Sazerac Rye

Price matters! I’ve alluded to this in previous tastings here, but with this one, I’m going to state it flat out. It’s a pet peeve of mine to pretend that you’re tasting your whisky without regard to price. Really? Are you a Kardashian? Are you Drake? Are you loaded enough to make it rain every time you go out to buy your spirits? You tip the checkout person? Or are you one of the Masterpiece Theater aesthetes who are above the fray of common earthly concerns that occupy the rest of us like money? “No, we don’t use money in Heaven!” “Oh yeah, that’s right. I keep forgetting. Comes in pretty handy down here, bub!” If you don’t believe me, if you don’t disagree, go on over to the Ardbeg Wee Beastie reviews. Look at the star ratings and compare those ratings to what people report they paid. You’ll see that those who paid OVER $50 HATE the Wee Beast. Those who paid UNDER $45 tend to love it. I’m not even sure this is a conscious thing. It might be what we call today unconscious bias, but if you get a great deal on even a decent tasting whisky, the whisky just tastes better. Am I wrong? Obviously, the reason I bring this up here, is that Sazerac is probably the best deal you can get in the whisky world if we’re going by the intersection of price and quality. For $28, you get a relatively complex, extremely tasty rye that you can drink straight, on the rocks, or use in mixing, and you don’t feel guilty about employing it in any of those ways. It’s arguable, of course, that Eagle Rare 10 Year is a better deal, given that whisky's age. Both can be relatively difficult to find depending where you are, but where I am, Eagle Rare is more difficult to locate, and since I prefer rye to bourbon, I’m going with Sazerac, but if you think Eagle Rare, I’m not going to go off on you the way I might on Mr. “All Me.” “Got everything, I got everything/I cannot complain, I cannot/I don't even know how much I really made, I forgot, it's a lot…” Sorry, I zoned out there for a second. I'm probably coming off a little stronger here than I intend. But if you’re not Drake, there’s the distinctive possibility you’re posturing. Still, you know, if you do this whole "price doesn't matter" thing and we’re buddies on this site, don’t take it to heart too much; we’re cool. I’ll concede that if I didn’t have a mortgage and two kids to raise (i.e., if I were a young single man, living on my own, with a decent paying job), I might spend more on whisky, but I doubt even then that I wouldn’t look for whiskies that fall on the intersecting point of the graph where great price meets great taste, and this is it. Sazerac Rye is the dictionary definition of that. Are there better ryes out there? Of course. Not below $50, not that I’ve tasted. And certainly not below $30. There are others in this category that are acceptable, drinkable, but nothing I’d call good. So what do we have here? The predominant aromas are spice and sweetness. Cherry vanilla with cinnamon and nutmeg with an underlying earthiness I’ve tried to place but have always had trouble putting my finger on. Maybe it’s less cinnamon powder and more cinnamon stick, Ceylon cinnamon in particular, which has a distinctive smell, quite different from that plastic container of McCormick spice you keep on the rack to make pie. There’s also an underlying hint of orange peel that comes right on the end of that whiff after you’ve let the glass open up a little. Honestly, I wish they made a Sazerac candle because the nose is pleasant in a way where you wouldn’t mind the entire room smelling of it. On the palate it’s spice forward, the same mix of nutmeg and cinnamon with a little bit of black pepper on the tongue. It’s got a cola feel, which when mixed with the vanilla and cherry tang reminds me of Cherry Coke. There might be a trace of bergamot mixed in, but it’s not too strong, so those who don’t favor the black tea sometimes present in rye can still indulge because it’s not too prevalent or overpowering. The sweetness then fades as the sip hits the back of the tongue and returns to the spice profile with the pepper becoming predominant and lingering just long enough for you to think, damn that’s fine. This is my second bottle, and it’s proven just as satisfying as the first. Given the price, I plan to pick one up whenever I see it on the shelves of my FW&GS because this is one of those that you can mix in to tastings of much dearer bottles and you won’t miss a step. There are supply chain problems currently, so it’s disappeared but I don’t expect that to be for long, and when it returns, I might buy in bulk just to be on the safe side.

It’s a smooth pour. Got a bite but not too strong.

It’s nice, sweet at first with some spice quickly following. It’s not quite as smooth as some of the other whiskeys I’ve tried but I like it.

Some cherry and some vanilla. That’s nose and palate. Wood flavors hit in the finish along with the alcohol.