Clear Creek Reserve Apple Brandy

Situational sipping for me but over all phenomenal companion for cocktails.

The Bottle: This is one of the few Clear Creek bottles that deviates from their "standard" white label, likely to play up the age statement that it comes with. It's a nice dark green glass with a parchment-style label that gives a fair amount of information. It's nice enough, but it won't really stand out on your bar. the good news here is that unlike some of the other bottles from this distiller, it isn't an awkward fit on a shelf that has height limitations. In the Glass: Straw. On the Nose: Now we're getting somewhere. I poured myself a glass of this a few minutes ago, and from five feet away I can smell it. Distinct notes of apple and oak. If you've ever been to a winery/distiller where you can walk through the aging warehouse, this has some of those same "wood" notes to it. It may be one of the most "autumnal" drams that I've come across. Taste: Smooth, apple arrival with a development dominated by oak and wood spice (reminiscent of Lark's single malt, if I'm honest). The fruit here reads along the lines of a pink/red varietal...no Granny Smith here. The finish is tannic/bitter, but you really don't want a lot of sweetness in a brandy like this...it would just be too much. It's like they found a way to harness the essence of what an apple is all about and left the sugar out of it. If you let a few minutes go between sips, the flavor that is left on your palate is 100% apple skin. Many distillers of this style like to keep the aging to 3, or fewer, years (Clear Creek even does this with another apple brandy offering), but I do think that the extended age on this has done it more good than harm. The concern is always that the oak will overpower the delicate nature of the apple, but that doesn't seem to happen with this expression. You definitely get the oak in the development, more-so than you do on something like a single malt; but it isn't hiding the craft that went into the underlying spirit. This is definitely a sipper, mixing it into a cocktail would destroy a lot of the complexity that it has to offer.