@claptonfan756 cheers! It’s a tasty pour. Gonna pick up a bottle myself soon too.

I tried this before looking at the score on this site and was astonished that it was scored so low by the experts. 79! Get real. I paid $22, and at that price it’s an absolute steal.

@ContemplativeFox The price after discovery will probably skyrocket and make it unattainable for most. But, that’s precisely my point. If such an amazing cheap (let’s just say “affordable” to be more inclusive) whiskey continues to remain cheap/affordable/available even after discovery of its “amazingness”, then it has achieved something remarkable and near-impossible, which for me could be the reimagined definition of a unicorn in this context. I think this may be possible in the bourbon & rye world if you go up to $35 - $45 range. I’ve had some memorable sub-$20 bourbons and ryes like Jim Beam Distillers, Fighting Cock, Old Ezra 101 7yr and Rittenhouse, which I would happily go back to anytime. Amazing is not word I would use to describe them though....or a lot of things for that matter. Amazing for me = perfect or exceedingly near perfect. Those are truly few and far between.

@WhiskeyLonghorn Yeah, if I raise my arbitrary threshold to $30, then there are a lot more things I can get in there, especially if I leave the realm of whiskey (particularly scotch). Rum in particular seems to be a great place to find value these days, with Doorly's 12 at ~$25 maybe being the closest I've found to an "I'm done" spirit.

@Anthology I hadn't thought of it that way, before, but you raise an interesting point. While I have never seen a bottle of many of the unicorns people chase, I know for a fact that they exist. I'm less convinced that the cheap "I'm done" one is out there. And if it were, would its price just skyrocket a la Weller 12 as soon as it was discovered?

@cascode You're quite right that it's a tall order. For whiskey, probably WT 101 and EC SB are the only things I've found for under $20 that I'd actually enjoy neat, but they are far from amazing. I think the most generous I can be is to say that some $40-45 stuff might have met the bar if I'm feeling generous (e.g. WT RB, Glendronach 12, JW Green), which isn't so bad. I have to agree though that really to be amazing, I'm thinking more of Springbank 10, Lag 16, and this really excellent CS SiB JD that I got a while back, all of which are at least $55 and many of which go for over $80.

@Anthology @cascode @ContemplativeFox y’all make some interesting points here. Maybe it’s just a phase but I’ve grown weary of chasing expensive bottles. The last few bottles I’ve bought have been sub $30 American and sub $60 Scotch. Those are my thresholds for really excellent stuff. I’m not sure about sub-$20. Some decent mixing bourbons go for that, but sub-$30 I can still get some pretty tasty bourbon and rye, like 101, Elijah Craig store picks, Old Forester 100 & rye, etc. Scotch is a wash. The tariffs in the US imploded any hope of affordability. After buying some stellar rums for under $30 I became convinced of that.

@ContemplativeFox No worries. Got it! Thanks for the explanation/additional context. Totally makes sense. Here’s a thinker. As I pondered your clarification further, is it crazy to think that contrary to conventional wisdom, maybe this affordable (aka cheap), readily available whiskey that is both amazing and ALSO satiates the never-ending and insatiable itch for the next whiskey, is the true epitome of a holy grail/unicorn whiskey, NOT some hard-to-find, unobtainable and financially out-of-reach bottle? Like you, I earnestly wish that such a one-and-done whiskey exists. If only wishes were horses...

@ContemplativeFox Under US$20 for something amazing is a pretty tall order. At the Australian price equivalent there is literally nothing I'd buy at the moment. The Aldi "Highland Black" that was around for a spell a couple of years ago was truly amazing and at that price, but it was a one-off opportunistic vatting. Loch Lomond Reserve used to be at that price and was way better than it had any right to be but it's more expensive now and recent batches have slipped just a tad. Ballantine's 12 would be cheapest thing currently available here that I buy repeatedly, but I only use it as a mixer and in highballs. The cheapest things I'd happily drink neat would be Cutty Sark Prohibition, Glen Grant 12, any of the Compass Box core range or Johnnie Walker Green Label. However I wouldn't call any of them actually amazing, and they would all be at least twice your minimum price level. So yeah, there is whisky that is both affordable and amazing in context, but no there is no amazing "cheap" whisky. The only whiskies that make me think anything like "I'm done" would be over the US$60 mark, easily.

@WhiskeyLonghorn I'd agree this is slightly under-rated here are 79. Slightly. I gave it 81 in my tasting journal and 2.5 here, but that was a while back when it was definitely sourced whiskey. They may be bottling their own whiskey by now, I'm not sure. I thought it was perfectly acceptable, if simple and a bit plush in profile, and yeah I gave it exactly the same score as Black Bush.

@Anthology (I hit save too early on that first post 'w')

@Anthology Clearly this is too optimistic, but I continue to be disappointed by the distance between my hopes and reality.

@Anthology very fair. I might invoke the efficient market hypothesis here and state that if an underpriced whiskey is found it won't be underpriced for long, which I'm sure is something many here have experienced. These isn't really what I was getting at though. I keep hoping to find a whiskey for under $20 that I can obtain readily and is much better than the quality I would look for in a daily - the type of thing that makes me think "I'm done; there's no reason to buy another whiskey". Clearly this is

@ContemplativeFox I feel Ike I should let this one (I.e. “no such thing as an amazing cheap whiskey”) go but then again can I? I think it depends...on context. A few scenarios come to mind (for example what’s expensive for one person might be cheap for someone else. Or where is line line drawn for cheap versus not cheap? Who decides?). But I’ll instead go with something we can all [hopefully] attest to. Before the whiskey boom, some of the stuff we’re paying silly money for now (aka not cheap) used to be “cheap” and yet amazing. It’s the same amazing stuff. Just got marked up crazy due to secondary markets etc. I was reading one of the posts from a legit source here (Soba45 or PBMchigsnWolverine) how Yamazaki 18 and Hibiki 17 used to sit on shelf’s for dirt cheap collecting dust. Those are amazing whiskeys that were cheap. So...it just might be possible to have an amazing cheap whiskey. Just need some context. Fair?

I'm still interested in trying this sometime, but your tasting definitely reinforces my confidence that there's no such thing as an amazing cheap whiskey.