Observations on old liquor marketing and a 1979 Ezra Brooks

July 21, 2016 Eric Burke

I’m a big fan of old liquor bottles. We’ve talked about this. I tend to go to antique stores, estate sales and bottle shows to look at and occasionally buy old bottles. Most of these are empty and I almost always get the comment: “too bad this isn’t full, huh?” But sometimes they are full. And when they are, I like to check the contents and the seal. If it’s bourbon, it hasn’t been opened and isn’t very expensive, I’ll bring it home with me.

When I search through old bottles, I also see a lot of decanters. Collectable decanters were a way for a struggling bourbon industry to try to stay afloat while tastes changed. And it must have worked because we have bourbon today, and there are a lot of old decanters for sale out there.

At some point in the mid-Twentieth Century, whiskey making changed. In the United States, the uncertainty of war coupled with changing fashions led whiskey makers to lobby for an increase in the bonding period of aging whiskey. In other words, they wanted to be able to sit on their aging stocks a bit longer before needing to pay taxes on it. It was granted and whiskey making and marketing started to focus on longer aging times. Larger age statements begins to appear and age became associated with quality. Around the same time proofs started dropping as well. Where 100 (and 101) proof were once fairly standard 86 proof was becoming more and more common.

With an increasing focus on age and decreasing proofs, it isn’t terribly surprising that the largest number on many of the old decanters you find is the age. What is surprising is that the age is stated in months not years. Unlike many of today’s whiskeys who use months for their age statements, it isn’t because the whiskey is young though. 100 months is the most common age I’ve seen on Jim Beam decanters (though I’ve also seen 155 on a few occasions). And I’ve seen numerous 101 month Ezra Brooks decanters.

I can think of a couple of reasons why 100 months might have been used. Much like the producers who put out three year old whiskey today and label it 36 months, 100 just sounds bigger than 8. The other reason I can think of is that 100 and 101 months bear a striking resemblance to the 100 and 101 proof that consumers had been used to seeing before proofs started dropping. Kind of an early version of the Very Old Barton “6” that Sazerac uses today. I don’t know if the actual answer is one, the other, or both. In any case, 35 years later, it is fun to ponder.

Ezra Brooks - Bengal Tiger, 1979

Purchase info: $15 at a bottle and advertising show

Details: From the Ezra Brooks Wildlife Collector Series. 101 months old (8.417 years). 80 proof.

Nose: Green apples, baking spices and a faint earthiness to go along with some oak. After some time it transitions to a strong butterscotch bomb.

Mouth: Not as sweet as I was expecting. Baking spices, brown sugar, oak and earthiness.

Finish: On the longer side of medium. Sweet with lingering baking spices and green apple.

With Water: The mouth gets a bit livelier and the green apple comes through more. The nose gets spicier with a touch of anise. Water kills the finish.

Thoughts: As Ezra Brooks has always been a sourced whiskey, it was really interesting to see what was being sourced in 1979. With it’s apple and spice notes, it reminds me a bit of a Brown-Forman bourbon. (Though I doubt that it is since Ezra Brooks debuted by impersonating their biggest brand and were sued by them). Based on this bottle, it is the equivalent of an ok $30-45 bottle today. But that said, I don’t know that I’d seek out another bottle of it. It’s pretty good, but not the best I’ve ever had.

A word on lead: There is a forum thread on straightbourbon.com that details the story of a man getting the whiskey from one of his decanters tested for lead and finding very high levels of it. I do not have the equipment to test this myself. I did however allow the bourbon from this decanter to evaporate and then drip the contents of a lead paint tester into the residue (saving a drop or two for the conformation strip) and there was no "red for lead." I won’t say this bourbon doesn’t contain lead or that any of the bourbon from old decanters you find will or will not contain lead. But this test satisfied my curiosity enough to allow me to do the small tasting I did for this post.

For more information on lead poisoning visit: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002473.htm

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!

Crown Royal Black

July 19, 2016 Eric Burke

Every so often, I'll be in a liquor store and I'll feel the need to buy something...else. I'm buying bourbon and maybe beer. But then something will catch my eye that I just have to have. One time it was a miniature bottle of Phillips Gin-Ka, a gin-vodka blend that I have no intention of drinking, but whose packaging was too hilariously cute to pass up. Once it was brandy in a bag that was on clearance because...brandy in a bag. (Come to think of it, those might have been the same time...). Hell, one time it was even be a bottle of "individually barreled" bourbon (see the previous post).

But occasionally when this happens, it is something perfectly normal that catches my eye. Something so normal and so ubiquitous that I just never bothered to try it before. Something like Crown Royal Black. I saw this sitting in a bucket near the register at a local liquor store and bought it on a whim. It's been sitting on the shelf for a couple months now, as I keep turning to other products that are new and exciting. But since I finally noticed it on the shelf, let's get down to it.

Crown Royal Black is available almost everywhere. And although I've had some very good products with the Crown Royal name on them, I've also had some real snoozers. The Black version is their run at bourbon drinkers. On their website, they claim it has deeper oak notes on the nose and bourbon notes on the finish. It is bottled at a higher proof then the original release.

Crown Royal Black

Purchase Info: I really have no idea what store it was at, but it was probably a buck or two for each 50 mL bottle.

Details: Canadian Whiskey, 45% ABV

Nose: Brown sugar, cedar, baking spices.

Mouth: Peppery without being too hot. Black pepper, dried fruit, brown sugar, baking spices and oak.

Finish: Medium length. Cinnamon spice candy which transitions into mint.

Thoughts: If anything can be said to "taste Canadian" it would be this. But unlike your stereotypical Canadian whiskey, this has enough spice to keep you interested and enough sweetness to make you want another sip. And it's fine. Nothing special, but I like it. If your choices are between this and the regular Crown, this is an upgrade. Other than that though, this would probably almost never be my first choice of pour. I mean, don't get me wrong, if someone was nice enough to pour me a glass, I'd be happy enough to drink it. I just doubt that I'll be picking up a full bottle anytime soon.

Black Eagle Bourbon

July 14, 2016 Eric Burke

You’re sitting in a meeting. You’ve run out of things to say. Everyone is looking at you. You know you have to say something, but you’re not sure what. It’s awkward. You just sit there looking around. Thinking to yourself that eventually maybe someone else will say something.

The silence get longer. It gets more awkward. You’re starting to fidget now. People around you are looking out the window, trying not to stare as you just sit there.

Finally you squeak: “Individually barreled?”

This is how I picture the label meeting going for Total Wine’s Black Eagle Bourbon. I mean when you describe your bourbon as “Old-style, individual barreled bourbon whiskey, distilled from only the finest ingredients for a genuine full-bourbon character” you know someone somewhere was wracking their brain trying to come up with something nice to say on the spot.

I find this label to be hilarious. So much so that I had to buy this bottle immediately. I mean, no matter the size of the barrel, it is going to be an individual. And what the hell is full-bourbon character?

I guess we’ll find out.

Black Eagle Bourbon Whiskey

Purchase Info: $11.99 for a 750 mL bottle at Total Wine, Burnsville, MN.

Details: 40% ABV. 3 years old.

Nose: Lightly fruity with delicate floral and mint notes

Mouth: Grain forward with light notes of baking spice and mint.

Finish: Short and grain forward.

Thoughts: When I saw this I expected something pretty bad. I mean the marketing people literally couldn’t say anything nice about it. When even marketing people can’t find a superlative that feels right to describe something you know that there’s nothing to say about a product. And though there isn’t much going on here, what is going on isn’t bad. It’s just sort of meh. To be honest this reminds me a lot of Old Crow. An ok well bourbon should you need one, but otherwise something to avoid.

I’ll probably use the rest of mine in the Cherry Bounce recipe from Michael Dietsch’s cocktail book Whiskey that I reviewed a while back. After three months soaking up cherry juice, it probably won’t matter what I used to begin with.

Head to Head Review: Eagle Rare, Store Pick vs Regular Release

July 12, 2016 Eric Burke

Two Eagle Rare Bottles. One from Ace Spirits, one from a grocery store in Wisconsin

Store picks versus regular releases. It’s a topic I find myself thinking about more and more often as I realize that I’ve examined a lot of bourbon for the blog and tasted a lot more outside of it. As my local liquor stores realize that they need to do something in order to differentiate themselves from the competition, I run across more and more store picks of things like Knob Creek, Woodford Reserve, Russell’s Reserve, 1792 and others. Plus, the price is normally either the same as the regular release or even a little cheaper. As such I’ve found myself picking them more often on my shopping trips.

I’ve had mixed results with store picks, some are amazing and some are…well…not. But I tend to buy them anyway. While I always like a good familiar bourbon, sometimes I like a slightly different take on that familiar flavor. I say slightly very purposefully. It is rare that a store pick will fall too far outside the accepted flavor profile for a given brand. It may be the the producer didn’t offer samples that strayed too far (it is their name on the bottle too after all) or it may be that the retailer didn’t want to surprise customers with something that didn’t match their expectations. So I tend to buy them when I see them. Not because they are totally different, but that sometimes I find it interesting how fairly slight differences can extremely noticeable when you taste things side by side. Of course sometimes I just buy it because it is on sale too.

Eagle Rare is a bourbon produced by Buffalo Trace. It is dumped out of barrels that were filled with distillate made from Buffalo Trace’s Rye Bourbon Mash Bill Number 1 (though I have been told that very occasionally a mash bill number 2 barrel will hit the flavor profile and become Eagle Rare). This same distillate is also used to fill barrels that will become Old Charter, George T Stagg, Buffalo Trace and Benchmark. It is also a bourbon that I was positive that I had reviewed before. I buy it every so often when I go home to visit my family because it is readily available and tends to be pretty cheap in relation to the price I sometimes find it for in Minnesota, where it’s a different story completely. Here it is neither readily available or as cheap. I will often find it for almost $10 more per bottle.

A local retailer peaked my interest when they sent out an email hinting that they’d solved the allocation problem by picking their own barrel. Even though I had a bottle open and on the shelf from my last trip home, I decided that the ability to taste these side by side was too tempting to pass up.

So now I have two open bottles of Eagle Rare on the shelf.

Eagle Rare: Regular Release vs Store Pick

Regular Release:

Purchase Info: ~$27 for a 750 mL at Marketplace Foods, Hayward, WI.

Details: Single Barrel. 10 Year Age Stated, 45% ABV.

Nose: Oak, mint and a slight smokiness

Mouth: A nice viscous mouthfeel. Sweet caramel, herbal mint and anise, oak.

Finish: Of medium length with sweet and oak notes.

Ace Spirits Store Pick:

Purchase Info: $34.99 for a 750 mL bottle at Ace Spirits, Hopkins, MN

Details: Single Barrel. 10 Year Age Stated, 45% ABV. Barrel # 170.

Nose: Oak, mint and a slight smokiness with the addition of baking spices and a light fruitiness.

Mouth: Butterscotch, oak, anise and a light fruitless.

Finish: Nice and spicy and of medium to long length.

Thoughts: Both of these are very good. Let’s just start there. I’m a big fan of both when I have them on their own. Together though, there is a definite standout. The regular release feels almost tired compared to the Ace Spirits pick. The addition of a light fruitiness to the oak and sweetness really livens up the pour. That isn’t to say that these are miles apart from a flavor standpoint. They both taste like Eagle Rare. One just tastes like a better version of Eagle Rare.

A Whiskey Vatting Experiment

July 7, 2016 Eric Burke

My vatted whiskey in one of my favorite antique glasses

I try to never dump out whiskey. Not even when it is really bad. I always figure that there is something I can use it for. Even if I don’t want to drink it neat, I might use it in a cocktail. If it isn’t able to stand up in a cocktail, maybe I’ll use it for cooking. If I don’t even want to cook with it I try to see if I can blend it with something.

Which is the thought that inspired my latest experiment.

I had a lot of whiskey on hand after the Bottom Shelf Bourbon Brackets. A lot of whiskey that was ok but not great. As the bottles were reaching their conclusion I was struck by a little inspiration. Why not start a giant vatting of American whiskey and see what I got after I filled a liter bottle? I mean I wasn’t starting with anything crazy. I think Jim Beam white and Johnny Drum 80 proof were the first two in the bottle.

After a while I decided that if this was ever going to be anything worth drinking that I would need to dip into the better tasting, and higher proof, whiskies as well. So I decided to put one ounce of everything I had opened (or would open in the future) into the bottle no matter if it was a Willett Single Barrel or a Mellow Corn. If it was American Whiskey, it could contribute to the final vatting. It took a couple months but I finally filled the bottle. And after I let it sit for a few weeks to mingle, I decided to see what I had created.

Here is a list of what ended up in the bottle (and it’s proof). One ounce of each.

Jim Beam White (80°)
Johnny Drum (80°)
Dad’s Hat Vermouth Finished (94°)
1783 Evan Williams (86°)
Blue State (80°)
Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel Rye (94°)
Old Weller Antique (107°)
Very Old Barton (86°)
Maker’s Mark (90°)
Old Grand Dad 114 (114°)
Booker’s (128.7°)
Willett Single Barrel Rye (115.6°)
Willett Single Barrel Bourbon (118.4°)
Wild Turkey 101 (101°)
Woodford Reserve (90.4°)
Four Roses Small Batch (90°)
MB Roland Single Barrel Bourbon (106.5°)
Hochstadter’s Vatted Rye (100°)
Michter’s Barrel Strength Rye (108.8°)
Parker’s Heritage Collection: Promise of Hope (96°)
1792 Single Barrel: Ace Spirits (93.7°)
Rendezvous Rye-finished in Bourbon Barrels (104.8°)
Rowan’s Creek (100.1°)
Mellow Corn (100°)
Four Roses Single Barrel OESF (112.6°)
Knob Creek 2001 (100°)
1792 Single Barrel: Ace Spirits (93.7°) - accidental repeat
1792 Port Finish (88.9°)
Russell’s Reserve Rye Single Barrel (104°)
Old Scout Rye (99°)
Larceny (92°)
Elijah Craig 12 Year (94°)
IW Harper 15 Year (86°)
Maker’s 46 Cask Strength (108.8°)

So the final make up was 34 ounces of 33 different whiskies. It ended up being 95.54° proof. But how did it taste?

Arok’s Vatted Whiskey

Purchase Info: Too many to list or remember…see above.

Details: 47.77% ABV

Nose: Caramel, vanilla, spearmint, baking spices and oak

Mouth: Warm and spicy with vanilla/caramel, cloves, mint, bubble gum and oak

Finish: Warm and of decent length. Lingering bubble gum and rye spices.

Thoughts: More than anything this reminds me of some of the higher end Four Roses bourbons I’ve had. It shows a lot of rye character which isn’t terribly surprising since there are a lot of straight ryes in there. This is quite tasty. Overall, I’d say this was a successful experiment.

Now you might be wondering what comes next. Well, I like this experiment and I think I might keep going. I poured off 500 mL and am drinking that. The other 500 mL will be the starter for the next vatting. I’m thinking of doing it sort of solara style where nothing in the blend is truly ever gone, it’s just there in diminishing proportions. Eventually I’ll get bored, but if I keep at it (and make sure I put in the good stuff too) I shouldn’t run out of something that is decent enough to have as an everyday bourbon as long as I am running this site (needless to say I go through a lot of whiskey).

Russell’s Reserve Single Barrel Rye

June 30, 2016 Eric Burke

I’m four-fifths of the way through the week and before the night is over I will have booked twice the billable hours of a typical week. Needless to say, this has been a hellish week for me on the work front. I’m getting to work on lots of fun projects, but free-time is in short supply. So since blogging doesn’t pay the bills nearly as well as working does, I’ll need to keep this short was well.

I tend to like whiskey put out by Wild Turkey. This is no secret. I tend to like Rye whiskey. This is also no secret. So when I saw a rye whiskey on the shelf produced by Wild Turkey, that I hadn’t yet had, I felt the need to buy it on the spot. And buy it I did.

This is Russell’s Reserve Rye Single Barrel. It is a non-chill filtered rye whiskey bottled at 52% ABV. And it is delicious.

Russell’s Reserve Single Barrel Rye

Purchase Info: $59.99 for a 750ml bottle at South Lyndale Liquors, Minneapolis, MN

Details: 52% ABV.

Nose: Tobacco, mint, Bazooka Joe bubble gum and oak

Mouth: Nice and spicy. Bubble gum, mint, baking spices, vanilla, black pepper and oak

Finish: Long and warm with lingering vanilla, baking spices and just the faintest hint of pickle.

Thoughts: This is an extremely tasty rye. It’s spicy and has enough sweetness to balance that. It has a wonderful mouthfeel. It pairs fantastically with a well aged cheddar. I can find no faults with the whiskey and look forward to buying another bottle.

I can however find faults with the packaging. This is a single barrel whiskey. And a single barrel whiskey could allow the consumer the opportunity to learn a little something about the whiskey that they are buying. Is it older than the typical release? Was is aged in a specific place that seems to help create notes they like? What barrel did it come from in case they like it and want another of the same one? The packaging tells you none of that. It tells you how long Eddie and Jimmy have been working at the distillery, but not how long the whiskey was aged. It tells you it’s a single barrel, but not which barrel it came from. One bottle looks just like the next even though the whiskey inside might taste different. It’s a small thing, but for $60, the small things are sort of what you are paying for.

That said, I’ll buy another. It’s too tasty not to.

Michter’s Barrel Strength Kentucky Straight Rye Whiskey

June 21, 2016 Eric Burke

So there I was. At a Maker’s Mark Ambassador event in Andover, Minnesota. It was interesting. I got a couple black dipped glasses that I will probably never use, I had a free bratwurst for lunch and I was hanging out with other Maker’s Ambassadors trying cocktails and sipping a little bourbon. I didn’t end up buying any Maker’s that day. But I did buy something that sorta surprised my wife.

I don’t normally buy Michter’s products. The juice is alright, but each purchase comes with a little baggage for me. When I first got into bourbon they were an NDP. Now there isn’t anything inherently wrong with that, but they were a more than a little dishonest about it. They were selling a story about how they could trace the company back to the American Revolution. The fact of the matter was that they registered an abandoned trademark and ran with it.

I don’t like being deceived and sometimes I hold a bit of a grudge. Which is why now, when they seem to have become much more honest in their story and have actually started distilling (according to Chuck Cowdery they produce more than 500,000 gallons per year), I still seem to find myself reaching for something else when I see them on the shelf.

But on that day, something made me go grab the manager on duty to open the case this was in. Like maybe this grudge had gone on long enough and I should give them another shot. I used to like their Straight Rye quite a bit, so a Barrel Strength version was a bit intriguing.

Michter’s Barrel Strength Kentucky Straight Rye Whiskey

Purchase Info: $71.99 for a 750 mL at G-Will Liquors, Andover, MN.

Details: Barrel No: 15C200. 54.4% ABV. Single Barrel (as is the regular release of their Rye)

Nose: Cedar, mint, cloves and a hint of earthiness.

Mouth: Bold and sweet in the mouth. Mint, caramel, vanilla, cloves and cedar chips.

Finish: Very sweet. A nice long warmth that lingers with herbal mint and spicy cloves numbing you tongue.

Thoughts: This is very good whiskey. Price and availability will demand that this be a treat not a shelf staple but if you see it and can see yourself through to it, pick it up. Because though I’m still a little upset at being deceived years ago, maybe it’s time to let that be in the past and let the whiskey speak for itself. And this whiskey is saying some very nice things.

Hoffman Originals, Mr. Lucky Series, The Carolers

June 14, 2016 Eric Burke

A very long time ago, by today’s standards, bourbon was not popular. It was so not popular that many people selling it almost of included it as a kind of “value-add” when they sold ceramic decanters. Ceramic decanters seem to have been immensely popular during the 1970s. I have people in my own family who will reminisce about purchasing a couple of them for a decent amount of money and then claim: “I don’t know that [the buyer] ever did drink any of that…”

Now the buyer in question above was a prolific drinker. And if he didn’t drink the bourbon, you can bet that he was not an edge case. This is born out by the fact that I have bought multiple ceramic decanters that are still full and sealed at antique stores or shows for under $25. Including the one above. That one only cost me $18. $18 at a bottle and advertising show where I saw a piece of Four Roses ad signage marked up to over $100.

The piece was put out by the Hoffman Distilling Company from Lawrenceburg, KY. Haven’t heard of them? Well, don’t feel bad, I hadn’t either. They seem to be one of those pieces of history that has left very little mark on the internet. But here is what I have collected.

Sam Cecil, in his book Bourbon: The Evolution of Kentucky Whiskey claims that the distillery was built in 1880 and after passing through many hands, was in disrepair by the mid 1970s. Saying on page 98 of his book: “I visited the distillery in the mid-1970s, and the still house was falling down.”
Mike Veach tells us on BourbonEnthusiast.com that in 1966 “The Hoffman Distilling Company of Lawrenceburg, Ky. with a capacity of 300 bushels per day is listed with Ezra Brooks as one of its four brands. The executives of the distillery are Ben G, Ripy, William R. Ripy, and Robert Ripy (1966 Red Book, p.33).”
He also says on another post “The Hoffman distillery is the distillery that created Ezra Brooks in the 60's. It went out of business in the 70s and Julian Van Winkle bought the old distillery.”
Speaking of Ezra Brooks, our friend Brian at Sipp’n Corn mentions Hoffman in his post on the lawsuit where Jack Daniel’s sued Ezra Brooks over the marketing of Ezra Brooks in the 1950s and 60s. If you want to read more about that lawsuit, you can.
Ellenjaye.com has a post about what became of the Hoffman Distillery after it was purchased and renamed by one Julian Van Winkle III. You may have heard of him. He really doesn’t figure into this story except as a footnote though.
And finally a reclaimed wood supplier in Oregon has a nice long post about the distillery from the point of view of one who might want to sell you wood from the rick houses.

Most of the research I found claims the distillery went out of business in the mid-1970s and the location was used as a bottling house by various brands and run by a member of the Ripy family at that time. One of the brands that seems to have been bottled there was Hoffman Originals, a brand that seems to have survived the distillery proper (though I can find no mention of any actual relation between them other than having the same name and bottling location) by selling ceramic decanters of the variety described above. They put out quite a few decanters throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Jim Crawford at jimsbottles.com has an extensive set of posts on their Mr Lucky series (the series of decanters which included the Carolers decanter shown below, click for larger images).

This decanter depicts two leprechauns singing Christmas Carols. It is a full sized (4/5ths quart) decanter bottled by the Hoffman Distilling Company, Lawrenceburg, KY. And because neither bourbon nor the bottle were enough to sell this, it is of course also a music box. It is from 1979. The cork was intact and the tax stamp was unbroken. It was $18. I decided to pick it up.

Hoffman Originals, Mr. Lucky Series, The Carolers plus the box

Hoffman Originals, Mr. Lucky Series, The Carolers Base (front)

Hoffman Originals, Mr. Lucky Series, The Carolers Base (back)

Hoffman Originals, Mr. Lucky Series, Carolers, 1979: The Bourbon.

Purchase info: $18 at a bottle and advertising show.

Nose: As is to be expected from a bottle that has been closed for over 35 years, this smells of acetone at the initial pouring. After letting it sit in the glass for a while, we started picking up notes of rich butterscotch, cloves, ripe apples, fresh flowers and hints of lemon zest.

Mouth: Peppery and sweet with more butterscotch and cloves along with a large dose of floral notes.

Finish: The finish follows the mouth and nose with lingering sweet, clove and floral notes along with a gentle, medium length burn.

Thoughts: This whiskey is pretty tasty though not to the standards of other older bottlings I’ve found. Being sourced whiskey, maybe this was lower end stuff bought only to fill the bottle? Or maybe, time just hasn’t been kind to this one. I don’t know. It’s fine, just kinda…meh when neat. Adding water does open it up allowing more sweet notes to come to the forefront, but it loses it’s burn. It goes to show that just because a whiskey is a “dusty” doesn’t necessarily follow that it is really good. Fun to try though.

A word on lead: There is a forum thread on straightbourbon.com that details the story of a man getting the whiskey from one of his decanters tested for lead and finding very high levels of it. I do not have the equipment to test this myself. I did however allow the bourbon from this decanter to evaporate and then drip the contents of a lead paint tester into the residue (saving a drop or two for the conformation strip) and there was no red for lead. I won’t say this bourbon doesn’t contain lead or that any of the bourbon from old decanters you find will or will not contain lead. But this test satisfied my curiosity enough to allow me to do the small tasting I did for this post.

For more information on lead poisoning visit: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002473.htm

Blog

Ezra Brooks - Bengal Tiger, 1979

Crown Royal Black

Black Eagle Bourbon Whiskey

Eagle Rare: Regular Release vs Store Pick

Regular Release:

Ace Spirits Store Pick:

Arok’s Vatted Whiskey

Russell’s Reserve Single Barrel Rye

Michter’s Barrel Strength Kentucky Straight Rye Whiskey

Hoffman Originals, Mr. Lucky Series, Carolers, 1979: The Bourbon.