Remus Gatsby Reserve, 2025

I’d like to thank Ross & Squibb Distillery and their PR partners for providing this review sample with no strings attached.

Look at that photo above. Can you believe that was taken in mid-November in Minnesota? I mean, we have a reputation as one of the coldest places in the continental US. Our winters are feared in southern states. So much so that when it was 50 degrees and damp in Kentucky one fall, I was teased by friends who thought I would have been used to it. (Not likely in early September.) But no, we are still doing great. I finally had to dig out a light jacket to take a pup for a walk today, now that the temps are consistently under 50 degrees in the afternoon. With climate change, Minnesota winters just aren’t what they are reported to be.

Ignore this post of mine from 2019 entitled: “HOLY F**K! IT WAS COLD LAST WEEK!” where I froze bourbon solid by leaving it outside overnight. Yep, don’t even pay attention to that one. So now that the weather report is over, let’s move on to sports… er… the bourbon report. (Though seriously, if an adult from further south than Missouri has a star football player in their life who is afraid to play college football in Minnesota because of the weather, you should especially ignore that damn post above.)

Tonight we are taking a look at the latest special release in the George Remus line. This one is the 2025 edition of Remus Gatsby Reserve. We last looked at this one back in 2023, and I said of it: “This is as close to a heart rating as I can give based on the price. It is tasty enough to get a heart when judged without context… That said, if I were to put 5 ‘reallys’ in the statement ‘I really like this,’ it would sum up my feeling accurately.” So when they offered a sample to taste, I jumped on it. Here is what the producer had to say about it:

Released to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the publication of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s legendary novel, “The Great Gatsby,” Remus Gatsby Reserve is bottled at 102.8 proof (51.4% ABV) and will be offered in ultra-limited quantities in October at a minimum suggested retail price of $199.99 per 750mL bottle.

“2025 marks the centennial of ‘The Great Gatsby,’ so we wanted to make this year’s expression of Remus Gatsby Reserve absolutely epic,” said Ross & Squibb Distillery Master Distiller Ian Stirsman. “We hand-selected our finest 15-year-old straight bourbon whiskey barrels from our reserves and expertly blended them to create a legendary pour. This year’s release showcases Remus Bourbon at its best.” 

Let’s dig in.

Remus Gatsby Reserve, 2025

Purchase Info: This sample was sent at no charge for review purposes. The suggested retail price is $199.99 per 750 mL bottle.

Price per Drink (50 mL): $13.33

Details: 51.4% ABV. 15 years old.

Nose: Caramel, oak, cherry, and vanilla.

Mouth: Spicy with notes of oak, cinnamon, cherry, caramel, and vanilla.

Finish: Medium length and spicy with notes of cherry, vanilla, oak, and baking spice.

Thoughts: This is delicious. If I were willing to spend $200 on a single bottle, this would top the list. As it is, I will stand in front of it and debate whether I want to spend that much until my wife vetoes the purchase on principle. It really is just so good. It has a thick, rich mouthfeel, nice spice levels, and the cherry/vanilla notes are complemented beautifully by the oak and cinnamon. All in all, this is another fantastic bourbon from Ross & Squibb.

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Oakspire Bourbon Barrel Ale from New Belgium Brewing and Four Roses

I’d like to thank Four Roses, New Belgium Brewing, and their PR teams for providing this sample with no strings attached.

I may have adopted Minnesota as my home, but my formative years were spent in Wisconsin. Home of beer, cheese, and those who consume lots of both. And let me tell you, boy, did I. Before I moved away twenty years ago, beer was the only alcohol I consumed. Occasionally, a glass of wine, but beer was my drink of choice. But then I moved, and a funny thing happened. Since, at the time, you could only buy beer in a liquor store—and liquor stores were forced to be closed on Sundays (well, if you didn’t want 3.2 beer)—I was forced to branch out. And branch out I did. There’s a straight line between Minnesota's lack of Sunday sales pre-2017 and the birth of this site.

However, even though I drank a lot less beer overall, I still really enjoyed trying new ones. If I hadn’t had it before, I wanted it. Though I’ve greatly tapered off in recent years, I still have over 1,500 unique beers checked into my Untappd profile—just over 100 new beers per year on average. Not too shabby.

Anyway, all of that was to explain why there’s a beer review on a bourbon blog. Mostly, because I like beer. And since Four Roses was nice enough to offer a sample of their recent collaboration with New Belgium, there was no way I could say no. One of my favorite bourbon makers and a brewery that I enjoy a lot of beer from. It seemed like it was made just for me. That is, if I liked barrel-aged beers… but we’ll get to that later. Here’s what the press release has to say about the process behind this beer:

• Four Roses collects charred oak chips from inside their bourbon barrels, which contain caramelized wood sugars that add notes of brown sugar, vanilla, and toffee, and add color to the whiskey while it ages.

• A barrel maker in Minnesota toasts a custom blend of oak spirals which are then soaked in Four Roses’ bourbon.

• New Belgium's master brewing engineers spent months figuring out exactly how to construct a series of custom, stainless-steel vessels to hold the charred oak and wood spirals to infuse the beer.

• New Belgium's high-rye base ale is circulated through these vessels during maturation, imparting the beautiful flavor notes from the charred oak and bourbon-soaked spirals.

Ok, lets pour a cold one and see how this tastes.

Oakspire Bourbon Barrel Ale

Purchase Info: This sample was provided at no cost for review purposes. It is available at my local liquor store for $13.99 for a six-pack.

Nose: Very biscuity with caramel and a faint hint of pine.

Mouth: Caramel, malty, biscuity, nutty, and you can certainly taste the bourbon and barrel influences.

Thoughts: Ok, so first thing to get on the table: I don’t usually like barrel-aged beers. I find them too sweet. I like a bitter beer with only enough sweetness to balance it out a bit. My go-to pour these days is still a hazy IPA. I like that tropical flavor. That, or a sour. I love a good sour beer. They’re very refreshing. But the good news is that my wife really enjoys barrel-aged beers. So, in a break from tradition, I decided to ask her to give her thoughts:

I like it. While it’s still sweet and boozy, what I particularly enjoy about this one is that it isn’t nearly as sweet or boozy as other barrel-aged beers I’ve had. It’s got a hint of bourbon, but you can still taste the beer. Sometimes they get overwhelmed by the barrel.

There you have it. Wife approved. And I have to agree, I also like this more than other barrel-aged beers I’ve had. Especially ice-cold. Once it warms up, it gets a bit too sweet for me. I don’t have the biggest sweet tooth, though.

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Russell’s Reserve Single Rickhouse - Camp Nelson E, 2025

I’d like to thank Wild Turkey and their entire PR team for providing this with no strings attached.

Look at the top of this page. Right there under the logo, you’ll see a tagline that I feel sums up how I see this site: “The Irreverent Home of Frugal Bourbon Drinkers Since 2012.” Irreverent because I don’t take bourbon very seriously. When I started this site, that was a rarity in the online bourbon fandom, and I felt it needed to be called out. At the end of the day, it’s something tasty meant to make your life a little more enjoyable. Frugal because it’s only since about 2019 that I stopped living paycheck to paycheck—finally being able to keep a paycheck’s worth of money into savings on a semi-regular basis. I literally couldn’t afford to review things that cost a lot of money unless they came as samples.

See, it’s no exaggeration to say that my wife and I grew up in poverty. I’ve mentioned this before, but we both have memories of standing in line waiting for handouts of government cheese, fruits, and vegetables at the local VFW. I didn’t create a memory of living in a house without wheels until I was an adult in my first apartment after my first year of college (I’m not counting the dorms for this, though you could). That apartment was so poorly maintained that there were holes in the siding, and we slept on a used mattress and box spring that we found behind the local furniture store. Add in a young child—the result of a teenage pregnancy—and you might be surprised to see either of us taking on the debt to go to college. Luckily for both of us, the amount of debt needed in the ’90s was much less than what kids today have to take on, especially for poor kids who could also qualify for federal grants in addition to the more standard student loans. Still, I didn’t spend more than one year at the University of Minnesota before dropping out for financial reasons. It took four years of factory work to get back into school at the much less expensive local branch of the University of Wisconsin system.

I preface this review with this information not because I think we should get “attaboys” for us scraping and clawing our way to a place where we can relax a little (a place that I honestly would have called “rich” when I was a teenager), but because I know that someone is going to see that tagline and wonder just what the fuck I’m doing reviewing a $300 bottle of bourbon. And that’s a fine question. I’ve been asking myself the same thing since I saw the price of the bottle in the press release that came with the sample. The answer is simply that I didn’t see the price before I requested the sample. And being frugal means being good with your resources. I have the sample here. It would be wasteful not to review it. So with my hand-wringing out of the way, let’s move on to the actual whiskey, shall we?

Russell’s Reserve Single Rickhouse – Camp Nelson E is the fourth release in their Rickhouse Collection. Each release is pulled from one rickhouse to highlight the differences between them. According to the press release:

Award-winning Russell’s Reserve introduces Single Rickhouse 2025 – Camp Nelson E, the highly anticipated fourth addition to its acclaimed Single Rickhouse Collection. The Collection explores whiskey “terroir", and how the exact location of the rickhouse - an often-overlooked detail, influences the whiskey’s final character. Now available in select markets, the 2025 edition from Camp Nelson E explores an entirely different environmental profile than the past releases – one shaped by shade, airflow, and cooler, slower aging conditions.When it came to exploring this year’s release, Master Distiller Eddie Russell and his team turned to Camp Nelson E, an iconic, 1946-built rickhouse tucked deep among the trees on Camp Nelson’s property edge. Located closer to the Kentucky River than the other rickhouses on the Camp Nelson campus, Camp Nelson E runs North-South along the river, subjecting it to different wind patterns off the river and more consistent shading throughout the year. Its unique positioning, deeper-set on the property, and dirt-floor “basement” level creates one of the coolest microclimates on the grounds – a stark contrast to the sun-drenched heights of Camp Nelson B from last year’s release.

So let’s get to the notes, shall we?

Russell’s Reserve Single Rickhouse - Camp Nelson E, 2025

Purchase Info: This sample was provided at no cost for review purposes. The suggested retail price is $300 for a 750 mL bottle.

Price per Drink (50 mL): $20.00

Details: 64% ABV. Non-chill filtered. Matured on Floor 5 of Rickhouse E.

Nose: Cinnamon, clove, toffee, fig, molasses, oak.

Mouth: Very spicy with notes of caramel, floral vanilla, cinnamon, clove, brown sugar, green apple, and oak.

Finish: Long and very warm. Lingering notes of cinnamon, green apple, and oak.

Thoughts: Right off the bat, this is a beautiful, deep, rich amber color. The nose is rich and complex. It’s hot in the mouth with a nice mouthfeel, and the flavors work together extremely well. The finish is long and satisfying. Overall, this is a fantastic whiskey—and if it were half the price, I’d be doing everything in my power to get a bottle. However, as mentioned above, BourbonGuy.com is the home of the frugal bourbon drinker. So we need to mention that $300 price tag here. Not only is that well outside what I’d consider paying for a bottle of bourbon, it’s also outside my ability to pay that much for a single bottle. And I’m guessing it’s out of many of yours as well. So even if I see this on a shelf, that’s where it’ll stay. I really like this bourbon, but I have a hard time recommending anyone spend that much money on a bottle of bourbon in this—or any—economy.

It’s things like this that make me wonder if, over the course of this site’s life, we’ve gone from bourbon being disrespected because it was too cheap to officially jumping the shark on pricing. Charging $200 to $300 MSRP for a bottle of bourbon is becoming a trend and is certainly a choice by the industry. This is the first sample I’ve gotten from Wild Turkey, and after this, I’m guessing it’ll be the last they offer. I’m still a Wild Turkey fanboy, but I doubt the PR folks will appreciate me spending over a thousand words questioning the industry’s pricing strategy using Wild Turkey as an example. I mean, people are already moving to other spirits, or away from alcohol altogether. I can’t imagine that pricing things like this will help the long-term outlook of the bourbon industry. But what do I know? I’m not an MBA. I’m just a poor kid who grew up scarred by, and never forgetting, where he started.

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Cedar Ridge Double Barrel Iowa Bourbon Whiskey, Batch 4

I’d like to thank the folks at Cedar Ridge Distillery for sending this sample with no strings attached.

Last month, while I was away on vacation, I received a package. Now picture this: I’m on vacation and get a notification from my doorbell that a package is being delivered (that’s a sentence I’m glad I don’t have to explain to my younger self…). My daughter, home on her lunch break to let the dogs out and not knowing that I’m watching, accepts the package and sets it aside for when I get home. At this point, I have no idea what it is and have to wait an entire week to find out. I was alive with curiosity. But because I was on vacation, I had to put that aside and wait. The only thing worse than unfulfilled curiosity for me is having a surprise spoiled.

It turned out to be a surprise bottle of bourbon, which is always a welcome surprise. I mean, honestly, if you’re going to be graced with unannounced gifts, isn’t bourbon one of the better ones you could be graced with?

So what is this bourbon that so unexpectedly showed up on my doorstep? That would be Batch 4 of Cedar Ridge Distillery’s Double Barrel Bourbon. According to the product website, this bourbon has a mashbill of 74% corn, 14% malted rye, and 12% malted barley. It’s scheduled for release on November 7th, 2025, and has an MSRP of $59.99 for a 750 mL bottle. Here’s what the producer had to say about it:

For this annual release, we transferred our original Iowa bourbon into a second, new American oak barrel to capture the full-bodied flavors of its freshly charred staves. The secondary finishing cask draws out the bold qualities of our classic bourbon and the rich flavors of Iowa corn.

So let’s see how this tastes, shall we?

Cedar Ridge Double Barrel Iowa Bourbon Whiskey, Batch 4

Purchase Info: This bottle was provided by the producer for review purposes and at no charge. The suggested retail price is $59.99 for a 750 mL bottle.

Price per Drink (50 mL): $4.00

Details: 52.5% ABV. Mashbill: 74% corn, 14% malted rye, and 12% malted barley.

Nose: Cinnamon, vanilla, caramel, along with the boozy/oaky smell of a dusty rickhouse.

Mouth: Grain forward with notes of vanilla, caramel, black tea, and cinnamon.

Finish: Medium in length and warmth. Lingering notes of black pepper, cinnamon, and bitter oak.

Thoughts: Initially, I was unsure whether I liked this or if it was off-putting. After sitting with it a bit, I realized the part that threw me was the strong, almost bitter grain notes hiding under the sweetness of that first sip. It doesn’t help that I usually don’t like malted rye in my bourbon, so having a lot of grain flavors that include that tends to give me pause. I was so unsure whether I liked this or not that I set the tasting aside to revisit it another day. On the second try, I put aside the Glencairn I normally use for notes and went with a rocks glass instead. A rocks glass is my preferred way to drink whiskey, so when I need to give something another look, that’s how I do it. Having done so, I found myself quite enjoying the Double Barrel Bourbon. If pressed on whether I’d purchase it for myself, I’d probably pass—$60 is a lot for a bourbon I didn’t instantly like. So this one gets a like from me, but I could also see where some folks might not.

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If you want to support our work at BourbonGuy.com, please consider a one-time donation at ko-fi.com/bourbonguy or paypal.me/BourbonGuy. Or you could buy some merch that I’ve designed and/or built (tasting journals, t-shirts, stickers, pins, signs, posters, and more) at BourbonGuyGifts.com. Use code BOURBONGUYREADER at checkout for 5% off any order of $50 or more.

Yellowstone Limited Edition, 2025

I’d like to thank the folks at Limestone Branch, Lux Row, Ross & Squibb, and their PR partners for sending this sample with no strings attached.

It truly is fall in Minnesota. Last night we had our first frost of the season. Meaning, of course, that there were plants in the garden that had every bit of produce plucked from them, herbs on the deck that were brought into the house, and a sheet covering a planter too large to move on my deck—all in the name of eking a little more life out of them. I love fall, which is weird because I hate winter. Like, I finally understand why snowbirds leave for warmer locations. Not that I would do that myself. I may hate winter in Minnesota, but I love Minnesota more than I hate winter.

But for all that I hate the winter, I love the crisp, cool mornings of fall. Standing on the deck, watching the dogs play with a steaming cup of coffee in my hands, is just the best way to start the day. And the inverse of that is that a hearty glass of bourbon out there in the evening, watching the sun set beyond the neighbor’s trees, is the perfect end to the day.

And honestly, the annual Yellowstone Limited Edition release is one of those bourbons that I tend to enjoy on a cool fall evening. Not only are they usually very good, but they’re all unique. Previous releases have had various barrel-finished bourbons incorporated into the blend. This year, for the 10th Anniversary release, they stuck with just plain old bourbon for the blend—but they did it with the help of their corporate cousins at Ross & Squibb (MGP for us old folks who’ve been around a while). Here’s what Founder and Master Distiller Steve Beam had to say:

"We've done something different with this special annual release every year since 2015," said Beam. "This year's 10-year anniversary Limited Edition represents my natural progression of experimenting with blending, using three unique mash bills to create a remarkable product. In partnership with the Ross & Squibb team, we pushed the boundaries of innovation by creating our first blend featuring barrels from the Indiana and Kentucky distilleries - without compromising on our commitment to quality that has kept the Yellowstone Bourbon brand on shelf for more than 150 years."

So let’s see how it tastes.

Yellowstone Limited Edition 2025

Purchase Info: This bottle was sent to me for review purposes at no charge. The suggested retail price is $99.99 for a 750 mL bottle

Price per Drink (50 mL): $6.67

Details: 10 years old. 52.5% ABV.

Nose: Oak, caramel, mixed berries, vanilla

Mouth: Cinnamon spice, Caramel, vanilla, mixed berries, oak

Finish: On the longer end of medium and warms. Notes of caramel, vanilla, oak, and just a hint of red fruit.

Thoughts: This is absolutely delicious. It’s rich with those stereotypical bourbon notes of caramel, vanilla, and oak. And I adore the lovely additional note of mixed berries or red fruit (depending on when you’re examining it). I don’t think there’s been a bad Yellowstone Limited Edition yet, but even so, this one stands out. I really like it. $100 is a lot for a single bottle of whiskey—especially in this economy—but at least the price has held steady since 2019. That’s something, at least.

Heaven Hill Grain To Glass 2025: Wheated Bourbon Whiskey, 2nd Edition

I’d like to thank Heaven Hill for providing this sample with no strings attached.

Friends, I am on vacation. If everything is going well, I’m in northern California, possibly in the RV I rented, enjoying either a glass of wine, a bit of bourbon, or maybe—just maybe—a little bit of the devil’s lettuce. Hard to tell what I’ll be in the mood for by that point. Because, as you might have guessed, I am writing to you from the deep past…oooohhhh…I’m a spooky ghost…

Or something like that.

So, we’ve covered the other two variations of this release. Heaven Hill was nice enough to send over the Rye initially, then I bought the Bourbon (and another bottle of the Rye). Now they were kind enough to send me the final of the three. This one is a wheated bourbon. Since we’ve already talked about this series twice before, I’ll just skip to what the press release says:

The 2025 edition features a mashbill with a higher secondary grain content than Heaven Hill's traditional Wheated Bourbon mashbill: 35% wheat, 52% corn, and 13% malted barley. The selected corn varietal—Beck's 6225, along with the mashbill's wheat component are grown by family-owned Peterson Farms on one of two sites in Nelson County, reflects the distillery's dedication to sourcing local, carefully chosen grain. Aged over six years at Heaven Hill's Cox's Creek rickhouse site, the whiskey is non-chill filtered and bottled at barrel proof, 106.6 proof (53.3% ABV).

Ok. Let’s see how it tastes:

Heaven Hill Grain To Glass 2025: Wheated Bourbon Whiskey, 2nd Edition

Purchase Info: This sample was provided by the producer at no cost for review purposes. The suggested retail price is $99.99 for a 700 mL bottle.

Price per Drink (50 ml): $7.14

Details: Mash bill: 35% wheat, 52% corn, and 13% malted barley. Corn varietal: Beck's 6225. Bottled at 53.3% ABV. Distilled in 2018. Six years old.

Nose: Cinnamon candy, floral vanilla, caramel, and oak.

Mouth: Nutty with notes of cinnamon spice, caramel, vanilla, and oak.

Finish: Warm and medium to long with lingering notes of nutty chocolate, oak, and baking spices.

Thoughts: This is just as delicious as the other two. It’s warm and spicy with a terrific nutty note throughout. I’m a big fan. That said, if I were buying and had to choose between this and the “ryed” bourbon, I’d go for the ryed bourbon—I prefer the spicier flavor over the nuttiness of the wheat. Out of the three, the rye whiskey was my favorite. But they’re all delicious, and this one is no exception.

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Whiskey Jypsi Tribute Double Barreled Bourbon

I’d like to thank the folks at Whiskey Jypsi and their PR team for providing this sample with no strings attached.

My friends, I am going on vacation. And you can’t imagine how excited I am to get two weeks with just my wife and myself—no guest dogs, no clients, nothing. Just the RV and the open road. Oh, and a football game. My beloved Golden Gophers are playing at Cal on our wedding anniversary, so I had to get us tickets since we’ll be in the right part of the state for at least part of the trip.

And yes, my wife is a fan as well. I’ve been married a long time and have already learned the lesson of not dragging her to something she wouldn’t enjoy on our anniversary. Just in case anyone was worried for my safety.

Whiskey Jypsi is a… you know what? I’m writing the next three weeks of these posts tonight. Let’s let the PR people handle the description on this one. Why let their hard work go to waste?

Whiskey Jypsi Tribute Double Barreled Bourbon - Born from the collaboration between country music icon Eric Church and entrepreneur Raj Alva, Tribute Whiskey reflects the spirit of adventure and freedom at the heart of the “JYPSI Spirit”, the idea that we’re all born beautifully wild. Designed with creativity and quality in mind, Tribute Double Barreled Bourbon is crafted from rare, heirloom grains, including reclaimed Cherokee White Corn from small family farms. Distilled under the guidance of master distiller Ari Sussman, it’s aged a minimum of four years in new charred American oak, then re-barreled for 3–6 months to extract maximum flavor. Bottled at 86-proof, the result is a smooth, complex bourbon with rich vanilla and caramel notes, perfect for sipping neat, on the rocks, or in a late-summer cocktail.

So there you go. That’s what I know about this one. I’m not usually a fan of “vanity brands” in the whiskey world. Sometimes they’re good, but most of the time they leave a lot to be desired. Let’s see if this one is just branding or if it actually tastes good.

Whiskey Jypsi Tribute Double Barreled Bourbon

Purchase Info: This sample was provided to me at no cost for review purposes. The Suggested Retail Price is $44.99 for a 750 mL bottle.

Price per Drink (50 mL): $3.00

Details: 4-years-old. 43% ABV.

Nose: Vanilla, caramel, nutmeg, and oak.

Mouth: Spicy with notes of almond, vanilla, caramel, baking spice, and oak.

Finish: Medium in warmth and length. Herbal notes, vanilla, almond, and baking spice linger.

Thoughts: I found the nose very reminiscent of Evan Williams. The mouth was initially much hotter and spicier than I expected from the nose. Under the heat are fairly stereotypical bourbon notes. The finish adds an herbal note that was unexpected at first but melded into the whole after a few sips. All in all, I like the whiskey.

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Remus Repeal Reserve Series IX

I’d like to thank Ross & Squibb and their entire PR team for providing this with no strings attached.

Seventy-second Congress of the United States of America;
At the Second Session,

Begun and held at the City of Washington on Monday, the fifth
day of December, one thousand nine hundred and thirty-three

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JOINT RESOLUTION
Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

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Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is hereby proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by conventions in three-fourths of the several States:

"Article —

"SECTION 1. The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

"SECTION 2. The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.

"SECTION 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress."

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And so, just shy of 92 years ago, the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution—and National Prohibition—was repealed. All in all, it’s a short piece of law. The introduction is longer than the amendment itself. What it lacked in size, it made up for in consequence. First and foremost, it allowed the Federal Government to get out of the way of a citizen's ability to have a drink. There were, of course, other consequences. The one most pertinent to tonight's post is that it also allowed the murderous scofflaws and bootleggers of the Prohibition era to fade into the sort of romanticized characters that only the distance of time can allow—people such as George Remus: pharmacist, bootlegger, lawyer, and murderer. 

Remus was a pharmacist turned Chicago criminal defense lawyer. In Daniel Okrent's book Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, Remus is described as having an inside look at the workings of Prohibition and the immense profits to be made outside the law. His plan was far more sophisticated than a smash-and-grab. He ended up buying both distillery stocks and brands (including names like Fleischmann's and Jack Daniel's), as well as a pharmacy where he could sell those stocks as medicinal products.

He would legally withdraw bourbon from bonded warehouses, but on the way to his pharmacy, the trucks would sometimes be “hijacked.” Of course, they were hijacked by his own men. Why would he divert the booze into an illegal market when he could profit from both the sale of liquor to his pharmacy and to the public? Well, that's pretty easy when you think of why he got into it in the first place. The profits are higher on the black market since there are no taxes to be paid on it.

On May 17, 1922, The New York Times reported that Remus was charged with conspiring to violate Prohibition laws. He and 13 others were sentenced to the Atlanta penitentiary for terms ranging from a year and a day to two years, depending on the defendant. Okrent notes that Remus’s cell was posh—decorated with flowers, where he was even waited on by servants. During his time behind bars, his wife took up with another man, and together they burned through the fortune he had accumulated. (Some stories claim this man was the agent who put Remus behind bars; others say he was an undercover agent in the prison who learned of Remus’s wealth and took advantage of the situation.)

In either case, newspaper reports state that his wife’s affair drove him temporarily insane—long enough that he had his chauffeur chase down the car she was riding in so he could shoot her in front of her daughter from a previous marriage. Even in the earliest trial reports, though, there’s an undercurrent suggesting what truly enraged him was the loss of his money. For this crime, he was committed to an insane asylum for a very short time (about three weeks) before he “proved” he was sane and was released.

After that, he lived in Cincinnati for the rest of his life and, as far as I can tell, stayed on the right side of the law. Today, he gets mentioned in discussions of Prohibition but is otherwise mostly forgotten—aside from having a bourbon brand named after him. People love to celebrate that time period. Although maybe he’s not the type of person who should have been celebrated.

The bourbon, though, is well worth celebrating—especially the yearly Remus Repeal Reserve. So let’s talk about this year’s release, shall we? Series IX is bottled at 104 proof, the highest yet for one of these editions. As always, it’s a blend of mashbills and ages: 7% 18-year-old MGP 21% rye bourbon, 26% 11-year-old MGP 36% rye bourbon, 23% 10-year-old MGP 36% rye bourbon, and 44% 10-year-old MGP 21% rye bourbon. 

So let’s see how it tastes.

Remus Repeal Reserve Series IX

Purchase Info: This bottle was sent at no charge for review purposes. The suggested retail price is $99.99 for a 750 mL bottle.

Price per Drink (50 mL): $6.67

Details: A blend of 18-year-old MGP 21% rye bourbon (7%), 11-year-old MGP 36% rye bourbon (26%), 10-year-old MGP 36% rye bourbon (23%), and 10-year-old MGP 21% rye bourbon (44%). 52% ABV.

Nose: Oak, stone fruit, cotton candy, vanilla, almond, and a hint of baking spice underneath.

Mouth: Spicy and sweet with a good bit of oak. Notes of vanilla, caramel, baking spice, almond, stone fruit, and oak.

Finish: Medium in length and warmth with notes of oak, baking spice, and a touch of almond.

Thoughts: Another delicious release in a long line of delicious Remus Repeal Reserve releases. I'm really digging the rich and thick mouthfeel. There is a lot of oak throughout, but not so much that it is overwhelming. The baking spice and vanilla give it a" classic bourbon" flavor profile that the stone fruit elevates. All in all, I will be buying this if and when I see it, so I think it is safe to say I like it. 

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