather and tobacco) and iterated fully delineated rye flavor profile but with a bit richer mouth feel; more honey; and more vanilla.  We discussed the irony that Colonel Lee was a cheap knock off with bottom shelf pricing and, yet, in the right era with the right bottle maturation it emerges as an incredibly delicious pour - very close to the dram of the night because of the shocking surprise.

Ezra Brooks 7 yo 1979 from Medley

Next Mike produced a 1979 (by bottle mark) sealed tax stampled Ezra Brooks 7 from Medley distillery as another example of a high rye mash bill bourbon intended to play in Old Grand Dad's sandbox.  On the nose the wood quality was clearly inferior to me: with some "kiln dried" notes that I associate with craft whiskey small barrels.  But as it opened the nose evolved into a musky musty place and the palate became astounding: with tremendous flavor amplitude that exploded in the mouth with the many of the same flavor notes:  delineated rye spice, rich bourbon sweetness - but overlayed by a darker aspect with more leather, old barn, bottom of the pot caramel, and char.

Wild Turkey 8 year old - circa early 1990s

The turkey molded into the octagonal jug.

No discussion of high rye mash bill bourbon can be complete without including Austin Nichols' Wild Turkey 101 - which we tasted and which then led to a discussion and tasting of ITS imitators:  Eagle Rare and Fighting Cock.  The pour of Wild Turkey 8 was from an octagonal jug handled 1.75 L bottle from the early 1990s with magnificent molded panels depicting the Turkey.  This was my first taste of 8 year old age statement standard OB Wild Turkey and it was a revelation.  Really really big.  Oak char, herbal rye sweetness, big musky bourbon with tons of toffee, corn, peach compote, and a big fragrant sandalwood oak finish.  Despite all the steep competition that came before, Wild Turkey 101 stands tall and absolutely earns its reputation and popularity.

The original 8 year old age statement
Fighting Cock.
Yes, it's all that.

Fighting Cock is one of those underrated Heaven Hill 6 year old bourbons that is seen more, it seems, in shooter bars than in whisky snob environs.  It currently rocks 103 proof.  But in its original incarnation it was an 8 year old 101 proof - just like the Wild Turkey it was clearly meant to imitate.  Here, in its original form as a 1990s dusty it shows all those delicious flavor of "whit if Heaven Hill did a high rye mash bill" - a bit lighter and sweeter palate than WT101 - with more citrus and a cleaner brighter rye spice and less musky musty notes and darker caramel aspects.  Mike actually prefers it.

Probably the most famous imitation of the Turkey is Eagle Rare - which exists in a bicameral existence in Buffalo Trace's line up as a very inexpensive 10 year old, sold at a sleepy 90 proof, with a reputation for sweetness, softness, and simplicity, and an ambitious 17 year old that is part of the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection.  But Eagle Rare has a long history - that begins with a Sam Bronfman marketing decision at Seagrams and master distiller Charlie Beam creating a WT101 killer in 1975 at Seagram's Old Prentice Distillery in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky.  As the sepia photograph neck tag makes clear, Old Prentice is what we now know as the Four Roses distillery.  Sazerac aquired the brand in 1989, thus the labels with New Orleans - and that's how it ended up in Buffalo Trace (which is part of Sazerac).

Original Seagrams Version of Eagle Rare:
 Old Prentice, Lawrenceburg KY.

...better known as Four Roses Distillery

Left to right: Eagle Rare made at Four Roses, Ancient Age (Buffalo Trace), and New Orleans

We were drinking the Lawrenceburg, KY bottling (late 70s through late 80s).  It had a large molded decanter top.  This is utterly magnificent Bourbon.  Dram of the night?  The mouth feel is epic: thick, mouth coating, and rich.  The nose and flavors are loaded with malt, cognac, molasses, burnt caramel, leather,  and a huge finish of iterated genius boxwood and sandalwood oak that brings a whole barrister's world of overstuffed brown leather chairs with black brass nails and huge dark brown polished oak surfaces into your olfactory system.   I have to stop writing for a moment.  I've become speechless...  So this big thick malt candy loaded flavor signature is giving me deja vu.  It's Old Ren!  Where the evening began.  This stuff tastes like Old Ren - but better.  Better balance and bigger mouth feel.  Old Ren has the bigger finish, though - and distances itself by being utterly weird.

Old Overholt 4 yo rye - made in Pennsylvania

My interest in rye dictated a taste of Pennsylavia Old Overholt 4.  Suffice it to say it's a whole different animal than the current Jim Beam Old Overholt.  This, too, needs to be its own post.  Old PA Old Overholt drinks much more like Rittenhouse 100 - which really managed to make a convincing replica of that old PA style of red rye.

Willett 25 yo single barrel rye 50% abv. v.s. Hirsch 25 yo rye 46%

How do you end a tasting like that?  How about a head to head between two legendary recent bottlings of hyper mature rye that are rumored to be juice of the same distillery?  Willett Family Estate Bottled Single Barrel Rye 25 year old Barrel 1767, 50% abv. versus Hirsch Selection Kentucky Straight Rye 25 46% abv.  These beauties are dark walnut in the glass.  Freshly poured, their palates seem quite distinct: with the Hirsch going to darkly mulled wine: grapey and loaded with cloves; spiked with St. Joseph's baby aspirin.  The Willet tending more towards a baked apple loaded with the same spiced as the mulled wine.  As they open up with extensive time in the glass, the noses converge.  These are both really big flavor signatures - but weird.  The rye is showing signs of noble rot with the good things that implies (like rancio, density, and character) but also some of the bad things:  weird, intense, loaded with oak, hard to drink.  While the Hirsch lost the baby aspirin and settled down into a big dark presentation dominated by dark purple fruits and cloves... (wait, that's not it...) CLOVES!!!.  The Willetts edged it by doing a strong essence of the hard red candy on a candy apple combined with cinnamon, baked apple loaded with allspice, cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon.  Titanic tastes with epic long finishes.  Both unique and fascinating examples of the vanishing glut era.

The finishing pair was apropos as well because it help highlight the differences between barrel and bottle maturation that run like a central thread through the conversation.  The object lesson of the Chartreuse was the undeniable fact of bottle maturation - and its way of relaxing the flavor elements and allowing them to balance better with each other, all while bringing in a sweeter and more vivid presentation of the flavor elements.  I kept getting that feeling with the many examples of young (4-8 year old) Bourbon we were tasting that had sat around in the glass for 20-50 years.  Barrel maturation is, of course, a vastly different animal: concentrating flavors, adding wood influence.  Tonight, was all about how long bottle matured younger whiskies can be amazing.

And I haven't tasted any of the 40-50 year old dusty Chartreuse bottles from Mr. Jasinski's collection yet...

Russell's Reserve 10 Small Batch Bourbon is soft yet satisfying

Last week I was musing on "small batch" bourbons and poking some fun at the undefined nature of the term and complaining about how some of the products didn't live up to their single barrel brethren. Jordan Devereaux suggested I try Russell's Reserve small batch bourbon. Like magic, a bottle of it arrived shortly afterwards in a bag from Danielle of Exposure - in a case of cosmic synchronicity.  The bag also bore news about the Russell's Reserve single barrel which is all over the blogosphere - and apparently already in stores in Kentucky according to journalist, photographer, author and whisky blogger Fred Minnik. First the tasting; then the analysis:

Russell's Reserve 10 Small Batch Bourbon 45%

Color: light amber with a coppery orange tint.

Nose: soft and inviting with floral citrus (orange, lemon, and lime), varnish and acetone, and a good dose of the rich musky loam aroma that is a common thread through the Wild Turkey lineage - perhaps a legacy of the yeast, warehouses or the very air and earth of that region of Kentucky. It's a nice bourbon nose, but not particularly distinctive or outstanding. It's not deficient in any way either.

The palate entry is sweet with corn sugars and pointed with a cinnamon red hots flavor note and palate heat. The cinnamon red hots wax into spicy oak with saw house dust and sandalwood hints. At the turn this oaky note shows it's bitter side and the finish is long and gentle with oak and char bitter melding with lingering cinnamon scented corn sweet. If sounds pretty good to you, you're on the same page with me. This is very nice bourbon. The sweet, musk, and bitter meld through the palate progression like a rich fierce beer. My criticism is the flavor density. This is soft and comfortable sipping. That's also a substantial strength. This could be an every day bourbon. It has enough richness and complexity to hold you, while being gentle enough and cheap enough to be a daily dram.


***  (almost four stars - I struggled with this one for a moment - but the struggle led me to the more conservative score).

Given that Russell's Reserve bourbon generally goes for around $30 this is a fine value.  In light of my previous small batch tasting I'd rank this ahead of Four Roses Small Batch.  Like Four Roses Small Batch, it's softer, less flavor dense, and less complex than the single barrel offering.  In this case the single barrel Wild Turkey I'm comparing it with is WT Kentucky Spirit 101.  Russell's Reserve Small Batch gets the nod for its red hots flavors - perhaps a sign of that 10 year ageing?  The elephant in the room here is Russell's Reserve Single Barrel with its barrel strength 110 proof.  If the RR Single Barrel stuff is the same mature flavor profile as the RR Small Batch, this could be really fine.  In the mean time, RR Small Batch is darned fine sipping bourbon with a laid back relaxed style but some of the nice flavors of the good stuff at a very attractive price.

Russell's Reserve hits the nerve... with verve.

Russell's Reserve Single Barrel Bourbon

Jimmy and Eddie Russel - the geniuses behind Wild Turkey

I'm a Wild Turkey fan - and I have a rather deep love for Russell's Reserve products - the upscale line introduced about a decade ago, perhaps as a response to Beam's Small Batch Collection. I think there's little debate that Beam's branding exercise was more of a success. But, as Jordan Devereaux, whiz kid whisky / cocktail science genius of the excellent and highly recommended Chemistry Of The Cocktail blog wrote in the comments section of my last post (a petulant diatribe against the loose meaning of the term "small batch):

Review of the 10 to come...

"Russell's Reserve is also a really good small batch bourbon. Definitely still has the distinctive WT yeastiness to it, but mellowed in comparison to the younger versions. And I think it's usually under $30, so it's even a decent value."
http://cocktailchem.blogspot.com/


And so it is. A full review of Russell's Reserve 10 will follow shortly (and a lovely bottle of it was just generously supplied by the lovely Danielle of Exposure). So, why is Russell's Reserve bourbon suddenly so present in the whiskey Zeitgeist?

It's because today is the day that the exciting new expression Russell's Reserve Single Barrel bourbon is out. This is exciting for a host of reasons:

• Cask Strength. As Chuck Cowdery - serious bourbon genius - explains:
  "For any Wild Turkey whiskey, 110° is just about barrel proof because they have an unusually low barrel entry proof."
  http://chuckcowdery.blogspot.com/2013/02/new-russells-reserve-single-barrel-is.html
  
  If you read Sku's Recent Eats last Tuesday you just read a post about how rare high proof bourbons are. Beam has had a premium one since Booker's. Wild Turkey's is Rare Breed. A nice sip, but not really a high end bourbon. (Whisky geeks, please remember that Booker's is "small batch and this new Russell's is "Single Barrel"). So this is a fairly major addition to our pantheon of barrel strength bourbon.
  
• Not chill filtered - for uncut barrel goodness
• #4 Char barrels for that lovely richness of deeply charred oak.

Now all that sounds pretty good to me. Maybe enough to forget about the fact that there's no age statement on the bottle. Chuck and others have complained that the more mainstream Russell's Reserve 45% abv. sports a nice mature 10 year age statement for $35 - so it seems disappointing to them that the more expensive ($50) Single Barrel version lacks an age statement. I would point out that Four Roses Single Barrel also lacks an age statement and Jim Rutledge has eloquent reasons for why this is better. These have to do with individual barrel selection for flavor rather than a blanket subjugation of flavor by a dogmatic age statement label. Under the circumstances I'm in favor of giving Jimmy & Eddie Russell the benefit of the doubt on this one. Lord knows they have made plenty of good decisions before.

The proof will come in the tasting in any case. Keep your eyes peeled for this one. This might be a lovely addition to the canon.

(Note - this post has got a lot of action in the Comments - with a lot of good material coming out there.  Be sure to click the comments link and check them out).

Boozeandinfused blog's banana infused Bourbon Old Fashioned.

A few months back G-LO from It's Just The Booze Dancing... blog (http://boozedancing.wordpress.com/) told me about this incredible blog where these nice ladies were geniuses at infusing whiskey (and other spirits) with incredible flavors - which was incredibly easy and fun. Their blog is called http://boozedandinfused.com

Now G-LO had infused some banana bourbon and that sounded like a good idea to me too. He and I and Alicia, the author of the recipe on boozeandinfused discussed how to do it and then, what you'd do with it. Alicia promised a cocktail recipe. G-LO said he was mainly drinking his straight - but ideas for some very sweet cocktails himself. In the end, however, no formal cocktail recipes came out of it. At first, after I made the bourbon, I had a sip or two - but it didn't blow my socks off by itself. Eventually I came up with the cocktail that follows. I'm not a cocktail guy - so I'll tell you right now, this is a simple whiskey Old Fashioned. Just, it is so delicious that it will make you cry. I had the idea of posting about it after seeing the following cartoon memed all over the place lately:

I ended up replying to a google+ thread that I couldn't abide by the message of this cartoon because I needed to make Manhattans and Old Fashioneds sometimes. Then I gave this recipe and I thought "I should really make this official". I've been meaning to write it down for ages.

Boozeandinfused blog's banana infused bourbon Old Fashioned

It only has 4 ingredients:

1. The banana bourbon you'll make by following the instructions here: http://boozedandinfused.com/2012/06/05/banana-bourbon/
2. Dr. Adam Elmegirab's Aphrodite Bitters This is very important. These are amazing, complex, significantly cacao flavored bitters. See http://bokersbitters.co.uk/aphrodite_ver2.html
3. Turbinado Sugar (i.e. raw cane sugar). I used this.
4. Ice

Preparation Steps

i) About a week or two before you want to have your drink cut up a few ripe bananas into a mason jar. Well cover them with whatever bourbon you choose. I used a 375ml flask of Wild Turkey 101. Allow to infuse for days or weeks. Periodically shake it to agitate.

ii) When done infusing (i.e. when it smells really really good to you) pour the whisky through some doubled up cheesecloth to strain out the solids and then decant back into the original bottle.

iii) take 1 tsp. Turbinado sugar (raw cane sugar - which is brown - but isn't "brown sugar"). I got mine at Trader Joe's. Dissolve in a few tsps of boiling water.

iv) Add a couple of ounces of your home made banana bourbon.

v) Add a few dashes of Dr. Adam Elmegirab's Aphrodite Bitters

vi) Fill with ice cubes, stir well, and enjoy.

This was so buttery rich and delicious I can't even begin to tell you. The sweetness and richness of the cane melds with the banana and bourbon like pecan pie. The cacao flavors of the Aphrodite bitters enriches and reinforces the sweet and rich and adds a needed edge that keeps it from being too sweet or cloying. It's not a chocolate-banana combo flavor like you might be thinking - although both those flavors are present (although in a bit drier form than you'd think). The Aphrodite bitters are subtle and complex - less "chocolate" than cacao nibs and herbs. Seriously. You'll thank me for this later.