Recommendation: The Bourbon Country Reader

July 5, 2016 Eric Burke

Way back when I was a young bourbon-lad, transitioning from a bourbon drinker to a bourbon geek, Chuck Cowdery's The Bourbon Country Reader was the first whiskey publication I subscribed to. Over the years, I subscribed to other whiskey publications, Whiskey Advocate, The Bourbon Review and others. But one-by-one I let those subscriptions lapse. Sometimes it was because I didn't find anything between the pages that I found valuable enough to pay for. Sometimes it was due to lack of time or interest on my part.

The one publication subscription I've never let lapse is The Bourbon Country Reader. The content is well-written, well-researched and isn't available anywhere else. Chuck knows bourbon and though he has his opinions, that's part of the draw. The subscription, being about the price of a cheap-ish bottle of bourbon, is inexpensive at $20 for six issues. These appear roughly 4-6 times per year but your subscription is issue based, not time based. They appear frequently enough that they become part of your routine and not something that you've forgotten that you subscribed to by the time the next issue arrives. And in what might seem a paradoxical statement I like that it is short. It is 4 pages long with three to four articles per issue. I can get through it in one sitting. There is no filler.

If you are reading bourbon blogs, you are probably reading Chuck Cowdery's blog. If you read bourbon books, you might have read his books: Bourbon, Straight and Bourbon, Strange among others. But if you read only one bourbon publication, it should be The Bourbon Country Reader. Go to Chuck's blog to subscribe.

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!

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.

My Wandering Eye: Dusty Cognacs from the 1970s

June 28, 2016 Eric Burke

This post is only part of the My Wandering Eye series as a tangent. It wasn’t cheap. It isn’t readily available. But it was inspired by the exploration of other aged spirits that I conducted as part of the My Wandering Eye series. You see I was trolling eBay looking for photos of old bottles for a project that I’m working on when I happened across a listing from Canada that was offering old miniature bottles from the collection of the seller's deceased parents. In that lot were bourbons, scotches and cognacs. To be honest, the price wasn’t bad…until I got into a bidding war with another person. At which point emotion took over and I ended up dropping about $100 for 15 minis from the 1970s. Of which nine were still full and sealed.

I’ve already reviewed the Wild Turkey I received in the lot, but I was really interested to see what the cognacs in the lot would taste like. I’ve had good brandy and I’ve had terrible brandy. But when I was a kid, cognac in a snifter was visual shorthand for wealth. I was a kid in the 1970s. The fact that these were from that timeframe (even if they were possibly the lower shelf versions) was interesting. So let’s get into it.

Courvoisier V.S.

Details: Pre-1975 is as close to a date as I can figure. The top was dipped in paraffin by the previous owner. Sealed. 80 proof.

Nose: Dried, dark fruit (raisins or figs), sweet baked goods. Basically this has the nose of a Fig Newton.

Mouth: Sweet and rich with a ton of fruit present. There are some baking spices on the back end.

Finish: Short with lingering fruit.

Thoughts: Overall, this is ok. Nothing to write home about and I wouldn’t seek out another, but it was interesting to taste a bit of history. It is sweet and fruit forward. A bit too sweet for my tastes.

Marnier-Lapostolle Cognac

Details: Sept 1972 is printed on the back of the label so I’m going with that for an age. Sealed. 40% ABV

Nose: Birdseed, rubber and a hint of spoiled fruit juice.

Mouth: Sugar sweet with an unpleasant spoiled fruit undercurrent to it.

Finish: Short with lingering spoiled fruit.

Thoughts: There are two options here. One is that maybe there is a reason that, here in the US, Marnier-Lapostolle is known more for their Grand Marnier liqueur than they are for cognac. Maybe they aren’t good at this whole unflavored spirit thing. The other option is that this little bottle has seen some hard times over the last 44 years and the juice just didn’t hold up. I don’t know which it is and am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt since, of it’s 40 plus years of history, I only know that this bottle was made in France and ended up in the collection of a Canadian collector before coming to me. But wow. This is downright bad.

Hennessy Fine Cognac

Details: Pre-1975 is as close to a date as I can figure. The top was dipped in paraffin by the previous owner. Sealed. 80 proof.

Nose: Ripe peaches along with floral and oak notes.

Mouth: Very sweet. Caramel, dried flowers and hints of baking spice.

Finish: Fairly short with lingering dried fruits.

Thoughts: This was hands down the best of the three. Mostly on the strength of the nose. Peaches are one of my favorite fruits and that ripe peach note grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. Once it got into my mouth though things fell off and since ultimately the point of the liquid is to be consumed, that’s where I judge it. Once again it was ok. There wasn’t much that would lead me to seek it out again though if a friend were pouring, I wouldn’t turn it down. I will say it was much better than the modern day release of the same that I have on hand for making cocktails.

This was an interesting exercise for me. It’s fun to taste what our parents or grandparents tasted. And it’s good to be reminded from time to time that not everything that comes from prior to the time we were born is necessarily as good as we are sometimes lead to believe...it’s just harder to come by.

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

June 23, 2016 Eric Burke

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bourbon A:

Nose: Pear, caramel, oak and baking spices.

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

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

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

Bourbon B:

Nose: Creme Brûlée, floral notes and dusty oak.

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

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

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

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

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.

Whiskey: A Spirited Story with 75 Classic & Original Cocktails by Michael Dietsch

June 16, 2016 Eric Burke

As I tend to list my favorite cocktail as Whiskey in a Glass, it should come as no surprise that I am not really a cocktail guy. Not because I don’t like cocktails. I like them quite a bit. And not because they are too hard. I love cooking elaborate meals. No I’m not a cocktail guy, because I don’t know what I’m doing. Go beyond a Sazerac, a Manhattan or an Old Fashioned and I’m not sure what to do. There are too many possible ingredients that only seem to come in 750 mL bottles and which you use a teaspoon at a time.

This is why I was looking forward to Michael Dietsch’s new book Whiskey: A Spirited Story with 75 Classic & Original Cocktails. I need help knowing what to make, what types of ingredients I should buy and in what combinations I should use them. Eventually I might be able to get to where I can riff on my own, but for now I’m a relative noob. Plus, I loved his last book on shrubs and even made two or three of them including a Cranberry Apple Shrub that I substituted for the vermouth in a Manhattan for a while.

The first third of the book is a primer on the different types of whiskey. Everything from bourbon to scotch to Japanese whiskey is covered. There is even a separate section for Tennessee whiskey just to make Jack and George fans feel special. The next 20 pages or so are really great for the cocktail noob. Entitled “How to Make a Cocktail” it gives you an overview on equipment, technique, glasses and more.

Then you get into the nitty gritty. The part I wanted to book for. The recipes. The first night I had the book I went through and put flags on the cocktails I wanted to try. Soon I had run out of flags and had to grab a second package. I must have tabbed about half the cocktails in the book. Then it was time for a shopping list. Luckily I was able to buy just a few of ingredients to make a large number of them. Then I got down to research. If I was going to review the book, I wanted to do more than just read it.

There were cocktails in there that I’d always wanted to try, but never had, like the Vieux Carré. There were the standards that are in every book like the Manhattan, etc. But then there were ones I had never heard of as well. Things with exotic names like Algonquin, Bardstown, Lion’s Tail and Fanciulli.

One thing I liked about the book is that along with each recipe you get a little of it’s history. A little information about it. Plus, if you are a history buff like I am, a nice touch was that the recipes are organized by historical period. Feel like having a Prohibition-party? You know what to make. Feel like something modern? Turn to the back.

To say I enjoyed my research would be an understatement. My wife and I spent at least two weeks going through the book and making everything we had the ingredients for and then buying the ingredients to make some of the others. This is a book I can easily recommend to any whiskey fan looking to expand a little beyond Whiskey in a Glass.

Curious about what’s inside? Michael has graciously given permission for me to republish one of my favorite recipes in the book. I really like this one.

Fanciulli

Ingredients

2 ounces of bourbon (Bulleit is suggested though I can attest that other fruity, light bourbons work as well)

3/4 ounce sweet vermouth

1/4 ounce Fernet-Banca

Procedure

Fill a mixing glass 2/3 full of ice
Add bourbon, vermouth, and Fernet-Branca, and stir 15 seconds, or until chilled and diluted.
Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

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

Ask Arok: 1792 and Very Old Barton

June 9, 2016 Eric Burke

Very Old Barton and 1792: What's the difference, really?

Last week, Dan left a comment on the post I did comparing 1792 Port Finish to a 1792 single barrel.

What is the difference between 1792 and Very Old barton other than packaging? Thanks!

Initially thought he was asking about flavor. Because I find them to be quite different, I was happy to share that I found 1792 to be hotter, drier and showing more wood influence than VOB. It turns out that his question was much more interesting than that, cutting to the heart of the difference between the juice that goes into the bottle for two brands. Since both of these bourbons are produced at the Barton 1792 Distillery in Bardstown, KY one might assume that they are just the same bourbon put into different bottles.

At one point, this would have been an easy question to answer. Age. Both of these had age statements until just a few years ago. Very Old Barton was 6 years old and 1792 was 8. I assumed that this, along with barrel selection was probably still the case. But the bourbon industry has changed in the mean time. There is much less info on the label than there used to be for these two brands so I couldn't say for sure. To find out, I reached out to a contact I have at Sazerac to see if she would like to chime in. Here is what she had to say.

Age constitutes most of the difference in taste between Very Old Barton and 1792, as 1792 barrels are typically aged 3-4 years longer than Very Old Barton. We also taste, evaluate and approve all the barrels prior to use in any batch to ensure a consistent taste profile for every brand. So in other words, to ensure Very Old Barton always tastes like Very Old Barton and 1792 always tastes like 1792.

So I was correct in my assumption that it is still age and barrel selection. But I was a bit surprised at one thing. Apparently in the last few years Very Old Barton has gotten younger at a faster pace than 1792 has. They used to be 2 years apart in age. Now they are 3-4 years different. Assuming that they wouldn't remove the 8 year age statement while making the bourbon older, we are left to deduce that Very Old Barton is now only 4-5 years old while 1792 is around 7-8.

Toss in choosing barrels to fit the flavor profile and you get yourself a different brand that starts the same, but are pretty different when compared to one another.

Do you have a bourbon question you'd like answered? Just get in contact with me using one of the icons in the sidebar to submit one. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll try to find it from someone who does.

Blog

Russell’s Reserve Single Barrel Rye

Courvoisier V.S.

Marnier-Lapostolle Cognac

Hennessy Fine Cognac

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

Bourbon A:

Bourbon B:

Michter’s Barrel Strength Kentucky Straight Rye Whiskey

Fanciulli

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