Tastes

It’s been a while since I’ve reviewed anything here. There are several reasons for that. 1. I’ve become a little disenchanted with the site as an app. It started when, despite there being a filter to remove “featured content,” so that I could only see people I follow, the filter doesn’t work. This leads to 2. Someone I follow (and I will point out I respect the opinions of those of you I follow here, even when I have a different take on the same whiskies) posts a review, and I don’t see it for a few weeks, usually not until someone else I follow likes the original post that I didn’t see and I go, oh, that guy—honestly we could do with more women here, but that’s the way this site apparently leads—posted a review of Ardbeg 10! I didn’t see it! and then, I open the app to check my feed and 3. There are surveys popping up at the bottom of the screen that you can close but that aren’t all that easy to close, trying to gather data from me on how many bottles I have and how important whisky is in my life. I think if I’m on a whisky review app, you can pretty much assume, whiskey is a prime hobby, but maybe some people are just here for shits and giggles? I mean, crying out for halcyon days, this app was better before the upgrade! But that’s the modern world, ain’t it? Adobe Acrobat works all right, there are a few bugs but I get along and then they release a new version that addresses none of the bugs and makes it less user friendly, all so that they can sell it to us again. So with that litany of complaints out of the way, the actual reason I haven’t reviewed anything in a while is that one August 19th, I had a friend over for drinks. We finished off five bottles of wine between us, stayed up until 3 a.m., and though I was all right the next day—a little wobbly, but not too hungover—I realized there were exactly three weeks between that night and opening day for the NFL, and I figured my liver could use a 3-week recovery period, so I went dry. It wasn’t hard, but it wasn’t easy either. By which I mean some days I was coasting, but my wife was still drinking and she liked it when I mixed her cocktails, so I would, and it was kind of like the drinker’s version of watching porn instead of actually having sex. I was sticking to it, if only to once again prove to myself that I can abstain, but yeah, there were certain moments when I was like, is there really a point to being dry? Truth is, there is. But some nights, oh, some nights. But I’m back! Sunday I had my brother-in-law over to watch my Eagles gather their first (ugly) win over the Patriots and I organized a tasting that went: Method & Madness Single Pot Still, Glenmorangie La Santa 12, Sagamore Spirit Ale Finished Rye, Ardbeg Corryvreckan, and Laphraoig 10. It was a good night with the only missing element being my dad. He was stuck at home recovering from covid with my mom. The good news in that was they had gotten boosters 3 weeks before they caught it, so while it wasn’t a party, they weren’t in any danger (and my mom had cancer two years ago so it is a big deal for her). Anyway, I’m not reviewing any of that stuff here, though I will be reviewing it in the future. What I am reviewing is a bottle that was almost gone before my 3-week dry spell: Five Trail Blended American whisky from Coors! Now, I dislike when people say they don’t factor cost into their assessment of a whisky because how much it costs matters to most people, but this bottle I actually received from a friend who works for Coors. They had just gotten into the whisky game (apparently beer is down, whisky is up) and he wanted to know what I thought. So while I can judge this without thinking of the monetary investment, I’m going to talk money anyway. The whisky itself is nice. As specs go, it’s 6 year old Colorado single malt, 4 year old Kentucky four grain bourbon, 4 year old Indiana wheated bourbon, and 12 year old Kentucky bourbon, so all in all not a bad blend. The nose is waxy and sweet with vanilla and sweet corn prominent and maybe a little honey and caramel underpinning it. The palate remains sweet with moderate oak creeping in on the caramel and vanilla and the finish is moderate in length adding a bit of pepper spice on the end. If this bottle were $35, I think it would be in the mixing rotation and could be enjoyed neat on occasion. But this is $55 and probably not worth it at that. When I was talking to my friend who works for Coors, I asked him the question about target audience. I mean, if you’re knowledgeable about whisky, you’re aware that for the same price or even lower, you can find Maker’s Mark Cask Strength or 46, several bourbons from Old Forester’s whisky row series including the 1920, and if you’re looking at small batch you can get everything from Larceny to Elijah Craig to Jefferson’s to 1792 for much lower. So why am I going to buy this? What makes it stand out? What makes it unique? Are you simply banking on people who usually buy Coors seeing that Coors now makes whisky and spending that $55 out of brand loyalty? My friend doesn’t work in the whisky division, so he didn’t have answers to any of this, but he saw my point. And I hope Coors figures it out because as a starting point, the flavor profile isn’t bad, it’s just not consistent with the price tag. So I guess I’m kind of looking a gift horse in the mouth here and saying that even though I didn’t have to pay for it, and appreciate getting it, I would never actually buy this. Recently Coors bought Blue Run and my friend send me a bottle of their high rye bourbon so I’ll drop some thoughts on that as soon as I have a call to give him my thoughts first. After all, it’s another gift and in this case, one that at SRP runs $100, which is super generous, and I’m hoping it’s really good. In the end, the Five Trail is decent, but I'm giving it that same score I gave Old Tub Bottled-in-Bond, which goes for $17.99 around me when it's on sale. Truth be told, I think I prefer the Old Tub too. Give it another go, Coors. You're almost there. Either lower the price or come up with something with a more impressive or unique flavor profile.

I’m biased. I’ve loved everything I’ve had from Sagamore after first tasting their Tequila-Finished Rye. Since then, admittedly, I’ve only had the Cask Strength. But they were both top-tier, top notch drams, and based on these experiences, I’ve purchased the 8-Year, Double Oak, and Rum-Finished, even though I haven’t tasted those yet. Oh, and I asked my buddy in Chicago to pick me up a bottle of the Ale-Finished. So that should get to me at some point. Thing is, they don’t sell a lot of Sagamore around me. I did get the Tequila-Finished Rye and the Cask Strength at a local store, but I had to go to Ocean City Jersey for the 8-Year, and the other two plus this Cognac-Finished Rye, I picked up the day before Mother’s Day. My family had gone to visit an estate called Winterthur just next to the Delaware state line where there was a Total Wine, and when we finished our trip (plus a drop in on family friends), I said to my wife, hey could I pop into the Total Wine? I was actually looking for Lagavulin 16, since on the site it says it’s in the $90 range whereas here it’s $120. But they were out of stock, and with the kids and wife out in the car, I was pressed for time, so my eyes scanned the shelves for shit I can’t find in my neck of the woods and landed on Sagamore. They had more than just the Double Oak, Rum-Finished, and Cognac-Finished, but I was also operating on a limited whisky budget. So, I nabbed the ones I’d read good things about, forgoing the Cask Strength (even though I’d have loved to buy it again) and the Port Finished because it was $90 which seemed steep comparably, and this Cognac-Finished is the first of those that I’ve opened, and now it’s almost gone. In fact, I have maybe a pour or two. Some bottles we review right away, and some we wait because we simply can’t find the words. Then again, this bottle is different than the one listed here. Apparently, although I thought I was picking up the regular Cognac-Finished Rye, what this is turns out to be a special bottling for the Delaware Total Wine that’s 115 proof instead of 90-something like the standard. So I was in luck, and I didn’t even realize it (sometimes you reach for the Dickel 8-Year and get home and realize you’ve bought Dickel Recipe 8, and sometimes you try for the standard Cognac-Finish and get home with a cask strength bottle of it without realizing). Now I could put in a request for a different listing of this version of the Cognac product and have one review with one rating or I can just drop it here with this disclaimer. If you’ve had it, and wondered what it would taste like high-proof, it’s liquid gold. I gave it to my brother-in-law who thought it was a bourbon because of its sweetness if that give you any indication, but the cognac and rye blend so well that you get both golden raisins and on the nose and rye spice. On the palate it’s both sweet with the raisins and a bit of plum as well as dry and a bit oaky, but not overly oaked and the finished is rich with white pepper and cinnamon. Reading the expert review, and acknowledging the spirit might be different at 115 proof, I also taste the licorice he’s noting, but not a whole lot else from the write-up vibes with me except maybe the wine-soaked fruits. But that the plum and raisins and alcohol coming through. Honestly, I can’t wait to try the others, particularly, well, all of them. I love what Sagamore does and my only wish at this point that we could get more of the bottles in Pennsylvania. I made a joke on their Instagram that maybe it was a blockade by Dad’s Hat that prevented us from stocking them with Dad’s Hat Distiller in Bristol and Sagamore in Baltimore (you know, the great Rye Wars?), but I don’t think they were too receptive to that. Maybe because the conflict isn’t open but more of a cold war. In any case, Baltimore isn’t far, and perhaps someday a visit to the distillery to stock up may be in order. Sounds like a good birthday trip. Maybe that’s what I’ll do this year. Hotel Room, Distillery Tour, Stock up on Sagamore! Sounds like a plan.

This is one I've had before in the wide release, 9 year 120 proof. The store picks I've always flirted with but in the end went with rye instead of bourbon. They went from $50 to $60 to $70 in three years. This is great whisky, but far too much of an increase. I love Knob Creek, but when the 12 went from $60 to $72 in my neck of the woods, that eliminated Knob 12 as an option, especially when ECBP is $75 or LCBP is $65. Both better. So, I saw that the Circle Liquor Single Barrel Knob was $49 and went with it. This is a caramel bomb. Dulce de leche through and through on the nose and palate. Vanilla, too. And then the finish is a little tobacco leaf. A little oak. That's it. Not amazingly complex, but the intensity of flavor make purchasing this worth it. It's the best single barrel store pick I've had. End of story. Shit, that's my shortest review ever. Followers know I'm long-winded. I've twice had douchbags give me the too long didn't read response. But know what, fuck you. This is a review site for you. Whisky diary for me. This is my space. A whisky book. And I'm keeping to that.

This is one of two bottles my wife brought back from Nashville when she worked a GSK conference there two months ago. I was at home taking care of the kids so the bottles were a gift because my wife is awesome. The other bottle was Dickel Bottled-in-Bond (Fall 2008; 13 Year), which was amazing. So amazing, in fact, that together we finished it in about a month, and when I say together, I’m talking a 75/25 split me to her. Okay, maybe it was 80/20. Um, all right, I’ll cop to it, it was more likely 90/10. Anyway, I love the Dickel BiB, and spotted a bottle in the Circle Liquors in Sommers Point, Jersey and bought it a second time. And now that I’m no longer in Sommers Point, I’m regretting I didn’t clear the shelf. We’re going back for my wife’s birthday in August, and I might do just that (the restaurant she wants to go to is right next to Circle Liquors). As for Chattanooga, it’s what I ask for whenever my wife is in the South or Midwest. I don’t know if the brand has reached New England anywhere, but I don’t see it around me. And I don’t travel much, which means I don’t get to the South or the Midwest. My wife, on the other hand, had to go down to Georgia last year to help her aunt with some things, and while she was there, she picked up the Chattanooga Founder’s 10th Anniversary and the Chattanooga Islay-finished (the Islay was my request, the Founder’s was the clerk saying, hey, I have something good in the back your husband might like). The Islay finished Chattanooga is awesome, so when I saw this was the new finished release, this was what I wanted (should also note that because of my love of Islay, she brought back 2 bottles, the second of which I’m saving for a special occasion). I gave the Chattanooga Islay a 4.5. Some of you whom I follow here have had it, and it seems you like it as well. It’s amazingly evolved from what went into it. It tastes neither like a bourbon (or “other” whiskey, as it’s defined here, I suppose the mash bill doesn’t quite qualify it as a bourbon, though it’s described as “made from a combination of unique bourbon mash bills, all containing over 25% specialty malt” whatever that means) nor an Islay scotch but it becomes its own beast in that bottle and it’s a beast I really enjoyed. This one differs from that in that it’s “made from a blend of 5 single malt mash bills, each one containing a range of toasted, roasted, and caramel malted barley. The whiskey is aged for over four years including the 18 months in the Silver Oak Cabernet Sauvignon casks.” And let me tell you, this is wildly different from that Islay-finished dram, but just as good. And I’m talking neck-pour staggeringly good. Now, of course, there’s a .75 star review rating below, and with only 6 ratings so far and mine being a 7th, I’m going to grade on the curve here to try to rectify that. My real rating is 4.25 (I gave the Islay-finished a 4.5, and that edges this out but only because of my predilections). My actual rating in the end will be the same 4.5, and over time, it might show itself to deserve that. Honestly, the folks at Chattanooga know what they’re doing, and I only wish we could get more of their product where I am so I could buy it all the time. This is the wine-iest whisky I’ve ever tasted. The nose is all berries, mostly strawberry and raspberry. On the palate it almost becomes a wine if not for the slightest undercurrent of oak and vanilla that remind you that this is an American-made whisky which for all its single malt credentials still reminds you of that. It’s creamy too, and almost reminds me of Green Spot’s Chateau Montelena in that there’s a sort of jammie fruitiness that makes you feel like the fruits aren’t fresh so much as concentrated and caramelized. The fact that this only has 6 reviews here suggests its either not too widely available or people aren’t rushing out to buy this. Maybe you’re on the fence because it has at 3.42 as I write, but trust me, for $60, this is well worth it, and I think I’m about to get up and pour myself another dram. My only regret is that I didn’t ask my wife to bring back two bottles of this one the way I did for the Chattanooga Islay-finished whisky. I might have, but she wasn’t sure how much room there was in her luggage that trip. Honestly, there’s a part of me that wants to rent an RV and head down to Tennessee and Kentucky and load up. I’m starting to edge to that point where I’m wondering if I’m stockpiling too much and if I should just stop buying considering what I’ve stored should keep me going through an apocalypse and then I taste something like this and think, no, I can’t stop now. There are too many unique expressions out there. I have to keep roaming. Can’t stop, won’t stop. Bad boy for life. As long as it’s this good, let’s keep the whisky flowing.

I picked up a bottle of this on February 29, 2020, a week before I started working from home because of the pandemic, owing to a flash sale where this was $20 off. Given this goes for $54.99, that was quite a deal and really the only way I was ever going to buy an untested local product, and tasting it reminded me of my first time tasting red wine. You see, I didn’t experiment with booze as a teen. While my friends were doing that thing of getting older friends to buy us beer, I was the teetotaler. It wasn’t until I went to Rome on a study abroad program in college that I tried red wine. First night out, my new roommates and this girl we met on the program wandered around looking for a nice little place to eat, and when we found one, they ordered a bottle of the house red. I didn’t want to seem sheltered or uninitiated so when they poured the glasses all around, I decided to partake. “It’s made out of grapes,” I thought, “will probably taste like grape juice. What’s the worst that can happen?” And I took a sip and winced, doing my best not to spit it back in the glass. Definitely didn’t taste like grape juice. It sort of reminded me of that scene in the 90s high school comedy Can’t Hardly Wait where the nerd infiltrates the party, drinks his first beer, and yells out to all the party-goers, “Nobody drink the beer! The beer has gone bad!” With this, Dad’s Hat Pennsylvania Straight Rye Whisky, I had a similar moment where, although I’d been drinking whisky for 17 years by the time I cracked this, it tasted like no rye I’d ever tasted before. By then, of course, I was always willing to expect the unexpected and ride with it. I’d had Sazerac and Overholt and Rittenhouse and Jim Beam Rye, but this tastes nothing like any of those. And unlike those, the sweetness is not the omnipresent note, but rather, what comes forth on the nose out of the glass is….um, rye. Rye spice, dill, yeasty bready aromas, perhaps a little spicy mustard. Honestly, the aroma is like you’ve gone to a good deli and asked them to make you a sandwich on their best rye bread, only, you know, hold everything except for the mustard. There are underlying scents of vanilla and caramel which add some complexity to the nose, but they tend to emerge more if you let the glass sit for a while. If you dive right in, and you’re not prepared for it, and you’re not a rye guy/gal, you’re probably going to complain that no one should drink the whisky, the whisky has gone bad, and given that the reviews here seem a little divided on the quality you’re getting, I’m guess that we have quite a few who gave this a rating who either didn’t know what they were getting into, or didn’t let the glass sit long enough (though I think most of us would argue this is the case with a lot of ratings on this site). There’s also a slight black licorice/early gray note on the nose as well. As for the palate, again, the rye spice is prominent. You get cardamom as well as caramel and that yeasty bready note from the nose transforms into a luscious creaminess here with a spicy red bell pepper flavor ushering the palate out on the finish. I just bought my second bottle of this last week, over three years after the first time I had it. I’d say that at $54.99 a bottle, it’s a little steep, even though I like it, and the reason I say that is I’ve had the cask strength and that goes for $69.99, so generally speaking I’m going to invest the extra in that simply because I enjoy it more (in fact, I have a bottle in my cabinet for future indulgence). But this was on sale again for $7 off, so I figured I’d dip in just as a point of comparison. Honestly, if this went in the low forties instead of the mid-fifties, I’d buy it a little more often, especially given how unique a rye it is, but it just edges itself out of range by degrees. To my mind, this is an acquired taste, sort of strikes me as an American version of Islay where those in the know will get it and those who want their whiskies basic will give it two stars with a one-word review, “eww!” Well, more power to you. But Dad’s Hat is a brand I keep my eye on, and I’d like to try their bottled-in-bond sometime soon. Again, however, the problem is that the bonded is $65 while the cask strength is $70. Now, if you’re from Dad’s Hat and you’re reading this, I don’t mean that to say you should raise the price of your cask strength. That bottle is priced perfectly. But if you could just drop the price on the straight rye and the BiB, I’d be buying your stuff a lot more regularly. Think about it.

This is the type of accident you have when you’re in a rush. Usually, when I come to Jersey on vacation, one of the things I like to do, aside from sitting on the beach and watching my children play, aside from hanging out at the beach house devouring books, aside from marching along the boardwalk at night munching on confectionaries, is to head across the bridge to the Sommers Point Circle Liquors and pick up a few bottles to bring back to Pennsylvania with me. You see, in PA, the state controls the liquor stores, so the stock across the state is pretty much the same anywhere you go. There are certain items they always have in stock and certain items they never seem to get; the advantage is that bottles tend to go for SRP or not too far above SRP, the disadvantage is, you don’t see a lot of variation, which is why whenever I travel, I look forward to stocking up at distant liquor stores, getting those bottles I simply can never find at home, but have read about and always wanted to try. So why was I in a rush? Well, you see, my wife and children came with me this time. My wife wanted to buy a couple bottles of white wine and the kids, being ten and seven, were constantly bickering and posing a danger of knocking bottles off shelves. So when my wife had picked out her wines, she took them to the car, and I had maybe ten minutes to look at whisky before her patience with the children in the car ran out. I tend to have a sense of what I’m looking for and what I want. For example, I love New Riff, and while we have New Riff BiB Rye and Bourbon and Single Barrels of both in PA, we don’t have the 6 Year Malted Rye, so I grabbed that. Then, at the Circle Liquors, they have Barrell bottles. In PA we only have the Dovetail, but here they have more, and I wanted the Vantage, so the second bottle I grabbed was Barrel Vantage. Third I grabbed a bottle of Kilchoman Sanaig to scratch my Islay itch. We don’t get any Kilchoman in PA, and though they also have Machir Bay here, a year ago my buddy sent me a bottle of Machir Bay Cask Strength, so I felt that to buy the Machir Bay would be a step back. Hence, the Sanaig. Then I spotted a single barrel Knob Creek Bourbon, 9.5 year, 120 proof. In PA we have these but they’re up to $70. Here the bottle was on sale for $50, and I love Knob, so I picked that. And now I had maybe two minutes left. I was scanning. Truth be told, there were maybe two dozen bottles I wanted, but I spotted a George Dickel BiB 13 Year. My wife brought one of these back from Nashville two months ago and it’s already gone because it’s maybe one of the best under $50 bourbons I’ve ever had, so I grabbed that, and with a minute on the clock, I spotted this next to it and grabbed it. Now for those of you with a wife and kids, you’ll get this. You sometimes feel rushed, and when you’re rushed you don’t always make the best decisions. To explain further, Dickel has this, the original recipe 8, that is a 6-year bourbon. They also have a George Dickel 8-Year Bourbon that is actually aged 8 years. I wanted to grab the 8-year bourbon, but in my haste, I grabbed the recipe 8. We crossed back over the bridge to go food shopping at Acme, and I was looking at my receipt and next to this bottle, it read $24.99 and walking the aisles, I immediately recognized my mistake. It wasn’t the case that I was unaware that both Dickel bottles existed, it was simply that I hadn’t taken enough time to actually look at the label on the bottle I was grabbing. And I was a little disappointed. If only because the 8-year is generally only 8 dollars more and supposed to be pretty decent at the price point. The Dickel 8, make no mistake, is a starter drink. An 80-proof bourbon, and can I tell you how long it’s been since I’ve cracked open a bottle of 80-proof whisky? Just not really something I reach for anymore. Last starter bourbon I reviewed was Old Forester 86, and that was disappointing, mainly because it was my go-to at one point when I started my whisky journey. The Dickel 8 carries no such baggage, but still, I didn’t taste it neat first. I actually mixed a whisky and soda with it, and the resulting concoction basically tasted like ginger ale. So, in reviewing this now, tasting it neat, I had a favorable first impression as a mixer, which once you’ve reached a certain point in the journey we refer to as our whisky journey, is exactly what this is for. When tasting neat, this isn’t bad and goes well with the cookies we just ran to the boardwalk to get before a thunderstorm blows through (we got back just as it really started to put). The nose is cracked pepper, vanilla and creamed corn. The palate gives you a little caramel, vanilla and corn. And as had been repeated ad nauseum here, the thing that separates this from say, Jim Beam or Evan Williams or Ezra Brooks is that note of barrel char at the finish. All-in-all, I don’t regret my mistake given that I generally don’t open any of the bottles I get down here until I get home and if I’m going to open one, the mixer seems to gel with a week of rest and relaxation. Would I have preferred to zero in, pay attention and have grabbed the bottle I’d intended to grab? You bet. But I appreciate Dickel. I like what they do. Funny, you always hear about that Flintstone Vitamin flavor in it, but I’ve tasted the Dickel Rye, the BiB and the 8, and I have yet to encounter anything that reminds me of the artificial cherry flavor in Flintstones vitamins (and I am an authority on this; in case you missed it, I have a 7 and a 10 year old who both take a Flintstones every morning). Also, I really enjoy their bottle design. So kudos on that. It’s tough to give this a rating as a neat whisky comparatively since it’s nowhere near some of the best I have but it seems unfair to rate it a 2.5 or less. Let’s stick with a 2.75. I think that’s where I put the Old Forester 86, and this is relatively equivalent. As a gateway starter bourbon, you could do worse.

So I missed this one the first time it came around, back when it was getting all the accolades and was still prices at $89.99 in my neck of the woods. Apparently SRP was supposed to be $10 less than that, but for some reason, Lagavulin is always a little higher than SRP in PA, na’mean? Anyway, it came back around: 5 bottles, online sale only, $99.99. And I hadn’t bought any whisky yet that month, yet even then, I was hesitant. Pulled the trigger on the second-to-last bottle. Then I got an email from FW&GS with pictures telling me one of the bottles in their shipment had broken open during shipping, and would I still like it. My bottle hadn’t been damaged, but the label, IT WAS STAINED!!!! So I took a few moments to clutch my pearls at the travesty of it all and told them of course I still wanted the fucking bottle. What do you take me for? Someone who gives a shit if a high quality bottle of scotch comes with a stained label? And I stowed it in my collection back in May for a future date. And then Father’s Day seemed appropriate. Drink it with my dad. Offerman cask seemed just like, thematically apropos. You dig? Only my sisters had invited my dad for brunch, so we couldn’t do early afternoon. Then when he got back from that, he needed a nap and my mom planned to take him to dinner at a Mexican restaurant, so I had to wait, even though I kind of like day drinking on Father’s Day. We spent an afternoon three years back with a bottle of Balvenie 12 between us and it was just a nice afternoon. I keep hoping to recreate that, but the next year, my family had our beach vacation scheduled the week of Father’s Day. And the year after that, we had him over, but we had him and my mom and my brother-in-law over, and that was great because I love family gatherings, but you know, sometimes, I just love sitting out back with my dad drinking whisky, talking about guy shit, right? Anyway, this is great whisky. It’s got the Lagavulin character, so far as I understand the Lagavulin character. I’ve only ever had the Distiller’s Edition, which is the 16 finished in PX Sherry. So the base, as I’ve always understood it, is peated, briny, oceanic, and essentially what makes it stand out from other Islay peated whiskies is that it’s more meaty. The saltiness and meatiness meeting to give it a sort of bacony quality and who doesn’t like bacon? Hell, I was a vegetarian for a decade and I never stopped thinking bacon was good. And nowadays, having returned to eating fish, I still think bacon is good. Why I don’t eat it is another conversation that’s a digression and really isn’t the point here, but this whisky has that meaty quality in spades. What the Guinness imparts to that is chocolate malt, so think salted bacon, cooked over a peat fire, covered in dark chocolate, let’s say 75% because it’s not particularly bitter, but it’s definitely not milk chocolate. The palate, in fact, is where the dark chocolate nose becomes milk chocolate, and in fact, that’s where the Guinness really shines through. There’s a lovely, sweet tone overall, that imparts a really creamy mouthfeel that mutes the peated edge and makes it taste like a peated egg cream, with the peat being very subtle, almost as if you’re drinking your egg cream next to a log fire. The finish itself is sweet too. Not peppery or smoky like a lot of Islay, and that’s another welcome departure from your standard Islay cask that, in the absence of having ever actually tasted the flagship 16 Year Lag, I’d have to say is also the influence of the cask finish. This, my friends, is what a cask finished whisky should be. The cask finish shouldn’t overwhelm or destroy the initial spirit, but should add extra dimension or depth. I do regret not getting this the first time around when it was cheaper. I don’t regret buying it when it came back around with its stained label. I’m not sure I’d be in a rush to buy it again, though ask me again if it comes back around in another year or two’s time. The Distiller’s Edition of 2023 is on shelves now, and I’m hitting that up soon. There’s 300 or so bottles in stock online and it’s not selling out too quickly so it may be another month or two before I pull the trigger on that, and I hope they don’t jack up the price in the meantime because at $108 it’s about as high as I’m willing to spend. This was a treat, an indulgence, but one worth having, and my dad agreed. I finally got to have that drink with him at the end of the night, sitting on the back deck, shooting the shit for about two hours as the dark on and Father’s Day reached its conclusion. One of these days we’ll have an afternoon to drink our cares away like we had that day a few years ago. And there will definitely be a great bottle like this, when that happens, to split between us.

Whenever I’m thinking of buying a whisky, I start with the question, what else is available at this price? Generally, if I haven’t had the best whisky available at that price point, I’ll go with that, and if I’ve had it and loved it, I’ll buy it again. But much like any sports draft, I may start with thinking I’m going to take the best player, but I also could consider drafting to fill a need. Case in point, this bottle, Virginia Distillery Co. Courage and Conviction Single Malt (Harry Cockburn batch): I’d read good things about how surprisingly good it was at both Drinkhacker and Breaking Bourbon. Enough to rouse my interest. However, it was going for $74.99. For less than that, I could get Ardbeg and Laphroaig and Talisker 10, I could get Nikka from the Barrell. Those all fit the description of whiskies below this price point that I’ve before and loved, so in the end, I couldn’t justify dropping the SRP on this bottle, much as I’m assuming Virginia Distillery Co. is the little guy, and I kind of like supporting the little guy (particularly Dad’s Hat and Sagamore). But of course, you keep an eye out for deals, and this went on clearance sale for $18.49 in the Wine and Spirits. At that point, I considered buying more than one, but my whisky budget had been reached and alas, I didn’t wish to gamble on multiple bottles when I might end up not liking it at all. Now I wish I had. This is not a complex whisky. The reviews I’d read made it sound like it was, and perhaps those reviews were for other batches (actually, I believe they were). But the complexity here would likely only be important to me if I had paid $74.99. At which point, I would have lamented that I didn’t pick up another Nikka from the Barrel (currently going for $1 less at $73.99). But at $18.49 this was a steal. I mentioned in my previous review on Jack Daniels Triple Mash that complexity isn’t everything as long as the flavors that are there blend together well and offer an enjoyable sip. While it wasn’t the case that I got that with the JD, it is the case here. The nose and palate are both pretty much the same, offering a creamsicle vibe that gives you vanilla cream and orange marmalade mixed together rather strongly. The fruit aromas are strong here with maybe a bit of peach mixed in, but overall, its citric, tangy. Honestly, it’s the kind of bottle that could give your Glenmorangie 10 a run for its money if it wasn’t about $30 more expensive than Glenmorangie, and this at just four years in the bottle. And that’s it, vanilla cream and orange marmalade. That’s what you get, but damned if, at $18.49 I’m not enjoying the hell out of it. It's not going to blow your mind, but it could lay waste to it fairly easily given how easily it goes down. So my advice is that, if you see it on sale, pick it up. Tops I’d go would be, say, $49.99. Then again, give the explosion we’ve seen in prices recently, this might, in the long run, end up being a deal at SRP at some point in the future. As of now, it isn’t going to appear on anyone’s best value list. But you might want to draft it to fill a need if you have the disposable income lying around.

When Jack Daniels announced they were releasing the Bonded and Triple Mash, I figured I’d try them eventually, but I wasn’t in any rush. Aside from the fact that JD’s never really been my go-to brand of American whisky, these two were released at 700 ml rather than 750, which feels like a cheap ploy to short us whisky. But the Daniels Single Barrel and Single Barrel Cask Strength aren’t bad, and these are in that affordable range still (this despite the fact that they seem to be going for $10 less in all other areas aside from mine). Still, there were so many other things I wanted to buy first that I didn’t get to the Bonded until it won the Whisky Advocate 2023 Top 20, and even then, it was a drunk buy on my way home from the office Christmas Party last year, and it was all right if you can get it for $30, but it’s pushing $40 around here and that’s pushed it past what I’d be willing to spend on the rebuy. Oddly enough when I read the descriptions of both, I assumed I’d like the Triple Mash more. Not only did the mixture of single malt, rye and bonded strike me as more up my alley than a straight Tennessee Whisky recipe, but I think I may have been pulled in by the marketing (in other words, I liked the red label better than the black label). My mistake. I was lukewarm on the Bonded, and I’m decidedly even more lukewarm on the Triple Mash. Now I finally pulled the trigger on this because of an Instagram account I follow. The guy did a blind tasting of this against the Jack Daniels 10 Year, and while the 10 Year won, he touted how strong the Triple stood up against it. Perhaps he’s in JD’s pocket and got paid to say that, how am I to know, but I figured that, with the Triple still at $40 around me, I might as well pull the trigger before they boost that price to $50, as we’re seeing happen so often lately. And I did. And funnily enough, I picked it up on the way home from a work charity event in June, which parallels picking up the Bonded after the Christmas party because I was also a little tipsy after the charity event. And I figured then, since I had it after I got home, that maybe my palate had been polluted by the Old Forester 86/Coke mixture I was drinking at the event all afternoon, and I’d have to try back later. Didn’t help. The expert reviewer here begins by saying the nose is bright and fairly intense, which makes me wonder what he was drinking. The problem for me with this whisky is that the nose starts off muddled and muted with a faint spiciness and cinnamon undercurrent, astringent with a nail polish edge, but not much other than that. I can agree with the reviewer that the palate is average and not terribly plush. It drinks hotter than 100 proof and the flavors are relatively simple: banana, cinnamon, red hots, cherry. Now, I’ve long held that a whisky doesn’t have to be overly complex to be enjoyable, and while those flavors should work together, they don’t for some reason, mostly because of the burn that precedes it. It’s like the peppery finish starts before the flavors arrived on the palate, and that finish arriving first ruins the taste entirely. Or maybe it doesn’t ruin it, but it doesn’t make this something I feel the need to return to. It’s more of a last whisky of the night type of whisky (as it was after that charity event) when you still want a drink but you don’t want to drink your best stuff because you know your palate has been compromised. I don’t know. This could very well just be the way it’s hit my palate and it could work differently with other taste buds, so take this with a grain of salt, but of the two the Bonded is definitely better, but not better enough that I think I’ll ever be dipping into either well again. I'm going to see if ice helps, but even if it does, that won't much change my assessment.

There seems to be among some people a debate pitting Larceny BP against Elijah Craig BP. I'm gonna be honest here: I would never turn down either one. Larceny is still reasonably priced in my neck of the woods and so whenever it's available I buy it. Elijah Craig is also reasonably priced and whenever I see it, I pick up a bottle. At the moment, however, I only have one bottle of Elijah Craig, that being A123, where I went out and nabbed a second after tasting how good the first was. As for Larceny, I have one bottle of C921, 3 bottles of A122, and 3 bottles of B522. I haven't opened the C921. I've tasted the A122 and gave it a 3.75 at the time, but it's more deserving of a 4 in retrospect and I look forward to the other bottles at some point. And I've just opened the B522. Last night when I was talking about my whisky collection someone jokingly referred to me as a hoarder. Well, there's sort of some truth in that. But the reason I buy in bulk is to make sure I get the whisky I like while it's still reasonably priced. ECBP has gone up, Larceny has gone up. Everything is going up, so yes, I will buy a few bottles when I have the chance at a decent price so I can still drink the stuff I like without having to pay out the nose for it. And then, when it gets priced beyond what I'm willing to pay, I still at least have a little bit (I say this having picked up a 3rd bottle of Maker's BEP yesterday because it's $70 in my neck of the woods and why wouldn't you pick up three bottles at that price? It's not like it goes bad). That said, it's tough without the Larceny A122 open to gauge how I feel about the B22 against it, but I'm thinking I like the B522 better, which is also funny because it has a lower community rating on here. Now I'm tasting this straight and it's good that way, it's how I always pass my judgements here, but I believe I've mentioned previously that when the proof starts pushing 120+, I tend to like those best with a single melted ice cube. Now, here's the thing: there's a strong similarity here between the batches. This ones got a lot of cocoa powder and cinnamon along with some cherry on the nose. There's a strong ethanol element because of the proof and that was what made me dock points from the A122, but it doesn't feel as prominent here in that I'm more able to tease out subtler aromas, such as an earthy wheatiness as well. On the palate it's got a slight burn but it's sweet, there's a fruitiness but also a slight peanut butter quality to the flavor and the mouthfeel is really creamy. The finish is cherry again with a bit of pepper and cardamom. So yes, I'm glad I have three bottles of this in the collection. And yes, I will be buying more as long as it stays reasonably priced. I do think that overall I myself prefer the Larcney to the Elijah Craig, but that's because I tend to like the wheated bourbons. Still, I'm also tracking ECBP 523 over here and it should be arriving in stores soon and going for around $65 still unless they decide to jack the price. So, when you've got these in that range, it's nice because you don't really have to choose. At some point the prices will get high enough that I may at which point, I'll be focusing on Old Forester 1920 and Rare Breed. Come to think of it, isn't there just an embarrassment of riches in the barrel proof/cask strength bourbon category? And that doesn't even begin to take into account the $45 Maker's CS that I really should also be stocking up on while it's there.