Tastes

Double pour from the shoulders. Having already tried this startups standard bourbon I figured I'd give the rye a chance maybe it can make up for what the bourbon was lacking. The 70-20-10 bill gives this rye a good punch of sugars up front, this is one of my favorite bills and just enough warm sugars balance the rye spiciness to make this seem like it might be a bold and full ride. Unfortunately young malt and corn rough edges are readily apparent, in a well aged package everything here would be a good if not amazing rye, but well aged this is not. The exuberance of rushing young product to market has killed many a startup, and the mortuary may need to make space. All and all it isn't a bad drink but at the same price as a 10 year Whistle Pig, unless you're just looking to add unique looking bottles to your cabinet, this is a hard pass. With an MSRP well into the upper 70's, this is a good cheap rye that unfortunately isn't cheap. Cheers!

Nose: Incredible Front: Incredible Finish: Incredible Too verbose? Ok but the point stands, Dave Pickerell could have just as easily called this WhistlePig Triple Play because of the way it blends the 3 wine casks perfectly. The nose is an outstanding confectionery of iced raisin rum cake with red plums and cherries jubilee, and just the right hint of dill and baking spices to perfect the picture. This is truly Christmas in a bottle(fitting since it was a Christmas present) note to @PBMichiganWolverine I guess I do have some small amount of will power after all. That blend forms just the right amount of bite, the 86 proof being a wise decision, no ethyl tinge to interrupt the goodness, the well aged juice ending in a sweet chord of tones also fitting for the Ana Vidovic Bach concerto on Spanish guitar that I happen to be listening to during this tasting. As Jason noted on the front page, you don't want to rush this, it's just too good. I'm going to leave off the half point of adjustment I normally would give/take for the price, it's Whistle Pig, it's pricey, we all know that, just move on and accept. The Madeira certainly stands out in the finish not that the Saurternes and even the Port aren't noticeable. If you are at all a fan of the Basils Dark rye or the rum finished Angels, you will certainly find something about this to appreciate. I was hoping I wouldn't have to draw on the WP 10 year for comparison and I don't, this simply blows it out of the water. Of course some don't like the sweet red spiciness of wine cask finishes, and that's fine, you don't want this, however for the wine and rye connoisseurs, this should be smack dab in your wheelhouse. I would add if you're going to spring for the 12 year pig, just try and get the triple cask, you won't regret it. Old World Cask indeed. Cheers!

Rather than the very standard 12, I'm using the Glenlivet 15(French Oak finish) as my baseline comparison for this, it seems fair and being somewhat of a "scotch cripple" I need a decent reference point of what I'm looking at. Right away the nose of the 14 is impressive, sweet red grapes mixed with a bit o honey mead and faint sea salt, my bourbon bone is already hooked. This is what the good stuff should smell like, clearly cognac finishing is a step in the right direction. The front kicks in with some warm pepper and cinnamon along with tamer than expected sweet notes. I'm not going to lie, I was really hoping for a belt of bourbon sugars but this is a nicely balanced warm, sweet and spicy scotch, instead. It's a bit lacking in complexity, not much tartness or range in sugars, things we might have expected the cognac to bring forth are not really overwhelming. If fades out gently with nothing notable on the back side, the spice warmness lingering. In comparison the 15 year French Oak just seems bland, no red grape sweetness and dryer with just some small tanins from the oak. If you offered me either bottle it would be hands down, no choice for the 14. The french oak offers next to no complexity by comparison to what the cognac brings. The french oak 15 does have a nice nose offering some tart fruit sweetness, but those nose notes become phantoms when the liquid hits the tongue. This bottle would seemingly check in somewhere around 10 dollars over the standard 12 year, at which point it becomes a modest but welcome improvement. Can recommend. Cheers!

Unfortunately no age date on this, but a breakdown of 75 corn, 21 rye and 4 barley. Mild but pleasant nose with some sweetness and not much ethyl for 109 proof. I'd guess there is at least some similarity to the 15 year but no guarantees. It's sweet cinnamon forward, tart dusty oaks mid and corn sugars on the finish. Pretty good stuff even if it's no 15 year, the really interesting thing about this is the dust wood note is somewhere between a Beam peanut and a Barton barndoor it may even be a bit of both. The thing missing is banana esters which leads me more toward Beam than Barton. As it happens I have an open bottle of 1792 Single Barrel sitting here and yes, rather than banana, peanut and corn notes are the relevent sugar with only a hint of vanilla. The rye notes are well heeled and I'd have to say there's more than just 4 year juice here. This is more like bread cinnamon than christmas candy cinnamon, Lack of impurities on the finish tell me this is a really good bottle I just don't know about the pricing. Below 70 to 80 I would say this is worth pulling the trigger on, after all you can get a Sib 1792 for well under that or an Eagle Rare for about the same. Cathead rustled up some good juice from somewhere. Certainly a collectors choice. Cheers!

Swing and a miss, oh wait that's baseball not hockey. Everybody and their dog Rolf, is wanting to be in the liquor business these days and who can blame them. From Clooney to Jordan to the Rock, put your name on a bottle and make a fortune, it's all the rage. Sadly (or not) it just isn't that easy to crank up and crank out great bourbon. Not that Balfour doesn't have a good Master Distiller that knows what they're doing, I'm sure they do, but slapping staves in a barrel whipping up something great isn't as simple as it sounds. If it was Rolf's bourbon would be rockin at the nearest bar. This seems like a good base 2 to 3 maybe even 4 year old bourbon, not a bad one, it's just that adding "finish crafting" isn't the substitute for time that these neophytes would want you to believe. So how is it? The nose offers up some nice sweet vanilla and caramel base sugars and yes some noticable wood making for that after shave old english leather note. Not a bad nose not that you would ever mistake it for say Woodford Double Oak. The refinement just isn't there. That's the problem, this is priced premium and you could get a Makers 46 for half the moola and it's going to be as well crafted (and better in my view). Oh yea, the taste, it's front standard bourbon confectionary notes, strait into a middle of some acrid wood bitters, pecan nut, sure why not, or walnut or pick your bitter wood nut nib. Tailing off it's not really bad just not distinct in a way that really makes me want more. Maybe some higher proof and another 2ish years and it would stand up to the already much better priced 1792 Single Barrel. I'm sure it will sell well at bars where a fancy looking bottle is as important as the product contained within, if that's you, cheers! That's just not me.

Striking out on my search for Master's Keep, I decided to pick up one of the final Turkey offerings I have left to try. Turkey Rye, how good(or bad) is it? Ding Ding.. that bell ringing was the answer to me wondering if this would remind of the Russell's 6 year I put away not that long ago, and yes it certainly does! On the nose we get fresh cut lemon with some saw grass greeness, dill and mint. Yes along with the ethanol that does add up to a bit of the "furniture polish" smell that offends some. This one drinks like it smells, front is rye spice and lemon pepper, it leads straight into the hard hitting ethyl and dry grassy middle finish, while maybe a bit on the young side it really doesn't act up all that much, a bit of gritty rye bread sweetness unveils through the middle and more of a fade to black finish than anything else follows. While it's nothing impressive it's also not all that bad, coming in at the bottom of the straight rye price points, it compares easily in cost to the considerably sweeter, JD and Crown ryes. Just hints of the bubble gum sugars and honey, this is a nice compromise between a 95/5 and the sweet high corn ryes. I'd imagine some would prefer this as a cocktail base rather than straight drinker considering it's lack of refinement. Still Turkey Rye has some of the character of some of the far pricier ryes, that folks pay through the nose for, proving that even as one of Wild Turkey's lesser products they continue to be one of the more capable distilleries going. Cheers!

I was happy to find this in a local store, after all it's Heaven Hill BiB 7 years, how can it not be good? The nose loads up nicely with some heavy dark currant or grape jam, a little higher up you get some vanilla sweetness, also a bit of nut wood and barrel tannin. Hoping the chew will follow the smell. The jam sugars are forward, followed by immediate nut woods, (pecan shell) the vanilla is subdued but present. The harshness on the finish is a bit of a shock, it really doesn't seem like a 7 year finish. That tannin in the nose was real, and it follows the crowd around. The barrel toastyness that was hoped for(something in the Old Fitzgerald range) is really lite or missing alltogether, this is coming from an open bottle below the neck pour. Not really what I was expecting or hoping for, it's not altogether bad, just a little disappointing considering what it might have been. Another bottle left over from 2020 that might have opened up and developed into something special but it was not to be. Cheers!

3.0... 3.0??? I know, I know, "but Beppe, you said Col Taylor SiB was one of the best ever, you even pushed it as your choice for Bourbon of the Year, how can you be so hard on the small batch? What gives?" That's just it, the SiB from 2019 really was one of the all time outstanding Col Taylors, a perfected display of the art form brought out in bursting sugars and full bodied barrel notes, from runny legs on glass to nose to final finish. In fact that's really the problem for Small Batch, it can't even hold a candle to big brother SiB, who shows it up in an almost embarrassing fashion. Both are 100 proof, both minimum 4 years BiBs, and yet Small Batch is no where near the mark that is set by the much much better SiB. The glaring difference starts at the nose where Small Batch doesn't bring out that rich deep maple syrup, but is just light in the sweet caramel notes, from then on it's much thinner at the front and even a little harsh in the finish, a factor that never reared it's head in the SiB. Really you can almost blame the SiB for showing up the issues with Small Batch, coming in the same Bottle in Bond form factor and yet not even comparable. Yet Col Taylor Small Batch is starting to see the higher price points set forth in many other Saz/BT product. At 30ish this would be a pretty acceptable bourbon, but at more than twice that, it's not even a decision. HARD PASS. Time for the folks at Sazerac and their BT fanbois to be taken down a peg. This Col Taylor just isn't that good. Cheers!

Old Fine, Prohibition, Birthday the Forester label is known for some headline making bourbons, and while the standard 86 proof and BiB are both drinkable enough, among those pricey if available bottles including the overpriced IMO, Statesman, somewhere nestled in the middle you find 1870. This bottle is going for around 40 in my area putting it just in range of some of the other starter small batches. What we have is a very decent bourbon, comparable to the standard small batch a lot of labels offer up, 1870 offers a great nose of orchard fruits, light sugars and just a hint of some rich red rum sweetness and spice. That light sugar starts with a bit of vanilla, a bit on the dry side it is after all only 90 proof, some middling starchiness gives way to the rye baking spice and mint. Just a hint of those red fruit sugars give notice and it all fades away nicely without any harsh or bitter finishings. It really is a good healthy sample of bourbon with out frills but also nearly free of any faults. It's an easy drinker. Adding to the versatility, this is a bourbon you can drink neat or offer in a Old Fashioned without flinching. If this really is the "original batch" bourbon out of Old Forester, you can easily see why they succeeded. If it came in, say in the 30ish range it could be in the "deal" category, but at least in my area Old Forester generally stays with the pricier brands. Cheers!

Being a fan (or not) of Blue Label may lead one to wonder, "hey, is the 18 year very close to Blue?". At least those are the kind of meandering musings that percolate around in my somewhat rattly skull these days. Maybe we have the JW version of "poor mans pappy" for Blue Label masquerading with a 18year goldish label on it? Having sampled at least one version of each, Blair Athol, Cardhu and Glen Elgin I'm already intrigued with some fairly high expectations. Fresh off a Blue Label review this might be kismet like timing to take on the 18 year. Nose: sweet and fruity, a honey or meade sweet bread and fruits maybe more like peach are well forward. This really seems sweeter than Blue Label which carries much the same nose spectrum. Now for the real test. Wow, this is something, that peach syrup sugar is well accentuated by a hardy bitter nut center. That bitter carries through the finish and this most definitely ends the direct comparison to Blue Label, while it's not a terribly harsh bitter finish, more of a flail to the other side, it really shows how a blend variation can produce drastically differing results. The Blue Label continues that bread and honey circus right out the gate and will not be denied its namesake winning ribbon color "Blue". 18 year has more of a "hey IN YOUR FACE" coarse attitude as it shuffles off to the alley. Had the comparison ridden only on the nose the 18 looked like a potential winner but the Blue Label ends the ride in a far more refined finish. 18 year is like roaring into the driveway with a hopped up 400 V8 rattling under the hood of a Mustang Cobra while Blue Label is like coasting in, lights off in a convertible Caddie with under inflated tires and the top down on a July night. Both great in their own way but just not the same thing at all. Conclusion: Still a Blue Label fanboi all the way, but respect for 18 Year where it is due. Not a bad effort at all Johnnie. Cheers!