whiskey

Lagavulin is a pretty peaty beverage. Good stuff Havent had the ones above it.

i just got this as a gift, pretty psyched 2 try

http://cdn2.bigcommerce.com/server5500/tpbc2s65/products/1431/images/1464/glenrothesselectreserve__57639__83898.1358534237.1280.1280.jpg

it's not just about peat as much as it's the flavor of the peat. i'm not a fan of laphroaig or kilchoman, but i like bowmore and ardbeg a lot. lagavulin too.

Tonight I saw a few Rye whiskeys I've never seen before, one called Lock Stock & Barrel, aged 13 Yrs at $149!!! Has anyone tried this? And they had Hochstadter's Rock and Rye, is this something you drink straight or is it a mixer, it's sweetened, right?

i have not tried it--if you're interested i believe whistlepig is basically the same stuff and it's considerably cheaper (tho not actually "cheap")

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll pick up a bottle of whistlepig for Christmas Eve.

drank some lagavulin last night. it was like a marsh in a tumbler. excellent stuff

I prefer the saltier islays - lagav, ardbeg uigeadail, caol ila - to the medicinals

ya that purity chat's all very interesting, jim, but scotch tastes better so

also had some japanese whisky and it was like bad medicine ffs. bear in mind these were baby steps. never gonna drink beer again though

Whistlepig, iirc, is one of the few imprints that says straight-up where its juice comes from (that Canadian distillery, right?). That puts them at odds with this endless wave of whiskey with neither an age statement nor sourcing information. Like, that stupid new $4000 Michter's bourbon? Who in the world would pay that much for something without knowing exactly how old it is or where it comes from? Except for, you know, someone who knows absolutely nothing about whiskey and wants to continue the streak of ignorance? Michter's is either being coy (at best) or dishonest when it even hints that the stuff came from Stizel-Weller. Even Jefferson played games with its 17/18 year, which put the S-W name on the bottles while still playing a little fast and loose. "Aged in Stitzel-Weller barrels." Does that mean it was aged *at* S-W, or just in barrels that came from S-W? Who knows? It's telling that Jefferson is staying mum on all its subsequent old released, the 21 year, the 26 year, the 30 ... no one knows where they came from or what they are doing. Just like stonehenge.

Anyway ... people love the Whistlepig Boss Hog Rye.

i know we've talked about this before but based on having read everything i possibly could about it i'm 90-95% sure the jefferson's 17/18 was stitzel weller all the way. i agree the way they are leveraging that fact for the older bottlings is a little shady.

whistlepig and lock/stock/barrel are both from alberta distillers ltd. lock, stock might have gotten the absolute best barrels of that stuff for all i know and it wouldn't be worth $130. regular whistlepig is nice enough but i just don't think 100% rye is a distillate that does anything for me.

As distillers wait for more stuff to mature to meet demand, this barrel-scraping (literally) trend will only continue. The old found-'em-in-a-warehouse- somewhere barrels, there's often a reason the distiller is willing to let them go to other bottlers. How good can the Jefferson 30 year possibly be? A lot of distillers put the bourbon sweet spot at 8-10 years, with 12 being the top for rye based stuff (right?). The Weller wheat recipe is what allows Van Winkle to do so well over the years, but just any ol random bourbon? Not worth the gamble. That Diageo Orphan Barrel Lost and Found collection is dubious to the max.

idk, george t. stagg is usually 17 years old or so and it tastes p. good to me.

Isn't Stagg really low in rye? That may help. But I don't really know. Obviously, taste buds don't lie!

stagg is the standard buffalo trace recipe which is not high in rye tho the % of rye in most bourbon mashbills stays in a pretty narrow range.

Maybe that's part of the appeal of Stagg and some of the other antiques: that the recipe does pretty well in the barrel. Eagle Rare uses the same recipe, right? This year's Eagle Rare 17 was actually 19 years, iirc. But it's hard to find many bourbons, period, over the age of 12, or at least labeled as such. The Four Roses that everyone went bonkers for this year (and I was unable to even come close to getting) was mostly 13 years, right?

yes, eagle rare is the same.

it didn't used to be hard. elijah craig 18 was ubiquitous and cheap, the vintage 17 wheat bourbon was everywhere and fairly priced, there was old bmh. all of these things were niche products to an extent, but the main thing that changed was that everyone bought them and there was nothing in the pipeline to replace.

i guess my larger point is it's very hard to say anything conclusive about bourbon as a category. imo it is poorly understood at best. i don't think we really know much of anything about how bourbon ages out, for a variety of reasons. maybe jim beam ages beautifully past 12 years--we've never gotten a chance to know because they can sell all the jim beam in the world at 4 years.

Yeah, good point. I assume somewhere out there are warehouses of experiments just waiting out the decades, though who knows how much. Certainly Buffalo Trace has been working on its Warehouse X or whatever project.

yeah, i haven't really been keeping up on the bt experimental but hopefully they're doing something with the results to eventually make them public.

I'm never going to randomly find a bottle of george t. stagg again, am I?

i randomly saw a bottle of 2011 stagg a couple weeks ago

I drank half the bottle before I really realized what I had

It happens now and then, though not too often will you randomly find it anywhere near MSRP. I'll say again, at least in Chicago the absolutely hardest bottle to come by was the Four Roses 125th Anniversary. And that's without the mad scramble of the BTAC or PVW hunt. I was bummed not to get a bottle.

I think I paid MSRP ($70?)

Yeah, sounds right. People were not marking up the Four Roses like they do BTAC et al. If you found it at all, you likely found it at around that price. But to just randomly come across BTAC or Pappy at MSRP is a very rare thing.

local shop apparently bought a full barrel of Blanton's so they had a special

Just watched a guy buy $1500 worth of Pappy, various ages.

ew/lol

This store isn't one I'd figure to stock it but they had a lot. Still some 10 year and 23 year left, $90 and $300-something respectively. I thought about grabbing a 10 (never had it before) but I haven't finished my gift shopping yet and it just seems excessive.

JiC this is Kimbark liquors on 53rd if you're interested.

Done hunting for the season, when suddenly I get an email this morning that the Pennsylvania online store is belatedly selling their allotment of Pappy 15. Signed on and ... snagged a MSRP bottle for my friend with no hassle (beyond having to bring it back here after visiting my folks in PA). Later today, get a text from a friend that the local totally average liquor store had a few bottles of Old Rip 10, which is a solid but not really worth hunting for bourbon nonetheless swept up in the Pappy craze. I went over there and got a (barely marked up) bottle for me and another for a friend, $50 a bottle. That's twice today where stuff in the Van Winkle line more or less fell in my lap. Even my wife thought it was weird, and she's tired of hearing about this stuff.

Wait, did you really say "some" 23 left?! That stuff goes fast, and while I have the only bottle of it I will likely ever buy, $300 is only a bit above MSRP. Considering it's going for $1000 a bottle online, that's not terrible (relatively speaking).

Black bag right? They had at least two on the shelf behind the counter. The dude who spent a grand and a half bought like 3 bottles of the red bag stuff, all they had, plus some others.

Red bag is 20 year. Wow, though, that's pretty low for the 23 (again, relatively speaking), given the gouging out there and on Craigslist. Especially if they were asking $90 for the 10 year.

Done hunting for the season, when suddenly I get an email this morning that the Pennsylvania online store is belatedly selling their allotment of Pappy 15.

already gone?

Man, it was gone in literally five minutes.

I'm going to line up a taste-off between Bulleit Rye, Dickel Rye, and Templeton Rye sometime. Can't wait to realize they're all close to interchangeable.

Finally had a taste of Ancient Ancient Age last night, it was different than I expected but still very good. The bartender seemed astonished I asked for it specifically but shit, apparently they don't even make it any more? (Or at least have changed the name, I guess?)

Boss gave me a bottle of Bookers. 126 proof? jesus

there's a "what the whiskey you receive indicates about what people think of you" fluffpiece in there

I got this stuff as an office gift fwiw:

http://www.thirstysouth.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/DSC_0069.jpg

you guys are lucky! no one is giving me whiskey :/

yeah, sadly my work is pretty restrictive about alcohol in general, but I suspect my boss would love it if he could contribute to us boozing it up more.

Booker's is one of my favorites

the liquor store guys were having a lively debate about booker's when i went in last night - one guy loves it, other guy thinks it's awful.

i got a bottle of bookers from my boss and the maker's mark 46 from someone who works for me. i'll be enjoying my xmas vacation.

nakh

Connemara Turf Mór Heavily Peated Single Malt

The eagerly waited new peated single malt from Cooley Distillery. Limited in number to around 20,000 bottles.

Heavily peated at around 58 ppm on the phenolic scale. This makes Turf Mór about as peated as Ardbeg and even more smoky than Laphroaig and Lagavulin. Curiously the high level of initial malt peating doesn't always withstand the assault of brewing and distilling, so whilst this is a big smoky monster it still has a certain delicate and fruity character.

Tasting Note:

Wonderfully smoky on the nose. Reminiscent of wet bonfires, lapsang souchon tea, pears and almonds. The palate is light and delicate with fierce smoke and alcohol both launching a two pronged attack on the taste buds. Once the alcohol subsides a clean fresh and fruity character emerges which gradually gives way to lingering dry smokiness. A real joy on the finish, this whiskey seems to go on forever.

£70? i'd rather buy a couple of bottles of ardbeg

Not a fan of Larceny. Or at least I wasn't the one time I was served it.

Got a call on Saturday in the middle of moving, from Binny's.

"Hi, your name was on the Pappy Van Winkle waiting list. Are you still interested?"

"Sure. What do you have left?"

"We have the 10, the 12 and the 15."

"Could I get the 15?"

"Sure, it's yours."

"Wait, didn't you say all those weeks ago that the waiting list was miles long, and that there was really no point?"

"Well, the list was miles long, but we've been steadily going down the list, one bottle per customer at a time."

"Awesome! Thanks."

So you never know.

I'm not a big scotch fan but I had a glass of Laddie 16 last night and that was quite nice.

Looks like Heathrow only stocks cask strength Ardbeg at the moment. Have most of a bottle of the standard Connemara to finish over Christmas which should be fine.