Elijah Craig 18 Year Old Bourbon: Pre-Hiatus vs. Post-Hiatus

June 23, 2016 Eric Burke

An Elijah Craig 18 year old bottle that has been empty for 4 years plus a sample from it and a sample from a current bottle that have been empty for 4 days.

I used to work with some amazing people. My wife was going through chemotherapy for ovarian cancer and was suffering from immense bone pain due to it. They put together a collection to get her a night in a hotel with a private hot-tub to help alleviate the pain. It was an immensely nice gesture and very much appreciated.

While we were there I was an attentive errand boy, as I was every time a chemo weekend came up. But there were times when she was sleeping or we were watching tv when I could hop on twitter and spend a little time escaping from the reality we were living by reading about whiskey. And then I read a post from Pops over at Bourbon and Banter that Elijah Craig 18 yer old was going away. I didn’t really care too much. I never cared too much for it, but my wife was very upset. At $45 it was one of her favorite bourbons that wouldn’t break the bank. She likes oak a lot more than I do.

So I did what any good husband would do, I left the hotel to go get two bottles to put away. One I still have, we plan to open it up next year to celebrate 5 years cancer-free. The other we drank pretty quickly, but as always I put aside a few samples in my sample library to have in the future.

It turns out it is now the future. Elijah Craig 18 year is back. It’s almost three times the price, but it has been seen off and on at my local Total Wine. I did not buy it. I didn’t want to spend that much on a whiskey that historically I did not like. But luckily a friend of mine did buy it and knowing that Robin was a fan, gave her a healthy sample. I in turn gave him one of the samples I put away so he could compare. Then I pulled out my other sample so I could compare them as well.

It was a fun tasting. We did it blind in order to gauge which we liked better without any preconceptions being attached. So…is the one we have in the closet better than the one we could find today?

Elijah Craig 18 Year-Old Single Barrel Bourbon Pre-Hiatus Versus Post-Hiatus.

Bourbon A:

Nose: Pear, caramel, oak and baking spices.

Mouth: Light and fruity with lively spices. Pear caramel, baking spices and herbal notes.

Finish: Spicy and warm with lingering herbal and fruity notes.

Thoughts: I would never guess this is 18 years old. It is a lively pour that almost dances across the senses. It is really good. I might even buy this one…if the price was right.

Bourbon B:

Nose: Creme Brûlée, floral notes and dusty oak.

Mouth: A little thin on the mouth feel. Caramel, mint and oak predominate.

Finish: Lingering oak and herbal notes along with a nice burn that sticks around for a while. Much of the flavor comes from the finish on this one.

Thoughts: This is muted and accentuates the oak flavors. It feels old and a bit tired. I don’t know that I’d buy it again based on this bottle. It’s just kinda meh.

So which is which? Can I go buy the energetic, virile, young 18 year old bourbon? Or am I stuck buying a tired, old bourbon at the end of its useful life? Well, I’m happy to say that Bourbon A was the post-hiatus Elijah Craig and that Bourbon B was the pre-hiatus version. And in a rare case of whiskey-math working like regular math, I think the bourbon that costs almost three times as much as it used to, is approximately that much better than it used to be. I’m shocked to say it, but I might even buy one of these if I see it on the shelf. Even at $130. Weird.

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Wild Turkey Diamond Anniversary

February 4, 2016 Eric Burke

Ever pay money for an expensive bourbon only to find out that it’s…not bad? I mean one that is fine, but for the price you were kind of expecting…better? The it’s a decent bourbon, but not for it’s price range sort of thing?

I honestly hope you haven’t. Unfortunately, I have. Numerous times. And I’ve shared them with you. Numerous times. And it saddens me to say that tonight I’m going to be doing it again.

Wild Turkey Diamond Anniversary is a bourbon that I think people were excited about trying before it came out. It was an Wild Turkey expression made up of 13 and 16 year old bourbons. It was put out honor a legend’s 60th anniversary in the business. Everything was set up for this to be a special release.

Then it came out. The reviews were nice, but less than stellar with most of them being something along the lines of what I described above. I decided early on that I wasn’t going to be purchasing it. The MSRP was out of my price range and though I love almost everything Wild Turkey has put out, I had to pass.

Then my wife got auction fever. We were at the Oscar Getz Museum Master Distillers Auction during BourbonFest 2015 when this bottle came up for bid. It came with a set of four nice tumblers. No one was bidding on it and she felt bad. She ended up getting the bottle and the tumblers for $140. A little below MSRP once you toss in the price of four glasses. We figured that it was for charity and any bottle that wasn’t sold wouldn’t help the museum. So she waited until it fell below MSRP and pounced. She was the only bidder.

Wild Turkey Diamond Anniversary

Purchase Info: $140 at BourbonFest Master Distillers Auction (with 4 glasses included), Bardstown, KY

Details: 45.5% ABV. A blend of 13 and 16 year old whiskeys.

Nose: Kind of flat on the nose with sweet fruit and oak.

Mouth: Sweet. Brown sugar, oak and baking spice.

Finish: Lingering oak and caramel flavors. Slight heat and spiciness.

Thoughts: This is a whiskey that either fits your palate or doesn’t. I find it flat and uninspiring while my wife really likes it. Neither of us are looking to buy a second bottle though, not even when Total Wine put it on sale for $89.

To be honest, if I’m going to spend a lot on Wild Turkey, I’d go with Master’s Keep. I actually picked up a second bottle of that when I saw it for $130 (I also saw it all over the place for around $150). If I’m not trying to spend a lot, I like the Rare Breed better than the Diamond and it is less than one third the price. Both of them tend to be more energetic in the mouth than Diamond, which is something I like about Wild Turkey normally.

Diamond is not a bad bourbon. It’s actually quite good. It’s just not $90 to $130 good. For the price and the pedigree, I expected a lot more.

Woodford Reserve Master's Collection 1838 Style White Corn

January 12, 2016 Eric Burke

Once a year, Woodford Reserve releases a new whiskey in its Master’s Collection Line. Each release is a an expression of curiosity and experimentation. Woodford likes to tout its “five sources of flavor: (water, grain, fermentation, distillation and maturation).” In each release of the Master’s Collection they change one of those five things. Previous years have mostly included changing either the grain or the maturation, though there was one year where they did a sweet mash fermentation instead of the typical sour mash.

I’d love to see them come out with a version where they change out the water. Not because I’d want to buy it, necessarily. But I’d love to see every pundit on the internet explode when they release the Woodford Reserve Master’s Collection: Bardstown Water edition for $100.

After changing the maturation last year with a Pinot Noir finish, this year they are continuing the Tick-Tock of changing grain and maturation by changing the grain from yellow corn to white corn. This is exactly the type of experimentation I like. It is a seemingly minor change that may or may not make a huge difference.

Woodford Reserve Master’s Collection: 1838 Style White Corn

Purchase Info: $89.99 for 750mL bottle at McDonald’s Liquors, Minneapolis, MN.

Details: 45.2% ABV

Nose: Juicy tropical fruits which transition to dusty, earthy corn and oak.

Mouth: Dusty corn and oak, cayenne, tropical fruits and baking spices.

Finish: More tropical fruits and then a slightly bitter dusty corn along with a lingering gentle heat.

Thoughts: This isn’t terribly different than the normal release of Woodford Reserve. It’s a little rougher around the edges. It has a bit more earthiness and funk to it. It is certainly more interesting, though in this case that isn’t exactly a good thing since I find the regular release tastier in its understated way.

This is a whiskey where I find my opinion changing as the conditions I’m drinking it in change. I liked it the first time I had it in a normal rocks glass. When I did the tasting notes, I hated it. I wrote things in my notes like: “it’s hard to pay $100 for interesting when you realize you need to choke down the rest of the bottle.” As I normally do, I’m having a little more as I write about it (drinking not tasting) and my opinion has swung back toward my initial reaction.

It’s ok. It’s interesting. It’s also overpriced since it tastes like a rougher and less refined version of the regular release. But for all of that, it is mildly recommended if you like seeing the results of experimentation. Because I think this will tend to be a like it or hate it sort of whiskey, I’d try it in a bar first. It’s too pricey to just flat out recommend.

Blood Oath, Pact No. 1

October 8, 2015 Eric Burke

Bourbon is big business. And even though it has a reputation as a cheaper option to scotch, it always has been. People throughout most of the history of this country have made a very good living distilling, aging, buying and selling this whiskey that we all love so much.

For a long time, bourbon was cheap. Nobody wanted it. Whiskies aged to extreme age often just got redistilled into something else, vodka or fuel. Bourbons of middling age, six to eight years old, regularly made it into products that were nominally around four years old. It was good if you were a bourbon drinker, but in honesty almost no one was. You could barely give the stuff away.

Not to worry though, those days are firmly in the past. These days everyone wants bourbon. The more expensive, the better. Some days it feels like taste doesn’t matter nearly as much as price. And like good businesses, producers have given the folks what they want. Sure, most of the old value labels have stuck around, but almost everyone has gotten into the Ultra-Premium game. Wild Turkey has it’s $150 Master’s Keep, Diageo has it’s Orphan Barrels, And now Luxco, makers of Everclear and bourbons such as Ezra Brooks and Rebel Yell has taken a turn at bat.

Even though Blood Oath felt like it was trying a bit too hard (it’s proof is blood temperature after all), I had some hopes that Blood Oath would be a decent bourbon. I’ve been a fan of a lot of the labels in Luxco’s Ezra Brooks line and even liked one of the new brand extensions for Rebel Yell. They obviously spent a decent amount on the new packaging. It is beautiful. They were trying something new by blending wheated and rye bourbons. All signs that a company is ready to make something special. Tossing a brand new bourbon out with a $100 price tag is a statement that they think people will want to buy it.

Blood Oath, Pact 1

Purchase info: $98.95, 750 mL bottle. Blue Max Liquors, Burnsville, MN.

Details: A blend of two rye bourbons and a wheated bourbon. 49.3% ABV.

Nose: This has a very sweet nose, leading with maple and clove. That is followed by wet, old wood and a slight fruitiness that balances things out nicely.

Mouth: This tastes almost nothing like it smells. Where the nose was sweet and a light, the mouth is heavy and on the dry side. The descriptor I immediately think of is “dusty.” It has the feeling of an old, closed attic where things have been stored for too long. It’s not a wet attic since there is no mildew, but rather old boxes and dust. After that I get maple, cocoa powder, a slight fruitiness (that isn’t nearly enough to balance the overpowering dust) and a good bit of heat.

Finish: Warm and of medium length. The maple and slight fruitiness are carried over from the palate and transition to more dusty cocoa.

Thoughts: After tasting this, it feels like Luxco was making a cash grab. Wow! Disappointing. The nose takes me one direction and the palate takes me directly in the opposite direction with few notes overlapping. As I stated above, I’m a fan of the various bourbons in the Ezra Brooks line because they are tasty and a good value. This has neither of those things going for it. I found it heavy, closed, dusty and flat. For the price I paid for it, I can’t recommend it. It was an interesting idea, but is way overpriced and honestly just not that good. Hoping that a little oxygen might help this, I tried it at various times along a two month period until now when my last few pours yielded the review samples. No real change.

In short, the bottle says that “this rare whiskey shall never again be made.” To my palate that’s a good thing. For the price I expected amazing. Instead, it’s one of the few bourbons I’ve regretted buying.

Dad’s Hat Pennsylvania Rye Whiskey Finished in Vermouth Barrels

September 10, 2015 Eric Burke

The label of Dad's Hat Rye finished in Vermouth Barrels

I, by nature, am a bit of a hermit. I like my desk. I like my office chair. I like sitting in my office. Which is a good thing since I now work from home and spend a lot of time in that spot. Luckily for my ever expanding waistline, my wife is pretty good at getting me to leave my office.

But every once in a while she needs to travel for work. When that happens, I get to indulge my tendency to be alone in my office for every waking moment. Knowing that I can work for 12-15 hours at a time if I don’t have anything to distract me, she feels a little guilty leaving me alone for multiple days. To make it up to me, a bottle of whiskey will often find it’s way into her luggage on the way home. Which is how I ended up with a bottle of Dad’s Hat Pennsylvania Rye Whiskey Finished in Vermouth Barrels.

Since this one is not available here in Minnesota, I’d love to spin you a yarn about how I went searching for this whiskey all over the country and finally, finally found it tucked away in the corner of an old mom and pop liquor store in the backwoods of a sparsely populated state. I’d love to do that, but it isn’t true. My wife walked into the Party Source back in June and bought it. That’s all there is to the story.

But why did I ask her to pick up this particular bottle of whiskey to bring home? Well, I seemed to remember that people I think highly of said nice things about it when it was released. I love Manhattans so the idea of vermouth and rye whiskey was appealing. And even if it wasn’t good, I figured it might well be interesting. Plus I felt like it would be a good one to share. I know a guy locally who has a thing for young rye.

But here’s the thing, when I got the bottle i noticed it was 9 months old. All of a sudden I went from excited to try it to wondering what I would be doing with the rest of the bottle. I mean, I find Willet’s two year old rye to be too young. Immediately upon opening it, I poured some to share.

A little later I got a tweet back from him. “Dad's Hat Vermouth Finished Rye? Not my favorite thing.” Not having tried it myself yet I asked if it tasted like a 9 month old whiskey. His answer?

“It tasted young but not that young. And I thought it had a hint of vermouth from a 10 yr old bottle lost in the back of a cabinet”

Now I was actually more intrigued than scared.

Dad’s Hat Pennsylvania Rye Whiskey Finished in Vermouth Barrels

Purchase Info: $41.99, 750 mL. The Party Source, Bellevue, KY.

Details: 47% ABV. Aged 6 months. Finished for an additional 3 months in Vya sweet vermouth barrels.

Nose: This is an odd nose. Very grain forward (as to be expected from a nine month old whiskey). Under that is black tea, caramel and hints of cardamom and celery seed.

Mouth: Showing it’s youth it has the raw spiciness of a very young rye along with a lot of grassy mint. Hints of the vermouth barrel finish play along the sides of my tongue.

Finish: Warm but fairly short. The vinous vermouth flavor really shows here. Hints of cinnamon and cardamom reappear.

Thoughts: Not being a fan of really young ryes, this is not quite to my palate. That said, it feels like it was a nicely crafted rye before the barrel finishing and I hope they have some stuck away in big barrels for the future. (I see they have a two year old distillery only release.) As it stands, I probably can’t recommend it unless you are a big fan of really young ryes and even then would suggest trying it in a bar before dropping $40 on a bottle.

Two Stars Bourbon

August 18, 2015 Eric Burke

Here we have a bourbon that I have made fun of every time I walked though the bourbon section of Total Wine. I mean it’s hard not to.

“Only two stars? Wow, don’t set your sights too high there.”

“Two stars? Wait, is this an actual honest bourbon label?”

“Two Stars. Because four stars costs too damn much and you wouldn’t appreciate them anyway.”

Stuff like that. But in my never ending quest to find bourbon diamonds in the rough, I finally decided to take the leap and buy it. Before I did though, I picked up the bottle and took a hard look at what I was buying.

First off, it looks like the same bottle that Weller and Very Old Barton come in. I’ve seen other store brands made by Sazerac that use that same bottle so that was something. Second it is an 86 proof, straight bourbon with no age statement. So that means it is at least four years old. Seems ok so far.

Made by Clear Spring Distilling Co. in Louisville. I admit this through me for a loop at first, but a quick search lead me to this: Clear Springs Distilling Company???. And then the COLA. Yep, it seems that Clear Springs is an assumed business name that Sazerac uses to make house brands.

The bourbon at least stood a shot of being ok, so I picked it up. Unlike normal, immediately upon returning home I opened it and took a sniff straight from the top of the bottle. I was really leery of this one for some reason, maybe it was the name. It smelled ok, so I splashed a little in a glass and took a sip…and was shocked at how not terrible it was.

Two Stars Handcrafted Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey

Purchase Info: $17.99, 750 mL. Total Wine, Burnsville, MN

Details: 43% ABV. Produced by at the Barton distillery by Sazerac.

Nose: Caramel, vanilla, cinnamon gum, mint.

Mouth: Starts with a nice spicy tingle that dances across my tongue. Cinnamon and cloves. Dry, with more than a touch of oak.

Finish: Lingering tingle in the mouth, dry with mint and oak.

Thoughts: Well, this certainly lives up to it’s name. I don’t care if Total Wine claims it is named for the municipal flag of Louisville, this seems to have been named with it’s mark of quality built in. It is not a four-star bourbon. It is however a very solid two-star. It works well as a mixer and can even function neat in a pinch. It’s not a bad price either at less than $20 for a 750 mL.

Overall, keeping all that in mind, I’d recommend giving this one a shot. You might like it and if the worst that happens is that you are left with a bottle to use for making cocktails, that isn’t so bad either.

UPDATE: A previous version of this story incorrectly hypothesized that this bourbon might have been produced at Buffalo Trace. They have reached out to inform me that it is instead made at the company's Barton Distillery in Bardstown, KY. The story has been updated to reflect that change.

New Riff's New Make from a Rye Mash

August 11, 2015 Eric Burke

Whiskey distilled from a Rye Mash, by New Make Distilling, Newport, KY

There was a time, not too long ago, that the Party Source in Bellevue, KY was a whiskey geek’s heaven. An online store that had practically everything and who would ship it right to your door. Unfortunately those days are over. A few years ago, Kentucky passed a law outlawing shipping by liquor stores and in the intervening years, the Party Source has started to come back down to earth.

Don’t get me wrong, they are still a good liquor store, but unless you are going through Cincinnati, they are pretty far from your standard-fare bourbon tourism.

This however might be changing if you are a fan of touring craft distilleries. A few years ago, the owner of the Party Source seems to have gotten the bug to move from retailer to producer and built the New Riff distillery. Right in the Party Source parking lot. (If you are wondering about the three-tier system ramifications, he sold the Party Source to the employees, making it an Employee-Owned company.) He hired Larry Ebersold, former Master Distiller at (the distillery now known as) MGPi as a consultant and got down to business. So now, you can go on a distillery tour and get some shopping done all in the same trip.

And given the intertwined history of these two companies, it’s not too surprising to find that New Riff New Make is available at the Party Source. The only surprise is the price. Craft distillers often need to charge aged whiskey prices for unaged whiskey just to keep the lights on. In this case the 375 mL bottle I bought was only $15. Not too bad at all. The only question remaining is if it is any good.

New Riff New Make distilled from a Rye Mash

Purchase Info: $14.99, 375 mL bottle. The Party Source, Bellevue, KY

Details: 45% ABV. Distilled from a Rye mash. Positioned as a vodka alternative on the neck hanger.

Nose: Buttery. Hard butterscotch candies. Faint mint underneath.

Mouth: White sugar sweetness. Buttery toffee, grapefruit pith and mint.

Finish: Not hot but it has some lingering ethanol flavors. Mint, dill and bitter grapefruit are there too.

Thoughts: I certainly wouldn’t sit down to a glass of this served neat, but then again I wouldn’t do that with a glass of vodka either. I’m going to guess that neat is not the way this was intended to be consumed. And as such, I’m looking forward to making cocktails with it. So much so, that I moved it out of the whiskey room and into my cocktail-making cabinet.

Overall not a bad product as is, and I am certainly going to want to grab a bottle when it has spent it’s four years in wood. For now though, unless you like new make (or are just curious like I was) I'd give this a pass. I am impressed enough with it though, that next time I’m through Cincinnati, I hope to grab a tour on my way to do a little shopping.

Revisiting the Old Grand-Dads

June 30, 2015 Eric Burke

Three bottles of Old Grand-Dad at various proofs

Sometimes circumstances beyond your control put you in a position where you realize: “Hey, I’ve got bottles of three different styles of Old Grand-Dad open.”

Now I know what you’re thinking. “Eric, you’ve limited yourself to enough room for 22 open bottles of American whiskey, why would you have three different styles of Old Grand-Dad open?”

Or at least you would be asking that if this were a local radio commercial. I feel sorry for those guys. I worked with some folks who needed to write or record that stuff at my last job. It’s hard to get something good approved sometimes.

Anyway, it’s still a good question. How on Earth did I end up with this? I do have limited space, it seems odd to devote a little more than one eighth of it to a single brand.

Well, the 80 proof is still left over from the Bottom Shelf Brackets I did in March. It’s almost gone, but still seems to be hanging around. The 114 is one of my favorite sub-$25 dollar bourbons and I pick it up anytime I see it on sale.

And the 100 proof Bonded? Well, I picked it up for the blog, around the time of the label change thinking that a label change might have signified something greater. Reading the folks who also had that thought, made me think that we were all mistaken and that there was little if anything different inside the bottle. So there it sat. Until I realized that for the first time, I actually had all three Old-Grand-Dad’s in the house. Having fallen in love with the 114, I haven’t had Old Grand-Dad Bonded in the house since late 2011/early 2012 and I was curious to revisit it after a span of a few years.

Plus I thought it might be an interesting chance to explore the effects of dilution. Three bottles of supposedly the same bourbon diluted to three different strengths, bottled and given time to mingle. I know there might be barrel choices that influence things, but eh, it’s for fun, not science this time, right?

Three Old Grand-Dads

Purchase info:

80 proof: Ace Spirits, Hopkins, MN. $13.99 750 mL

100 proof Bonded: Ace Spirits, Hopkins, MN. $22.99 1 L

114 Proof: Ace Spirits, Hopkins, MN. $24.99 750 mL

Nose:

80 proof: Fruity graininess, sweet cinnamon, a hint of mint and some oak

100 proof Bonded: Less pronounced grain, some mint, vanilla and honey sweetness along with oak dryness.

114 proof: Initially very sweet. Some alcohol burn. Mint, toffee, yeasty bread dough.

Thoughts: Very interesting to see what the amount of dilution does to the nose of a whiskey. In this case, the higher the water content, the more pronounced the fruity and grainy notes. As an experiment, I watered down some of the 114 proof to 80. The nose was almost indistinguishable from the bottled 80 proof.

Mouth:

80 proof: Cinnamon gum, mint and oak dryness

100 proof Bonded: Sweet vanilla, oak, baking spices, anise.

114 proof: Hot and sweet, oak, hints of cherries and cocoa.

Finish:

80 proof: Decent length. Sweet and spicy. Lingering oak dries the mouth.

100 proof Bonded: Heat that settles in the chest and stays there a while. Lingering anise. Mouth numbing.

114 proof: Very warm and long lasting. Lingering dry oak.

Thoughts: I’m guessing barrel selection plays as big a part as proof does on the palate with these. For instance the 114 proof watered down to 80 proof just tastes like watered down 114 proof. Overall I like the 100 and 114 proof much more than the 80 proof. The 80 proof is merely meh. There is a smaller difference between the 100 and 114 though, the 114 still reigns as my favorite sub $25 bourbon.

Blog

Elijah Craig 18 Year-Old Single Barrel Bourbon Pre-Hiatus Versus Post-Hiatus.

Bourbon A:

Bourbon B:

Wild Turkey Diamond Anniversary

Woodford Reserve Master’s Collection: 1838 Style White Corn

Blood Oath, Pact 1

Dad’s Hat Pennsylvania Rye Whiskey Finished in Vermouth Barrels

Two Stars Handcrafted Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey

New Riff New Make distilled from a Rye Mash

Three Old Grand-Dads

Purchase info:

Nose:

Mouth:

Finish: