Five Trail Blended American Whiskey

Real good.

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.

Batch 01CWC21-A. Tasted with and without an ice cube.

Carmel sweet tobacco