@ContemplativeFox you know I was going to question your absurd "light" thing and then I looked at my last review where I compared murray hill to the pappy line and well buffalo trace. Now while not similar, I used them to explain the differences in batches and levesl of refinement. It oddly hit me that, maybe it was a bit of a lighter body and character that lead me to that analogy. Either way, I love the murray hill though I do love those older batches more. Now if only those special releases weren't 300+ if/when I see them now.

@WhiskeyBlender I'm always happy to discuss whiskey, especially when I get to also discuss economics :) I feel a bit in the eye of the hurricane myself on this one since I like MHC a lot, so I hope my conclusions are at least in the right ballpark. Cheers!

Dear @ContemplativeFox and @dhsilv2, unfortunately I can't give a detailed response at the moment, but I did want to give you both a HUGE thanks for really taking the time to answer my question in incredible about MHC. That is very enlightening! Sometimes when you're in the "eye of the hurricane," so to speak, you can't see what everyone else does. I'll write more about this later, but again, I just wanted to reach out to thank you for your very considered answers! Slainte, Nancy.

@WhiskeyBlender I suspect it comes down to the lighter flavor of the whiskey and somewhat unusual profile.  The TLDR of this post is that modern bourbon, including Joseph Magnus, is usually big and bold, with lots of wood, spice, and so on, so there are people who aren't happy when they get something so drastically different, in particular because they don't understand what it is. Like @dhsilv2, I think both the term "light whiskey" and its flavor probably turn the more typical bourbon drinkers off.  Most of the negative comments I've read call out the light character of the sweetness (e.g. calling it candy corn or cotton candy) and the short finish (I don't recall this having an especially short finish, but it definitely didn't last as long as the regular Joseph Magnus), missing the complexities that the restraint reveals. I'd also posit that anyone out there drinking the stronger bourbons regularly has a decent chance of having adapted their palate to expect those flavors and may even have blown out their palate so that they can't taste the subtlety in the Murray Hill Club (without taking a break for a week or two).  In my tasting notes, I compared the Murray Hill Club with Evan Williams Black and Jim Beam Black not because it is particularly similar in flavor and certainly not because I think it is similar in quality, but because they have milder touch than many other bourbons, so there's a lot of complexity that drops out quickly with palate fatigue, at which their quality drops substantially.  In fact, I often use Jim Beam Black to calibrate my palate before tasting other bourbons so that I know how sensitive my tongue is and what flavors to expect to be over-/under-emphasized. I think it's easy for whiskey drinkers - and bourbon drinkers in particular - to expect a regimented set of flavors, to look for certain combinations, and to expect older/more premium whiskey to have certain profiles.  In particular, rich, bold, woody flavors being commonly associated with age is extremely common, particularly in American whiskey, where cask strength single barrel offerings are the style right now.  Scotch also has this problem though, where lighter flavors get associated with tired casks.  Since Joseph Magnus, although a delightfully complex bourbon, is also one of the big, bold ones, I suspect that many fans of it decided to give Murray Hill Club a try and were surprised by the difference. As you correctly point out (I assume - I've only read about whiskey from the 1800s, never tasted it), American whiskey was very different back in the day, so a faithful recreation is likely to be polarizing.  I don't have a bottle of Murray Hill Club (sadly) but as I recall, it doesn't make it incredibly obvious that it is a recreation of a historical whiskey.  Unlike if they were drinking a bottle of Old Forester 1920 Prohibition Style, which literally explains what it is in the name, someone trying Murray Hill Club is at least somewhat likely to be unaware of what the intent of what they're drinking is and interpret it as a poor attempt at modern bourbon in the same way that they might criticize a lightly peated or unpeated Islay Scotch for not meeting their expectations. I'll spare you any everyone else still reading this my tedious economics reasoning behind the following statement, but I'll also assert that people on average are likely to rate an unusual whiskey substantially lower than a big success like Joseph Magnus, even if by some hypothetical objective measure they are of identical quality.

@WhiskeyBlender Thank you for such a detailed response! And thank you also for kindly not pointing out my goof in saying 2000 barrels rather than 2000 bottles. I'm delighted to know that you are personally nurturing each Cigar Blend barrel!  It's too bad that it's so hard to find, but I'd personally rather have to search for it and get the quality.  I maintain though that you should raise the price though :) As an economist, it pains me to see middlemen collecting huge profits that should go to the producers.

@WhiskeyBlender Thanks again Nancy. By all means, we'd never want your personal touch to leave the Cigar Blend. I've had store picks of "magnus" and some where great, but it's not really special as the standard and the limited releases are. As for Murray Hill, I think the answer is pretty simple. The bourbon consumer is generally less educated on whisky terminology than the whisky consumer as whole and they frankly don't understand or even know what a light whisky is or tastes like. They see blend and they see something other than "bourbon" and they get upset and also dislike even seeing it called bourbon. There's still a large contengent, all be it is dying off, who can't stand the finished concepts either. This is by no means an attack on the consumer, but bourbon drinkers tend to I believe enjoy the narrow constraints of their "Kentucky Straight Bourbon", and that's perfectly alright. Though even with scotch drinkers, Compass Box and John's work hasn't converted them all to "craft blending makes good whisky great" just yet either.

@ContemplativeFox, sorry, I meant to ask one more thing: I've been seeing people write things about Murray Hill Club being, as you say, "oft-maligned." Forgive me for being obtuse, but why is this? I don't understand what is controversial about a Blended Bourbon that is composed of eleven 12 to 14 year old Bourbon barrels with a little bit of 20 year old, plus 1 barrel of 15 year old light whiskey, for a total of 12 barrels. Please know that I'm not criticizing you (I see that you enjoy it!), I just don't understand why this whiskey is supposedly controversial. The original Murray Hill Club from over 100 years ago was a blended whiskey, and I wanted to make the modern day version of MHC a high quality whiskey, so I compromised and made it a Blended Bourbon. At any rate, if you or @dhsilv2 (or someone else) could please enlighten me, I would sincerely appreciate it! :-) Cheers, Nancy.

@ContemplativeFox, ouch, I have to say that the secondary prices are just completely absurd. Personally, the only thing that I ever pay $300-400 for would be a 45 to 50+ year old bottle of vintage Armagnac, and probably something from Darroze. At any rate, believe it or not, we actually HAVE increased production of Cigar Blend from 4 Armagnac casks to 6 Armagnac casks at a time earlier this year. Each cask is about 300 liters. The number of 750 mL bottles that you can get from one of these Armagnac barrels is usually somewhere between 370 to 390. Thus, a conservative estimate of the number of bottles that will come out of batches #29-34 will be about 2220 (if you take the 370 bottles per cask times 6), with the most probably around 2,340. If and when we do increase production again any time soon, it would probably be to no more than 8 Armagnac barrels released at a time. I have samples taken from these barrels about every two weeks, which I then personally analyze. Depending upon how each barrel is progressing, I might make minor adjustments to them (for example), if a barrel is turning out to be too spicy with very little wood sugars, I'll add a little bit of a 14 year old Bourbon to help balance things out, or if it needs more depth, add a little more 20 year old, etc.). What I don't want to see happen is for production on Cigar Blend to increase so much that I can no longer personally attend to each barrel, so that it then becomes just another bulk product. Does that make sense?

@WhiskeyBlender Ah, I realize now that each batch is probably one barrel, so it sounds like there's about 2000 more barrels about to hit shelves. I'd better check if anywhere around here is going to get one and get in line now!

@WhiskeyBlender Thanks for the tip about the upcoming batches and the additional details about this one! Are you able to share roughly how many bottles will be released?  I'm seeing secondary prices for this in the $300-$400 range. Not sure what MSRP is, but it seems like Magnus should increase production or increase its prices!  I admit that I'd prefer not to pay $300 for a bottle of anything, but the regular Magnus is awesome and @dhsilv2 is saying this is worth at least $400.

@WhiskeyBlender speaking of Armagnac would you have some brands or bottles in the US that you'd steer us begginers towards? I recently picked up a 40 year bottle that's easily blown my mind. Dartigalongue Bas Armagnac I believe. But I need to invest more time into this wonderful world.

@WhiskeyBlender always awesome to get your feedback nancy. I'm going to actually go to a few stores by me and see if I can put in a special request for these as it seems they're not getting normal allocated priority and thus vanish the second they see the light of day without raffels or other walls.

Hey there @dhsilv2, master blender Nancy Fraley here yet again to the rescue! As always, I'm thrilled to hear that you are liking Cigar Blend batch #28, but ouch, I'm so sorry that you had to pay $240 for it! If it helps any, the components in your batch are between 12 and 20 years old, with a significant portion being 14+ years old, so at least it isn't a spring chicken regarding age. The Armagnac finishing casks were re-cooped at the much esteemed Tonnellerie Vicard in Cognac, France, and were personally picked by my dear friend and mentor, Cognac Master Blender Alain Royer, so the quality of those finishing casks is first rate. Also, I think your tasting notes are spot on, as I too get a lot of earthy/leafy notes, perhaps somewhat at honeyed hay, along with the cherry and candied orange peel, along with some nuttiness. FYI, we'll probably be bottling CB batches #29-34 next week. These batches will range from between 118 to over 126 proof, and at least 3 of them will be in the over 126 range, which is the highest proof that CB has ever been to date. These latest batches will probably be hitting the shelves in late September/early October.

@Anthology congratulations on your find! I'll just have to keep trying.

@ContemplativeFox There’s hope. Keep hunting!

@dhsilv2 The things we do for whiskey. I once asked an ex gf to bring me back a hard-to-find bottle I ordered online...from across the pond! Can definitely relate to you asking a friend’s mum haha. Anyway excellent + encouraging review! I was hunting these JM Cigar Blend for a long time with no luck until one day I walked into a Total Wine & More and saw two of them sitting right there, close to the checkout counter...at $170 each, (which I thought was a mistake cos I’ve seen at $300 on regular retail). Grabbed one then and there. Then went back 30 minutes later and grabbed the other. Sometimes the whiskey gods do smile on you. Makes up for the times I saw PH Promise of Hope for $250 and didn’t jump on it. Or the time I saw Batch 1 of E.H. Taylor Four Grain bourbon on a shelf for $90 before all the hype and passed on it! Everyone has those stories. Would be interested to hear other really bad “missed opportunity” whiskey stories from the group. Who’s next?

@PBMichiganWolverine Hopefully whisky blender comes and offers us more details. But these do use older whisky and the Armagnac cask finishing is certianly not cheap. I think retail should be 150-200 depending on the market. This was bought in NJ at a store clearly asking for secondary prices and as I said god knows what I owe my friend's mom for shipping me this on top of picking it up. I'd take this over case of Pappy 23 (for drinking). Absolutely the best bourbon I've tried new this year. Here's hoping I get to try some of the rare stuff coming...but I'm not holding my breath.

Extremely jealous. I love the regular Joseph Magnus and even enjoyed the oft-maligned Murray Hill Club. Been hoping to find this for ages, but it never seems to be available.

Wow...$240?! Why...age, special finishing, or just premium marketing ?