My Wandering Eye: Gamle Ode Holiday Aquavit on Rye

Disclaimer: I consider Mike McCarron of Gamle Ode to be my friend 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 something I really liked. This is one of those times. He also keeps me well supplied with Aquavit so I should also note that this bottle was free.

As I discussed in the intro to this series, bourbon prices are creeping up. Limited editions are selling at retail for insane prices. And I’m getting a bit sick of it. My eye is wandering. I need to find things that I can get me excited about spirits and not break the bank. So when my friend Mike McCarron of Gamle Ode spirits invited me to have a drink with him and try his new Limited Edition Aquavit, I knew I needed to take a look.

Holiday on Rye is a version of his normal Holiday Aquavit but aged for 18 months in used rye whiskey barrels instead of his usual used wine barrels. It was also bottled with a nice proof bump clocking in at 50.24% ABV as opposed to the 42% of the original. Holiday Aquavit normally sells for $28-$30. Here in the Twin Cities Limited Edition Holiday on Rye is retailing for the very non-insane price of $30-$35.

So you may be asking yourself, “What is aquavit anyway?” That is a good question and before I jump straight into my review I should probably answer that for you. Like gin, aquavit is neutral spirit infused with herbal flavors. In the case of gin, the base flavor is juniper berries. In aquavit’s case it is caraway. And like gin, you are allowed to use more than just the base flavor. In the case of Holiday Aquavit and Holiday on Rye, caraway is joined by dill, juniper, orange peels, mint and allspice. Unlike a sweet and spicy bourbon, this is a savory drink.

Gamle Ode Holiday Aquavit on Rye Whiskey Barrels

Purchase info: This bottle was kindly given to me by the owner of Gamle Ode. In the Twin cities, I’m seeing it online in the $30-$35 range for a 750 mL.

Details: Bottle 425 of 426, 50.24% ABV. 

Nose: Mint, dill, juniper and citrus.

Mouth: Delicate on entry with a sweet spice that sneaks up on you as it moves back. Bright and energetic. 

Finish: Lingering flavors of mint, dill and citrus. 

A smile because I like this.

Thoughts: I like this a lot. Yes, it is produced by a friend of mine, but I can easily say that it is worth a look if you are in a market where it is sold. It is bright and energetic on the palate, probably from 18 months spent in rye whiskey barrels, and the infused flavors are amazingly well integrated. This is a savory treat for lovers of unique flavors.

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A visit to Tattersall Distilling, Northeast Minneapolis.

Cocktails in the Tattersall Distilling Cocktail Room. (Photo Credits: Producer: Sam Kovar. Photographer: Tom Okins.)

Tattersall Distilling Cocktail Room. (Photo Credits: Producer: Sam Kovar. Photographer: Tom Okins.)

Most of the distilleries I’ve been to are just that, distilleries. They might have a sample area or a gift shop where they can interact with the prospective customers. But at the end of the day, they are there to make a product. This is all well and good. But if you are a small operation, you need to get your name out there. You can’t just hope that people will be walking past the shelf and happen to look at your bottle. 

I’ve recently discovered that there is another way to go about it. I recently met a friend for a drink at Tattersall Distilling in Northeast Minneapolis. That’s right, I went to a distillery for a drink. You see, Minnesota recently passed a law allowing distilleries to apply for a license to have a cocktail room on premise. Tattersall was blessed with that all important quality in business—timing—and took full advantage of the new law when they opened. 

The distillery at Tattersall Distilling. (Photo Credits: Producer: Sam Kovar. Photographer: Tom Okins.)

Tattersall was opened by Dan Oskey and Jon Kreidler about a year, year and a half ago. Friends since childhood, the pair decided to make a career change and attended the Michigan State Distilling School. After learning their craft, they got to work getting the distillery up and running. Oskey was a highly renowned bartender, helping to develop the cocktail program at multiple local establishments including The Strip Club in St. Paul. Kreidler was, to quote their website, “a financial wizard.” But it wasn’t just the two of them, drawing on a wealth of talented friends that included marketers, architects, and others, they set out to build not just a distillery, but an experience. 

Tattersall is located in a building with a long history. Built in the 1910s it was a place where they were making the top secret Norden bombsight during World War II. The guard tower still stands above the outdoor patio. With exposed Bethlehem Steel beams, high wood ceilings and concrete floors it was the perfect place to house a distillery and the very cool cocktail room. 

Outside on the patio of Tattersall Distilling. (Photo Credits: Producer: Sam Kovar. Photographer: Tom Okins.)

The cocktail room is the heart of the business. It is a cool, industrial place to grab a high quality craft cocktail made by bartenders poached from some of the top cocktail establishments in the area. Beyond the glass walls is the distillery itself where patrons may occasionally get to watch the products being made on beautiful Vendome stills. 

Though they sell many of their products at local liquors stores and restaurants in Minnesota, the biggest selection is available in the cocktail room itself. It was explained to me this way: the distillery makes all the items that the cocktail room needs. They make gins, vodka, numerous liqueurs and bitters. The notable exception is whiskey. Right now the cocktail room uses a bourbon that is sourced from a distillery in Kentucky and bottled by them for use in their cocktails. 

Barrels aging at Tattersall Distilling. (Photo Credits: Producer: Sam Kovar. Photographer: Tom Okins.)

Don’t be sad though. They have started production on a rye whiskey as well as wheated and rye bourbons. The rye whiskey will be 100% rye using rye grain and rye malt and aged for at least two years. They want to put out a straight product. For the bourbons, though they wouldn’t tell me the ingredient ratios, they did let me know that they are using different malts for both the wheat and the rye bourbons as well as a specialty yeast that was developed in Scotland. Kreidler tells me that the barrels are sourced here in Minnesota and will be aged in “as big of barrels as they can buy, though no smaller than 30 gallons.” 

Tattersall Distilling Chief Officer, Jon Kreidler. (Photo by Eric Burke.)

Overall I like a lot of the things that Tattersall is doing. With the cocktail room, they know where their money is coming from so they won’t have to cut corners and just sell “what they have.” They can take the time to develop products that are innovative, unique, and most importantly good. Knowing that even with their training, they don’t have all the answers, they brought in consultants who did—on every topic from distilling a clean product to how to set up an industrial factory floor. Knowing that the cocktail room was going to be the lifeblood, they hired the best folks they could to make those cocktails and invested in a cool and cozy spot for people to drink them in. 

Overall if you are in the Minneapolis metro area, I’d highly recommend stopping in. I had an Old Fashioned and it was quite good. Tours are given Saturdays.

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Dad’s Hat Pennsylvania Rye Whiskey 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.

a neutral face since I find this a bit meh.

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.

A distillery visit and review: Wyoming Whiskey

Kirby, WY. From one end to the other.

I really wasn’t sure what to expect as the van I was driving crested the hill that gave me my first view of Kirby, Wyoming. I had read it was a small town. But even for a guy who spent a good portion of his childhood in a town with no population listed on the sign, Kirby was small. Off in the distance we saw one tall building. “A grain elevator?” I asked my wife.

Kirby, Wyoming is a village with a population just south of 100 people. It’s four block by five block area split in half by the railroad line that runs through the center of town. The roads are gravel. The houses are few. The nearest population center with over 50,000 people is Casper, WY, two and a half hours to the southeast. This is not the type of place that you would expect would be the home of a product that sits on store shelves in roughly half the country.

When I pulled into the parking lot in front of that one tall building (a distillery it turns out, not a grain elevator), I asked Samuel Mead, distiller at Wyoming Whiskey, why Kirby? The answer was simple: his family had a ranch there. It seems that that ranch was what allowed Wyoming Whiskey to go about setting up the distillery, distill product and allow it to age until it was ready to be sold. 

Ask any small distiller what the one thing they wish they had more of and the answer is probably going to be operating capital. A distillery is a huge investment, even after you’ve bought the equipment and gotten it up and running. Aged product takes time. Time where you are not making any money. Having another source of income allowed them to hire Steve Nally, formerly of Maker’s Mark, to come help them get running and as Mead says, “teach us how to make whiskey.” 

Launched in late 2012, Wyoming whiskey met with mixed reviews. Some folks gave it very high marks while others were not so happy with their bottle. When asked about the apparent discrepancy between batches, Mead was honest and told me that their quality control "may not have been the best early on." In an effort to combat this, they have recently hired a well regarded blender to help them out. With recent batches (batch 28 and on) having come under her supervision.  

Wyoming Whiskey, Batch 29. Purchased in Casper, WY at the Liquor Shed

As I was going to be through on a Sunday when the distillery was closed, I set up a tour with Distiller Samuel Mead. Photos follow.

Wyoming Whiskey, Kirby Wyoming. This is the tallest building in Kirby by a long shot.

There is a good reason why this is the tallest building in Kirby. They need it. This is a tall still.

The still is made by Vendome. It was made back when you could contact them and be reasonably sure of not being on an 18 month waiting list.

The back of the still features the cattle brand of the Mead family. I didn't think to ask what the TT stood for.

The still safe also features the brand. But I just put this picture in because I thought it was pretty.

If you look closely at the grain hoppers that feed into the cookers you'll notice that this is a wheated bourbon. 

This empty barrel is waiting to be filled.

Though the info is written on by hand, true to the cattle ranching roots, the barrel's logo is branded on.

When we entered an aging warehouse, I noticed this guy. Barrel number 1.

The last stop on the tour was the bottling line. Empty today as it was a Sunday. While there we got the opportunity to taste the tasty upcoming Cask-Strength Single Barrel release.

Wyoming Whiskey

Purchase Info: $34.99, 750 mL. The Liquor Shed, Casper, WY.

Details: 44% ABV. Batch 29. Bottled on July 31, 2015.

Nose: Caramel, custard and cola with just the barest hints of spice and oak underneath.

Mouth: A nice, but not overpowering, tingle. Sweet cola, vanilla and caramel. Herbal rosemary and mint. A nice biscuity flavor overall.

Finish: Gently warming and of ok length. Lingering herbal and cola flavors.

A smiley face because I like this.

Thoughts: This is certainly not your typical bourbon. And maybe that is why I am liking it so much. In a category that normally differs by degrees of sameness, this is a truly unique product. Wyoming Whisky may have had a rocky start, but if this is any indication of the direction they are headed under their new blender, they are now on the right track.

Because it is quite unique, I'd recommend trying one at a bar should you see it on the shelf. I like it a lot, but your milage may vary.

Want to know if Wyoming Whiskey is available in your state? Lucky for us they had this handy map in the stillhouse.

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New Riff's New Make from a Rye Mash

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.

a neutral face since I find this kinda meh.

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.

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!

Dry Fly Straight Triticale Whiskey

So. Craft whiskey. 

I haven’t written about a craft whiskey in a while. 

There’s a reason for that. I’ve been burned too often to want to pull the trigger on buying them when I see them in the store. I used to try every whiskey I could get my hands on. Big producers, small producers, bottlers, blenders, it didn’t matter. And I loved the idea of supporting small distilleries with my love and money. But there was a problem. 

Out of all the ones I tried, I remember a handful that I really liked. There are very few would I want to spend my money on a second time. I know how the process works. I know that economies of scale play a big part in the “craft price,” but there weren’t many that I felt were…well…good. Much less good enough to justify an inflated price.

So I haven’t picked one up in a while. But I have tried a few at whiskey events, just to know where things are at. And in doing that I found a couple of producers that I felt warrented another look. One of those was Dry Fly Distilling out of Spokane, Washington. I’d heard their name, seen their product on the shelves, even read some reviews. But as I said, I’ve been burned before. I just didn’t want to drop the coin until I could be assured I’d at least be interested by the product. After trying it, I felt it was worth the risk. Especially for one where it was made out of an interesting grain. 

Triticale is a hybrid grain. It was bred from wheat and rye in the late 1800s, but, according to wikipedia has only recently been commercially viable as a crop. If you want to know more you can read it yourself (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triticale). But what interested me about it was what it would bring to a whiskey. Would it be anything like other rye or wheat whiskies I’d had? Would it be soft or spicy? Would it be any good?

Dry Fly Straight Triticale Whiskey

Purchase Info: $29.99, 375 mL. Casanova Liquors, Hudson, WI. (It sells for between $39 and $49 for a 750 mL around the Twin Cities.)

Details: 44% ABV. Straight with no age statement so if all the rules were followed we should assume this is at least four years old in new barrels.

Nose: Bubble gum. Banana fruitiness. A light touch of caramel and baking spices.

Mouth: Spicier than I’d expect at 88 proof. A touch solventy at first. Sweet banana bread at the front of the mouth transitions to a nice minty rye spiciness as it moves toward a swallow.

Finish: A tad solventy again on the finish. Sweet and spicy. It fades to a nice bitterness that makes you want another sip.

Smile Face, I like it

Thoughts: I’m very pleasantly surprised by this. The more I taste of it, the more I like it. The only knock I have is that solvent note, but it seems to fade fairly fast. I’m guessing that as I finish the bottle it may even disappear. It tastes young, but I really like it. I can’t wait to try more by these guys.

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.

It's not my job to support your small business, it's your job to make me want to.

I love supporting small businesses. Small independent bookstores? Love them. Local antique stores? Wonderful. A small, hometown restaurant? Perfect. Craft brewers and craft distillers? So much fun. It makes me feel good to help support someone's dream. I was oddly devastated when the local True-Value hardware store and the independent grocery store in the town I live in went out of business and sold out to chains within a month of one another. 

Running a business is hard work. I found that out when I tried to live off of freelance work when I was laid off from a design job about a decade ago. I was passionate. I was good at what I did. I was also back working in an office a couple weeks after the severance package ran out. It didn't matter. I still needed to eat. I never blamed anyone but myself for giving up my business. I was good at designing things, but not good at selling myself. In three months I didn't sign up a single client. That was my failing. 

When I was in college there was a small independent bookstore in town. I once saw some kids come in to ask if he had Harry Potter. He angrily said no, he only carried literature. The next time I walked by I saw a hastily written sign taped to the door that said the same thing. Before I graduated from college, I saw another sign taped to the door blaming Amazon for him going out of business. He was expensive, he didn't offer a product that people wanted and he wasn't nice. So it was Amazon's fault he failed.

I'd say that 80% of the time I visit a craft distillery, I walk away amazed. There are people that built their own stills. People that built the buildings they are doing business in. People that are making an amazing product. They can't compete with the big guys on price, but they make up for that in providing a good experience to go along with a good product.

But sometimes when I visit a craft distillery, I run across people who remind me of that bookstore owner from when I was in college. Sometimes they are convinced that their gimmick holds the secret to aging whiskey in days and claim that the dumb big guys are producing crap in years. Sometimes they build a tiny distillery in a dry county and then get upset if someone doesn't want to pay for a five minute tour. Sometimes they are snobby or rude. And sometimes the product just isn't any good.

I love supporting passion. I love supporting people who are willing to go that extra mile to deliver something a little special. I'm normally willing to pay a little extra to do, so as long as I feel it's an honest trade. My extra money for your superior customer service. Or attention to detail. Or quality. Or experimentation. Or unique recipes. But when the sole benefit you can offer for the extra money is that you are not big? I'm not sure I see a benefit to me there.