whiskey

Scotch is best neat or with only a tiny splash of water in most cases, though. If I'm going to drink bourbon straight, I usually throw an ice cube in.

yeah i never put ice in bourbon pretty much (unless it's an old fashioned obv) so i get used to the higher abv

i like both scotch and bourbon but prefer bourbon. And i dont think it has to do with any relative sweetness, because i dont have a sweet tooth at all.

or doesn't have any teeth at all...

Operative word being "relative" sweetness. With bourbon you get hints of caramel. WIth scotch you get hints of, dunno, dirt, I guess. More vegetal vs. spice.

i mean this all comes down to personal palates but i've had sherried scotches (balvenie doublewood, glenfarclas 12) that seem so sweet to me!

I have a bottle of rum barrel-aged scotch stashed at a friend's place that is pretty good but not all that sweet, comparatively

buzza otm, thats why i don't really enjoy drinking something like makers mark str8 up, its got that cloying aftertaste

makers is kind of...not great though

makers is the attempted platonic ideal of "bourbon." no one is going to say it's the best, no one will say it's the worst, no real complaints from serving it, and it meets all definitions of a reasonable product

also available most places and not embarrassing to shout for across a noisy bar

it's also in the $ sweet spot, too. it's not swilly, but it's not something you're gonna get docked for financially. kind of the '90s RHCPs of bar drinks

bottled by anthony kiedis

sealed with a waxy flea kiss

served in a sock.

Triple sock filtered.

tried the bulleit rye 95 - pretty sweet tbh

sweet sweet?

sweet sweet

i often find cognacs a bit sweet

scotch prices in america are alas far more reasonable than those of fancy non-EU liquors here, else i would try more

Has anyone else been following the ongoing Buffalo Trace insanity, not just the Van Winkle stuff but the so-called "Antique Collection" as well? Prices have gone utterly bonkers.

yeah, I think it'll sort itself out in the same way Lagavulin did - it gets talked up in a lot of circles, novices seek it out as collection worthy or a name thing, price makes the former core audience move to other comparable products, prices level back out.

Unfortunate that a product with a 4 to 23 year production cycle is so fundamentally ill equipped to ride out supply/demand cycles.

to be fair to them, whiskey production has ramped up in the last few years since the trend was anticipated, but demand for bourbon in 2012 is still outstripping the supply

I hear that Knob Creek are launching a rye. Has anyone encountered it yet?

Has anyone else been following the ongoing Buffalo Trace insanity, not just the Van Winkle stuff but the so-called "Antique Collection" as well? Prices have gone utterly bonkers.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, April 4, 2012 2:38 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh definitely. spring van winkle allocation was pretty rough, i think at least one store owner straight up lied to me about their allocation. btac thankfully is nowhere near as bad, and the only van winkle worth coveting at this point is the 20 year and the rye.

I want to say it was less than a year ago that I was still able to find the 15 for $50. Now it goes for, what, $200+ dollars?

Do any of you have any good recommendation for any of the single barrel small batch whiskeys being churned out, like the Knob Creek single barrel? Has anyone tried the Woodford Reserve Double Oak?

yeah idk last time i saw van winkle sitting on the shelves around here was winter 2009. it's been a dogfight since then.

knob creek sb is cool if you like knob creek....at 120 proof i thought it was kind of a fatiguing whiskey. i don't like the creek that much.

not tried the woodford yet. at this point i'm skeptical. best sb's imo are still coming from four roses--i haven't checked recently but am guessing binny's carries all the recipes.

I find all the various Four Roses combos kind of exhausting. Too expensive to experiment. I guess the generic sb is around $40, and the small batch $30. But everything else tops $50.

Had Angel's Envy?

4 letters for you: OESQ

no angel's envy that i've seen in these parts, unfortunately.

I cant find Van Winkle anywhere. Havent had it in years.

I can only find Winkle 23, which is priced on a good day what the other bottles go on the secondary market.

i picked up a bottle of bruichladdich 10-year and glenmorangie artein yesterday... the artein (a blend of 15 & 21 year finished in wine casks) is really good, and way richer-tasting than the original. not sure about the bruichladdich - may need to try it with water. every review i read RAVES about it, but it tasted kind of waxy and flat to me. it's not bad at all, just not that exciting.

I remembered that there was a shortage of rittenhouse 100 so when I saw a bottle today I grabbed it

Just opened a bottle of Ardbeg 10, hoping that it will considerably improve my quality of life.

well, has it?

I'll tell you in the morning...

Rittenhouse abounds here. Amazing how much distro differs from place to place.

ardbeg 10 is a beast

Ardbeg is my favorite scotch. All the bottlings are great but the Uigeadail's my current preference.

I've been wanting to pick up the Uigeadail for a long time, but I've held off until I fly and can get it relatively reasonably at the excellent whisky shop in Glasgow airport; sadly, lack of holidays for several years has made it quite some wait already...

I think it's helping. At the very least I'm not wanting to go to bed and instead am wishing the night were longer, to give more time for enjoying such fine whisky! Maybe that's not a good thing though.

i have no whisky tonight and i would suggest your quality of life is better than mine upon discovering that even the shitawful supermarket brandy is all gone too

next whisky im gonna get is cask strength tho, probably an islay

got a bottle of some family produced stuff from a castle in clare, its good, v irish but soft with it.

buffalo trace is a fantastic bargain for the money imo

finished off my ardbeg airigh nam beist two nights ago. it was cool but i only felt like drinking it once every six months.

keep wanting to buy another bottle of Bakers

i'm having jameson with my müsli, it's not bad

Warning! Warning! Rye shortage is imminent!

They're predicting a two year (relative) drought, followed by a market flood, so stock up now.