Infectious Charm. Devastating Wit. Below Average Looks.
During a particularly wise and lucid moment at our most recent SWC meeting, I noted to the guys a bit of an evolution in my whisky hobby. In the early days, my buying focus centered on what new things I could taste, both for curiosity and palate development reasons. The particularly obvious attribute of this... Continue Reading →
It appears that a hidden desire exists amongst the whisky fanatic firmament: we all love us a nice peated whisky with a sherry finish. We love lots of other concoctions to be sure, but these smoky sweets do not show up often on the shelf. I seem to remember whisky writer Dominic Roskrow comment in... Continue Reading →
Having missed the Bunnahabhain boat for most of my whisky life I have found myself in preparation for this review not knowing too much about this Islay distillery. I have tried the 12 some time ago and remember very little. A barely smoky, salty malt. In fact, the most prominent factoid available in my mental... Continue Reading →
For the dusty hunters out there in Internet Land, the story of how a man named Jimmy Turner stumbled upon a bottle of his great grandfather Joseph Magnus’ bourbon in his mother’s house in 2007 certainly has its charms. This admittedly remarkable find (at least he didn’t have to pay for it) of a bottle... Continue Reading →
I long knew that Tomatin was a value brand. Inexplicably, I never tried it. I should have. I'm Mr. Value. You have to be in this age of inflated whisky prices. Back when I first got into whisky, you could score Jameson 18 for $70, Glenlivet 18 for $80, Chivas Regal 18 for $60, even... Continue Reading →
At the time of this writing, the SWC is over 6 years old. I'd like to say that the basic beating heart of any given meeting has not changed from when we first started, and that beating heart is sitting around a table and evaluating a new whisky we have not tried before, together. We... Continue Reading →
Peat lovers, or peat freaks, as they are lovingly referred to, are pretty much the closest to opiate addicts as you can get in the whisky community. There is a strange thing that happens in your brain when you first try a hefty peated scotch. If you do not immediately take to it, your first... Continue Reading →
Remember, just because you can blend weird whiskies together, even if you are David Perkins, it certainly doesn't mean you should. Just throwing that out there. Utah based High West Distillery is a mixed bag for me. I seem to like less of their blended expressions of god-like concoctions than others do in our uber... Continue Reading →
Since pretty much everyone in the club is a crawling, creeping cheap-o, we all share an enduring appreciation of the value bottle. Old Forester is one of those said value selections as they produce some decent fairly stuff and request a reasonable price for it. Brown Foreman, owners of the brand, released Old Forester 1897... Continue Reading →
Elijah Craig did not invent bourbon. Chuck Cowdery, Bourbon’s Ballast, said so. Many times. Yet the myth persists, even gently pushed along by Heaven Hill. The push back, not that it would help, has prompted some to claim that maybe not bourbon, but he was the first to age the whiskey in charred barrels. But... Continue Reading →
Not that I am rebelling for the sake of rebelling, but I have never fully participated in the Niagra of reverent praise bourbon enthusiasts offer up to the famed Stitzel-Weller Distillery and the whiskies produced there. The unicorn distillery closed in 1992, and as such the remaining stock was either kept in barrel form (so... Continue Reading →
I’m tempted to say that Ron Swanson was the best thing to ever happen to Lagavulin single malt scotch whisky. But he probably wasn’t, despite the legendary pop culture capital heaped upon the brand due to the popularity of the show Parks and Rec. Even though Swanson is probably one of the most memorable comedy... Continue Reading →
I'm afraid today's look at Lagavulin's DE from 2017 possesses no life changing insights like all the other reviews have. All my fun ideas will be going into the review for the standard 16 in a few days. Bottles like this don't come my way often due to scant availability and price issues. The older... Continue Reading →
Not too much, but I worry a little when we feature malts created solely for use in blends. With exceptions, generally speaking, these bottles have a small share of the malt market, and Google is less than generous in sending us visitors from the world wide web to our appraisals. Every now and then we... Continue Reading →
Pursuant to our time honored and cherished tradition of offering write ups of whiskies that no longer exist, we present unto you a resplendent look at Elijah Craig 12. Formerly a value bottle mainstay of the mighty bourbon hunters, for years Elijah Craig could be procured for under $30. And for a 12 year old... Continue Reading →
The barrel gets all the glory. And I have my suspicions as to why. First of all, and this is especially true for bourbons aged in the cruel inferno of a Kentucky warehouse, up to 70% of a whiskey's flavor makeup comes from maturation in the oak barrel. You can employ exotic finishings, possibly altering... Continue Reading →
We continue our look at the Colonel’s line of whiskies from Buffalo Trace Distillery. We will not recount the painstakingly researched historical details concerning E.H. Taylor’s comically absurd life covered in our review of the small batch (click here for that), so we hope you are not turned off by banality. For slightly less banality,... Continue Reading →
Just the other day I found myself curious about a particularly famous barely variety called Golden Promise and wondered which distilleries malted it, if at all. The timing was perfect as today we are looking at Glengoyne 10 Year Old Single Malt, whose distillery utilizes this interesting variety of Scottish barley. The reason why I... Continue Reading →
This may sound weird, but the day I realized that distillation is primarily a stripping operation, rather than some sort of magical, ethereal infusion of wonder and excitement with beer, that was the day my education really began. After all, the more you distill something, the closer you get to vodka, a spirit which is... Continue Reading →
