A new look for an old friend: Wild Turkey Rare Breed (112.8° proof)

Last September my wife and I had the pleasure of meeting Jimmy Russell, Master Distiller of Wild Turkey, while visiting the Wild Turkey visitor center. We wandered in and he was just sitting there chatting with a couple people. 

Now to say I’m a fan of his work would be an understatement and I figured it wouldn’t hurt to wander over after the other couple was done with him, congratulate him on 60 years and let him know how much we’ve enjoyed the fruits of that labor. It was a pleasant chat. Lasted about 15 minutes or so. Toward the end of our visit we bought a small bottle and asked if he would sign it for us.

That bottle was one of our favorite go to Wild Turkey products: Rare Breed. It’s one of my wife’s favorite bourbons. So much so that one year her Valentine’s Day present was a bottle of it. Which is a nice present since she’ll share and I enjoy it too.

So with all that said, it was with a mixture of excitement and trepidation that I noticed that there was a new batch out. I love trying new things and previous batches I loved, but when things change…well you never know. If you are looking, the new batch comes with a new label design and a new proof level. 56.4% ABV this time around as compared to 54.1% for the previous batch.

Wild Turkey Rare Breed (112.8° proof)

Purchase info: $33.99 for a 750 mL at Total Wine, Burnsville, MN

Details: 56.4% ABV, Barrel Proof

Nose: Spearmint, Garden soil, faint lemon zest, cinnamon rolls, leather, vanilla/caramel and oak.

Mouth: Hot. Brown sugar, honey, leather, tobacco, black pepper and a mineral note.

Finish: Long and warm. Leather, brown sugar and that same mineral note. 

love.gif

Thoughts: Because Rare Breed was our favorite Wild Turkey expression, I was a little nervous about the batch change. I needn’t have worried. This is still a rich, complex bourbon that takes a cube or two of ice well and is still a favorite.

BourbonGuy.com accepts no advertising. It is solely supported by the sale of the hand-made products I sell at the BourbonGuy Gifts Etsy store. If you'd like to support BourbonGuy.com, visit BourbonGuyGifts.com. Thanks!

Review: MB Roland Bourbon, Batch 16

Disclaimer: I consider Paul and Merry Beth of MB Roland to be my friends and in my statement of ethics I promised to disclose when I am reviewing one of my friend’s products and to only review them when it was truly somethiing I really liked. This is one of those times.

One of the things I like best about Kentucky are the people I meet when I visit. I think that every single time I’ve stopped there, I’ve left with newfound friends. Every time. And that includes the first time I stopped. 

I wasn’t in Kentucky very long that first time. I was driving to Savannah, Georgia for vacation. It was just my wife and I. One of the first vacations we’d taken on our own since our daughter had grown up and discovered she had her own life. We were not sure what we were going to do, but we knew that this trip was going to be just us, doing the things that we wanted to do, when we wanted to do them.

We had a genereal idea of what we wanted to stop and see, but didn’t really have anything planned for the leg of the trip between St. Louis and our overnight stop near the Great Smoky Mountains. So I did a little research. I was just starting to get into spirits and didn’t know much about it at that point. I have no idea what made me type the word distillery into the search bar of google maps as I was looking for something to see during that day. But it got a hit. Just off of the I-24 freeway. Something told me I had to stop.

When we got there, Paul Tomaszewski greeted us and offered us a tour. I took him up on it and proceded to have my eyes opened up to the facinating world of the process of making spirits. As we got back to the gift shop, I offered the opinion to anyone that would listen that they should also take the tour. We did the tasting, bought some products and continued our journey. 

If you want to know what happens next, read the About Me page to the left. Needless to say, I liked what I bought. And because I felt it was the right thing to do, I emailed Paul to let him know just how much I was enjoying what he made. From there, we kept in touch. He letting me know some of the behind the scenes bits of whiskey making knowledge and I letting him know some of the opportunities he might want to look out for as he plays in the world of marketing. He and his wife Merry Beth are now good friends and I try to stop in to see them whenever I’m in the area.

MB Roland Distillery originally kept the lights on making shine. Perfectly legal, it’s made from a mash of both corn and sugar. They flavor it in a wide variety of ways and it is quite tasty. But even right from the start, they were also making whiskey. Malt whiskey was the first aged product of theirs that I had. It was good enough to make me forget clear spirits and turn most of my attention to whiskey. Over the years, I tried a few experiments of theirs and was always intrigued even when they weren’t necesarily successful experiments.

Somehow, I had never been able to try their bourbon. It always sold out too fast for me to be able to grab a bottle (especially from 15 hours away). This last time I was in Kentucky though, I got lucky. When I visited Liquor World in Bardstown, I happened to see a couple bottles sitting there on the shelf. I couldn’t pass it up. I had to buy it.

MB Roland Bourbon

Purchase Info: $51.89 for a 750mL at Liquor World of Bardstown, Bardstown, KY

Details: (all of this is disclosed on the label) 51.96% ABV. Batch 16. Bottle 35 of 129. Barrel #4 Char. Mash AA. Unfiltered and undiluted after distillation. “Mashed, Distilled and Bottled by MB Roland Distillery, Pembroke, Christian Co., KY”

Nose: Vinous. Reminds me of a brandy. Raisins, toffee, dark chocolate, dried corn.

Mouth: Hot and sweet with a hint of smoke. Bread dough, chocolate, caramel and leather.

Finish: Long and warm. The raisins are back along with the smoke.

like.gif

Thoughts: I normally dislike smoky whiskeys. Even a hint is enough to put me off. But not here. Here it’s just barely a hint and it works. This is a tasty and complex bourbon. it is warm without being overpowering. The raisin notes remind me of a nice brandy, but the leather, chocolate and caramel bring me right back to bourbon. I love this one. 

Paul, Merry Beth and crew: nice job on this one. I wish I’d thought to buy two.

A Pair of Wheat Whiskeys from Heaven Hill: Bernheim Original & Parker's Heritage

I am a 38 year old man. My dog has been aged for a minimum of two years. My wife is…

…yeah. My wife is NAS. That’s No Age Statement for those of you who are not versed in geeky acronyms. And much like my wife, many whiskeys have recently chosen to remove their age statements. It’s due to a lot of factors, but the main one seems to be a decided lack of stocks of an adequate age. 

So in an era when age statements are falling faster than the leaves outside my house, it would be big news if someone actually added an age statement to their bottle. It would mean not only that they had adequate stocks of that particular whiskey, but that they foresaw that they would continue to have it for as much of the future as is foreseeable. Plus, why bother? NAS whiskey is selling fine.

But, in spite of all that, that’s what Heaven Hill recently did to their Bernheim Wheat Whiskey. Bottles bearing a large, yet slightly oddly worded, “7 Years Aged” have recently begun to work their way through retail channels. I have yet to see it in Minnesota so when I saw a bottle down in Kentucky bearing the age statement, I knew I needed to buy it. If for no other reason than I like to reward good behavior.

Positive Reinforcement People!

Bernheim Original Kentucky Straight Wheat Whiskey, 7 Years Aged

Purchase Info: $28.99 for a 750 mL at Liquor Barn, Louisville, KY

Details: 45% ABV, Aged 7 Years

Nose: Sweet cotton candy, pears, fleeting hints of peanuts

Mouth: Sweet with a black pepper tingle and vitamin or mineral notes

Finish: Gentle burn. Continues the palate with lingering sweetness along with the black pepper and mineral notes.

Thoughts: This is pleasant though uninteresting. It can take a little water, but not much. I like it but wouldn’t want it for every pour. I’d love to see that age statement creep up even further.

That last statement is something that I’d heard almost every time that I talked to someone about Bernheim. It’s the common refrain: a higher proof and more age would make this perfect. And I’d say in this case, they might be right. Lucky for me, shortly after I got home from Kentucky I got the chance to see for myself if common knowledge was correct.

While I was in Bardstown for BourbonFest last month, Heaven Hill released this year’s Parker’s Heritage Collection to their gift shops. It is a 13 year old cask strength wheat whiskey along the lines of the Bernheim. Just older. And higher proof. I missed it in both the Even Williams Experience and in the Bourbon Heritage Center gift shops. The Bourbon Heritage Center by mere minutes. 

Things take a little longer to get to Minnesota some times so when I started to see tweets from local liquor stores showing that they had this year’s PHC I started making my rounds. Many were holding it for raffles or events, but one new comer to our market doesn’t believe in that. They just put it on the shelf. And I happened to walk in looking for a six pack of beer at just the right time. 

Parker’s Heritage Collection: Original Batch Wheat Whiskey

Purchase Info: $109.99 Total Wine, Burnsville, MN

Details: 13 years old, 63.7% ABV, minimum 51% wheat mashbill

Nose: Dark brown sugar and caramel, leather and bready notes.

Taste: Sweet caramel, but hot on the palate. Cinnamon red hot candies, mint and ripe fruit.

Finish: Long, rich and warm. This one hangs around for a while.

love.gif

Thoughts: This is a fantastic whiskey! A little hot without water, but settles down. At $110 I would seriously consider getting another if I saw it. But at that price I will probably only consider it. It’s just under my price ceiling for a bottle of whiskey. I’m happy to have bought it once, don’t know if I can bring myself to do so again.

Since I had a little of each left in my tasting glasses after this, I decided to try one more thing. 

Parker’s Heritage Wheat and Bernheim Wheat in a 50/50 blend

Details: My math puts this at 108.7° proof (54.35% ABV)

Nose: Brown sugar, red hot candies, ripe fruit. Shows a lot of the Parker’s in the nose.

Mouth: Thick mouthfeel. More so than either separately. Sweet brown sugar and baking spices.

Finish: Gentle burn that lasts a decent length of time. Sweetness mixed with spice.

Thoughts: I think I like this better than either alone. The Parker’s is awesome, both in flavor and in power. This is a bit more approachable without being boring. It is sweet but balanced with spice. I’d drink this everyday if they released it.

Finding an I.W. Harper dusty while antiquing

It was a Sunday afternoon in early April. My wife had recently purchased an old Beam decanter for me. Something about it had made me excited to see what else was out there and it was easy for her to talk me into going with her when she decided to visit a few antique stores. I like the consignment style stores. The ones where a person rents a space and fills it full of their old crap. I don’t find many bargains that way, but I do see more things that I remember from my own childhood. And that’s fun.

As I wandered around this particular store, I saw some cool things. I saw a couple Ezra Brooks decanters from the 60s. A bear and a Native American. I didn’t pull the trigger on either since the labels were peeling off and in that condition I didn’t feel like paying that much for what was just a curiosity to me. I saw a NDP decanter of an old Minnesota Gopher mascot in a football helmet. It was probably from about the same time. And since I’m a huge Gopher football fan, I was tempted…until I saw it was over $100. That made me much less excited even though it looked as if it may have still been sealed.

Sealed and full of bourbon most likely contaminated by high levels of lead. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t buy it, I would probably have given myself lead poisoning since I doubt I’d have had the willpower to leave it sealed. I’m more curious than that fabled cat. 

But one thing did catch my eye. It was just about halfway down the center aisle, all the way down on the bottom shelf. It was a tax stamp on a mini bottle. Even though my knees hate it when I do this, I got down and took a look. It was a bottle of Canadian Club and it said 1962 on the tax stamp. Even better it was full and the seal hadn’t been broken. There were other bottles down there too. The other sealed one was a miniature of IW Harper. It was missing the tax stamp, but the seal was unbroken and the bottle was full. And best of all, both were under five dollars each. So I grabbed them. I wandered around for a little bit but didn’t see anything else I felt like buying, paid my bill and wandered out.

I wondered a bit at the legality of selling them. I doubted the antique store had a liquor license. Plus it was a Sunday and there are no spirits sales on a Sunday. But since I got something cool and I didn’t see a boatload of cops standing there, I decided to tamp down the curiosity and think about things that were a little more important. Like how long it would take to get home and crack it open.

But I waited a bit. The next week was the season premiere of Mad Men and since Don’s favorite drink is Canadian Club and since it was from just about the right time period, I decided to drink that during the premiere. It was good, though it was so floral that I found it a bit like drinking perfume. The IW Harper though, sat on my shelf for a while. I wanted to look into it a little bit and see if I could find out anymore about it. Specifically: “What is this?” and “how old is this thing?”

The first thing I learned is that currently IW Harper is owned by Diageo and isn’t sold in the US anymore. And hasn’t been for a while. Ok so, at least the 80s. Cool. No bar code and no metric units so that pushed the youngest it could be back into the mid to late 70s. I did a bunch of searching of old ads and the earliest I could find that label used was in a 1970 ad. The next oldest ad I could find was from 1965 and had a slightly different label featured. So roughly early to mid-1970s. At that time it was owned by Schenley. That was close enough for my curiosity now I just needed to open it. 

But I waited. And waited. It got shoved behind some other samples I had and so I forgot about it. Until I found it this weekend, decided that enough was enough, and cracked it open.

IW Harper Gold Medal Bourbon (roughly mid 1970s)

Purchase info: an antique store $3.99 for a 1/10th pint

Details: 6 years old and 86 proof (no ABV listed so I deviate from my standard even though I know it would be 43%)

Nose: Started out very floral. Dark brown sugar, baking apples, allspice, cardamom and a sharp wood note. After sitting a bit it settled into a general fruity candy.

Mouth: Nice thick mouthfeel. Floral again with more dark brown sugar. Spicy with allspice and cinnamon. Oak and caramel as it moves back in the mouth. 

Finish: Long and warm with lingering floral hints.

love.gif

Thoughts: I just wish there were more. Sweet, spicy, rich and floral sum this up nicely. The color is even beautiful. It is a joy to look at, smell and taste. Just yum.

Parker's Heritage Collection: Promise of Hope

A couple of years ago, my wife was diagnosed with cancer. It was a scary time in our life. After she beat the disease, our outlook changed. We realized that we were not, in fact, invincible. Personally, I realized that I needed to focus more on what was truly important in life. That instead of just existing, I wanted to make sure that the world would be a better place for my having been here. Even though I wasn’t the one that was sick, it made me realize that I wanted to be a better person. For her.

Last year it was announced that Parker Beam, Master Distiller at Heaven Hill, had been diagnosed with ALS. ALS is a disease that attacks the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control voluntary movement. In the fall of 2013, Heaven Hill released the most recent edition of the Parker’s Heritage Collection, a single barrel bourbon named Promise of Hope. They are donating $20 for each bottle sold to ALS research. I don’t know what impulse caused Heaven Hill to decide to make the donation, but I hope that it mirrors my own experience. I do know that my wife wanted it just a little bit more after finding out that they were doing that and I bought a bottle the day it hit our liquor store. 

This spring, I finally cracked it open.

Parker’s Heritage Collection: Promise of Hope

Purchase info: ~$90 at Haskell’s Wine & Spirits, Burnsville, MN

Details: Single barrel, rye-based bourbon. 48% ABV

Nose: This has the most perfect bourbon nose. Sweet maple syrup, oak, baking spices and a hint of mint.

Mouth: Brown sugar, maple syrup and baking spices

Finish: warm and pleasant with lingering spice and bitterness.

Thoughts: Oh! The nose on this one! I’ve spent a long time just nosing this bourbon. Just laying on the couch with the glass perched under my nose, reading a book and smelling this bourbon. The taste doesn’t disappoint either. It’s not fancy but, in my mind, it is the perfect example of an archetypal bourbon. It embodies what I imagine when I imagine bourbon. Just perfect. So much so that right after I cracked it open, I went back to the store and bought a second bottle. To me, if it wasn’t the best release of 2013, it is at least in the conversation.

love.gif

If you look, you might be able to still find one of these. Great bourbon for a great cause. If you missed out on it, you can still make a donation to Parker’s Promise of Hope and help fight ALS. 

Evan Williams Barrel Proof: a tasty, but expensive souvenir jug

It was a Sunday in February. I was driving through Kentucky on my way to an overnight stop in Louisville. I was looking to stop at a few distilleries. Looking to bring home some thing a bit special. I stopped at Four Roses but already had one of each of their Single Barrel selections. I tried stopping at Jim Beam, but they were closed. Looked up Willett, closed. Finally I gave up. I went to the hotel, checked in and decided to go for a walk downtown. 

As we were walking, I remembered the Evan Williams Bourbon Experience. I didn’t need another tour, but they did have a gift shop. And I seemed to remember that they had things there I couldn’t buy in the store. So I ducked in.

There were a few people who had just finished tour in there. I mingled around with them until a jug caught my eye. It was a short, squat stoneware jug. Picking it up, I noticed a photo of the actor who played Evan Williams in the movies you see as part of the tour. I also noticed the words: Evan Williams Barrel Proof on the front. That got my attention. I looked around for the price list. 

One hundred dollars. I did the math quickly. Eighty proof version for $15. One hundred proof version for $20. One hundred twenty five proof version for $100. Seemed like a high markup. I waffled a bit. Finally, I decided to buy it. It was the one shot I had left, on this trip, to buy something special that I couldn’t get at home. I felt a bit like a tool as I walked up to the counter to pay. 

As I was paying, a worker came up and asked if I’d tried it. I told him I hadn’t, but was looking forward to it. So he grabbed a bottle, opened it up and poured my wife and I each a small sample. He also poured the lady ringing me up a sample and a couple gentlemen who were still wandering around from before I wandered in. 

The two gentleman winced and thought it was a bit much for them. They stared in wonder as my wife’s eyes lit up and she uttered: “oooh, that’s gooood!” The lady behind the counter also seemed to appreciate it. I felt much less like a tool after that. The bottle they were pouring from was delicious. If the one I was buying was as well, it’d be worth the price.

So we paid, walked back to the hotel and I forgot about it for a while. When I got home, it went into the closet with the rest of the overflow stash. Until now.

Evan Williams Barrel Proof

Purchase info: $100, Evan Willams Bourbon Experience, Louisville, KY

Details: 62.5% ABV

Nose: oak, dry earth, ginger, allspice and after a while loads of brown sugar

Mouth: sweet and spicy with caramel, vanilla, ginger, cinnamon and hints of ripe cherries

Finish: Long with a warmth that settles in for the duration. Ginger, mint and the bitterness of grapefruit pith

love.gif

Thoughts: This is delicious. I love it! If you go just by the math, this is a terrible buy. But let’s just say that the next time I’m in Louisville, I’ll be stopping in to see if they have another. I might even buy two.

UPDATE: As of my September 2014 visit, this product had been discontinued due to manufacturing issues with the jugs. It was devastating news because this was a fantastic product.

Smooth Ambler: Old Scout 10

We’ve all been there. You walk into your local bourbon emporium looking to buy something new. Something you haven’t had before. But where to start? If you are like me, you started by grabbing one of the nicest bottles you could find. These cost a bit more, so they must be better… right?

After a while you exhaust the top couple shelves and since you are still looking to try that next one you move down a shelf. Maybe you move down a couple shelves. In any case after a while, as you scan across the multitude of bottles on the shelves, you start to realize that a lot of the “distilleries” named on the back of the bottles seem to all be located in the same few towns in Kentucky. 

“Wow, Kentucky has a lot of distilleries you think to yourself.” After you do your research, you realize that, no, it really doesn’t. Most of those are all made by the same 8 distilleries. They’ve been lying to you all along. “Well, I’ll just stick with craft whiskey,” you think to yourself. “At least then I know who’s selling me the bourbon I’m buying” 

Yeah… One of the saddest days in an educated drinker’s life is the day that he or she realizes that they can’t trust marketing. That it seems that every liquor company under the sun is actively trying to trick you out of your money. It doesn’t take much curiosity to know that only a relative few craft distillers really are distillers. Those that are should be supported and celebrated. They are not only competing against the big guys, but they are competing against independent bottlers who claim to be craft distillers. People who denigrate the good name of your local craft distiller with lies about old family recipes and gangsters. 

Smooth Ambler, in Maxwelton, WV, is not one of these people. They are a craft distiller. They are also an independent bottler. And they admit as much every where they can. I’ve seen it on their website, on twitter, they even tell you in person when you visit. They’ve gone so far as to make sure that the whiskey they make and the whiskey they only bottle have two different brand names. Smooth Ambler is the stuff they make, Old Scout is the stuff they only sell.

I respect the hell out of that. And it is especially easy since they make a product with a lot of promise and sell a product that is really damn tasty. On my last visit, after my wife fell in love with it at the after-tour tasting, I bought a bottle of Old Scout Ten from the gift shop. A bourbon that’s been in oak just over twice as long as Smooth Ambler has been in business. (Once again, information that is freely available on the label.)

Old Scout Ten

Purchase info: Somewhere around $50 for 750 ml, Smooth Ambler distillery gift shop (lost the receipt).

Bottle Details: Batch 10, Bottled on 10/29/2013, 50% ABV, “at least 10 years old”

Nose: An initial second of buttered popcorn before moving into what can only be described as apple pie filling. Cooked apples and baking spices. And of course, a nice hit of caramel to go with it.

Mouth: Vanilla, caramel, dark chocolate, mint, ginger and clove. 

Finish: long, warm and sweet with lingering ginger, clove and mint. 

love.gif

Thoughts: I love this one. It is the basic essence of what I look for in a bourbon. Share this with your friends. Even though it’s a tad aggressive...yum. I’m buying more next time I see it.

Head-to-Head Booker's: 25th Anniversary vs Batch 2013-6

I was passing through Kentucky when Jim Beam released the Booker’s 25th Anniversary bourbon. Unfortunately it was a Sunday in February and nothing was open. Not even the distillery. I knew that if I wanted to taste this, I would have very few chances. 

That night at the hotel bar in Louisville (Louisville being one of the few places I travel to that the hotel bar is worth stopping at) I saw a bottle of the 25th on the shelf. I ordered it, paid my $35 and decided that, while it was tasty, it wasn’t that much better than the Booker’s I had on my shelf. I counted myself lucky and mentally moved on for the night.

I had plenty of time to think about that bourbon on the drive home the next day. It started snowing in Champaign, Illinois and ended about Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin. White-out, white-knuckle conditions. We didn’t go over 25 miles per hour the entire time and even that may have been too fast at times. By the time we got back to Minneapolis, it was late. The normal 13 hour drive had ballooned into a 17 hour one. And all I wanted was a bourbon. I grabbed the Booker’s I had at home and tried to unwind from the trip.

It was good. Was it better than the 25th Anniversary? I tried to tell myself it was. I tried really hard to convince myself. And it was easy since it had seemed I’d missed my shot at getting the 25th.

After a couple days though, I decided that I couldn’t let this pass without at least trying to get it. I sent an email to a guy I know who works at a local liquor store chain. In the past, he’d gotten me a lot of bottles that I had requested, including a bottle of the Four Roses Limited Small Batch 2012 (though he wasn’t able to get the 2013 for me). I figured the worst that could happen was he wouldn’t be able to.

He placed the order with the distributor. The distributor didn’t have any, but placed the order and got his hands on a case. But then, the order was intercepted by management. It seems that the chain has a standing rule that anything that might be even a little special go to their main store to be included in a “lottery” event. My guy called, stated his case (and my case), and got one bottle reluctantly released to me. 

I felt pretty happy to get my hands on a bottle of the Booker’s 25th Anniversary bourbon. It was a bit expensive at $100 but I remembered it being worth it. And finally I’d get a chance to see if I was fooling myself when I thought I liked the regular release better.

Booker’s Bourbon

Purchase Info: $47, Burnsville, MN 

Details: Batch# 2013-6, 62.95% ABV, aged 7 years, 6 months

Nose: Starts sweet with a strong alcohol burn. After it settles down a bit, it transitions into something very much akin to green spinach leaves. Then oak. Lots of it. And under it all was a maple sweetness that made my mouth water in anticipation.

Mouth: Thick, almost syrupy mouthfeel. Rich vanilla, sweet brown sugar, ginger spice, fresh-cut oak and maple syrup.

Finish: Mouth drying. Sweet fading to bitterness with much less warmth than I would have expected at almost 126 proof. Very drinkable. Dangerously so.

Booker’s 25th Anniversary Bourbon

Purchase Info: $104, Richfield, MN 

Details: Batch# 2014-1, 65.4% ABV, aged 10 years, 3 months

Nose: Maple and brown sugar. There is an underlying waxiness. Just a hint of citrus.

Mouth: Not as thick as the previous, but warm and still sweet. Cinnamon and cloves. Vanilla. This is a nicely balanced bourbon.

Finish: Warm finish. Sweet fading to bitterness. Warmth lasts a long time.

love.gif

Thoughts: These are both excellent bourbons. The 2013-6 is wonderfully sweet. The 25th Anniversary has a lovely warmth and amazing balance. Both of these bourbons hit all the notes I look for in a bourbon. Sweet, spicy with a nice hit of oak, but not too much of any of them. If you can get your hands on a taste of the 25th Anniversary, do it. If you can't, don’t feel too bad. Every bottle I've had of the regular release was worth the price I paid for it. I highly recommend both of these.