My Wandering Eye: Flor de Caña 25 Year Old

My Wandering Eye is a series reacting to the crazy rising prices in the bourbon world. We’ve reached a place where even average products have hit the range where they compete price-wise with other types of aged spirits. If I’m going be asked to drop $40 to $70 on a mid-range bourbon, I might as well see what else I can get for that money. My hope is to see if another spirits category offers something that is downright tasty in that price range. The goal isn’t to find cheap spirits, but to maximize the quality, I’m getting at a particular price point. And please remember, these will all be from the perspective of someone who basically only drinks bourbon.

As you may have noticed during the past few weeks, I got really excited by non-bourbon things over the holiday season. I’m doling them out at a slow pace so that there is still bourbon/whiskey content on BourbonGuy.com.

Once a month, my wife and I do what is called a Mystery Date. One night each month, one of us, takes the other out to…something. The only rule is that the organizer can’t tell the other what the date is. It needs to be a surprise. We don’t do fancy things (we are not fancy people), but we try to make it something or someplace that is at least a little special.

Last month my wife took me to a burger and cocktail restaurant that we had never been to. On the way back, we stopped into the Total Wine location near the restaurant because they had something that I had been lusting over: Flor de Caña 25 Year Old.

See, I really liked the Flor de Caña 18 year old and I got really excited when I found out that not only was there an older version, but it was available in the South Metro. Unfortunately, it was about $155. Not the price range for something I would normally buy for myself. But as part of the special experience of Mystery Date Night, she convinced me to splurge.

And so she raised the bar much higher than I anticipated for this month when I am in charge of organizing the Mystery Date.

Flor de Caña 25 Year Old

Purchase Info: $154.99 for a 750 ml bottle at Total Wine, Eagan, MN

Details: 25 years old (according to their website, the bottle says 25 slow aged). 40% ABV

Nose: Brown sugar, oak, ginger, and chocolate

Mouth: Viscous mouthfeel. Ginger, honey, sugar cookies, and oak.

Finish: Gentle and lingering. Ginger and dark chocolate.

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Thoughts: This is delicious. It is a sweet dessert in a glass and I am glad that I purchased it. That said, even if it is available, I probably won’t be buying it again. I just like the 18 year old version better. It is more vibrant and spicy. Plus it sells for over $100 less per bottle.

And I need to save that kind of cash for date night.

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Holy F**k! It was cold last week!

Last week, I ended up getting sick. It sucked. I hate being sick. Especially stomach bugs. They are the worst. But, this particular tummy bug happened to coincide with a truly once in a generation weather event. (You might have heard that we in the upper midwest ended up having a bit of a cold snap last week.) Well, sick or not, I wasn’t about to waste the opportunity presented.

Let me back up a bit. When I was growing up in Northern Wisconsin the adults in my dad’s family had a tendency to drink. A lot. There were cases of beer outside chilling in the snow outside the back door of every winter family gathering. Even in temps well below freezing. Early on, I noticed that the sodas and water would start to freeze a bit faster than those beers did. Not knowing anything about thermodynamics and relative freezing points yet, I didn’t realize that the alcohol helped act as an antifreeze and that the snow acted as a refrigerator but also acted an insulator to help shield that beer from the worst effects of the negative temperatures. The waters and sodas meanwhile were just stuck outside the back door, where there wasn’t any snow and so it froze.

But once I grew up and started learning about these things, I started to realize why the hard liquor that they turned to as evening rolled around never seemed to freeze, even after the beer had started to get a bit slushy. And of course once I got to be a fan of that hard liquor myself, I always wanted to see if I could get that liquor to freeze.

Yes, I am a geek in almost every way you can imagine.

So, last week when the temps were forecasted to be in the “Oh God, please don’t go outside” range, there I was. Outside with one ounce plastic cups of bourbon of varying proofs to see what would happen.

So yeah! I froze bourbon! It was that fucking cold at my house. I hated it. It caused all sorts of havoc in my attic. The dogs started pooping in the house due to not wanting to go outside (can you blame them?). And ultimately I’m just thankful my gas company was able to keep up with my furnace.

I never want to feel those temperatures again. Touching something that is -30° F causes a slight tingling pain in your fingers that lasts a little while. Take it from me, it is stupid and dumb and you shouldn’t do it.

I did learn a little bit though. Here are some photos from after the sun came up to show what happened to each of the bourbons.

As you can see the 80° proof froze solid. It was a bourbon-pop minus the stick. I wouldn’t lick it though. At -30° F you’d probably frostbite your tongue. 90° proof was a little more solid, but had a bit of liquid. And 100° proof was the slushiest of them all. I found it interesting that most of the color and flavor stayed with the water and was locked in the ice. I wasn’t expecting that. And yes, I tasted it after blowing on it to warm it some. It was very odd. Not nearly as pleasurable as a nice glass of neat bourbon though.

All in all it was a fun experiment. I wouldn’t wish for the temperatures to perform it again though.

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My Wandering Eye: Tequila Clase Azul Reposado

My Wandering Eye is a series reacting to the crazy rising prices in the bourbon world. We’ve reached a place where even average products have hit the range where they compete price-wise with other types of aged spirits. If I’m going be asked to drop $40 to $70 on a mid-range bourbon, I might as well see what else I can get for that money. My hope is to see if another spirits category offers something that is downright tasty in that price range. The goal isn’t to find cheap spirits, but to maximize the quality, I’m getting at a particular price point. And please remember, these will all be from the perspective of someone who basically only drinks bourbon.

I wanted to buy my wife something for Christmas that would be just hers. I’ve always felt just a little like Homer buying Marge a bowling ball when I get her bourbon as a gift. I mean it’s for her, but we both know it’s really for both of us. So this summer, based on an uptick in tequila based cocktails that were requested, I asked her if she had ever thought about buying one that she would sip neat. She said she had not and I let the matter sit.

See that’s what 21 years of marriage has taught me. You might go buy it on Christmas Eve, but you start planning early for what you’ll buy.

So, I did what any category novice would do. I went to the Total Wine website, sorted by price (highest first) and worked my way down while cross referencing it with random reviews online since I was unable to find anyone conveniently writing a “TequilaGuy'“ site out there.

Ultimately I ended up going with a Reposado Tequila from Clase Azul. The reviews made it sound good. The company website said it was designed to be consumed neat. And it came in a very pretty ceramic bottle that was hand sculpted and hand painted.

I mean it was a gift after all.

Tequila Clase Azul Reposado

Purchase Info: $71.99 for a 750 mL bottle at Total Wine, Burnsville, MN.

Details: 40% ABV. Aged 8 months in oak barrels.

Nose: Creamy and sweet with vanilla bean and delicate caramel. This smells like an amazing ice cream or shortbread cookie.

Mouth: Nice mouthfeel. Follows the nose. Sweet with vanilla and delicate caramel. There is a fruity undertone.

Finish: Delicate and syrupy. Lingering notes of milk chocolate and caramel.

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Thoughts: Folks, I am here to tell you that I done good. My wife was very happy with this gift. She already has plans for what I am going to be doing with the bottle once she empties it. She enjoys drinking it on the occasions that she wants something a bit more smooth and gentle than her typical glass of bourbon. On more than one occasion, I walked into the room only to find her smelling the nose of the bottle. And I don’t blame her for that. This has an amazing nose. She has in her notes: “I could sit and smell this all day.” She really likes this

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Now I am not usually a tequila fan, but then I’ve really only ever had inexpensive tequila in cocktails. I’ve never found one that I could make it past the first sip of much less sit down to enjoy a glass. This, however, is missing all the things that I used to identify as “tequila flavor” and is something I would happily accept a glass of. I’m not exactly a fan. It is something that I can appreciate more than it is something I like. It just doesn’t quite align with my tastes. But it does show me that I need to do a little more exploring in this category before writing it off completely.

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Three Whiskeys from Filibuster Distillery

I state in my Statement of Ethics that if I accept a review sample, I will disclose it at the beginning of the article. Please consider it disclosed. I’d like to thank the folks at Filibuster Distillery for providing this sample to me with no strings attached. As always, all thoughts are just my opinion.

I’ve gotten used to whiskey showing up at my house. It took a while, but now that it happens about once a month or so, it is getting to be old hat. Usually it starts like this:

Hi Eric,

I stumbled across your blog and was very excited about it!

I was wondering if you’d be willing to review our (fill in the blank). 

They almost always just stumbled across my site and are always excited by it or are enjoying it so far. In return, I almost always say yes when someone comes out and offers me free whiskey. I mean it’s free whiskey. Even if it isn’t any good, I’m sure I can find something to do with it after the post goes live.

Most often, I’ll get a notification from UPS or FedEx, within a few days of replying in the affirmative, that there is a package on its way to me. Sometimes I tell them yes, and nothing happens. But one thing that never happens is that a sample shows that I didn’t have an email about first. Mostly because that is really the only way to get my physical address, which is obviously needed in order to ship something to me.

So, when a box of whiskey bottles showed up in mid-December from Virginia and I didn’t have a record of an email correspondence? Yeah. I was confused. I am an email hoarder. I almost never delete an email. And even if I do, I never empty my trash. I said above that “Filibuster Distillery” sent these to me because I honestly have no other idea as to who did.

Looking through their website, I come away impressed by the company. It is a woman, and minority, owned business. One of the ad agencies I worked for was the same, it’s something to be proud of. Unlike many of the folks that enter the craft spirits business, they aren’t strangers to the spirits business, having “experience in specialty spirits retail.” Plus they seem to be doing a lot of things on the distillery side to run an environmentally friendly operation. They do source some of their whiskey, but based on their labeling they also distill some as well. Based on their website, they seem to cask-finish a lot of their products in wine barrels. Seems like a good operation.

So then I ran into some questions. The bottle lists the bourbon as “aged for less than four years in new charred oak casks,” but the website states that it “is a blend of older and younger barrels – 4-6 year being typical.” Their bourbon is described on the bottle as a straight bourbon. It also says that it was “Bottled by Filibuster” as well as being “Distilled in Virginia and Indiana” thus disqualifying it from the straight designation (as per §5.22(b)(1)(iii)). The Boondoggler whiskey doesn’t use the straight designation. It seems to be a blend of different styles of whiskey. Once again this one states it was aged “for less that years” [sic]. The rye says that it is “Bottled by Filibuster Distillery” and doesn’t mention a state of distillation.

So now I am throughly confused. I’m not sure who sent this to me or how it got here and I have no idea which of the information they are using is correct as the website contradicts the label and sections of the label contradict other sections. I reached out to the distillery in mid-December via the contact form on their website to try to get these questions answered, but didn’t receive a response prior to publication time.

However, one thing I am not confused by is whether I like them or not.

Filibuster Dual Cask Bourbon

Purchase info: This review sample was provided by the distillery for the purposes of this review. It sells at Total Wine locally for $42.99.

Details: Batch 27. 45% ABV. The label lists a mash of 70% corn, 20% rye and 10% barley.

Nose: Cinnamon, honey, light mint and some dried grain notes.

Mouth: Warm with cinnamon red hots, cherry and some oaky notes.

Finish: On the short end of medium and warm. Lingering notes of black pepper and coconut.

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Thoughts: This has notes of both mature whiskey and very young whiskey. Which would make sense if they are blending some of their juice with MGP as the label seems to describe. The problem is that unlike some people who have done this very successfully, this one is a bit all over the place in terms of flavor profile. Not a fan of this one. Pretty meh. It’s ok but doesn’t align with my palate. It might do ok in a cocktail though where other ingredients can smooth over some of the rough spots of this one.

Filibuster Dual Cask Rye

Purchase info: This review sample was provided by the distillery for the purposes of this review. It sells at Total Wine locally for $43.49.

Details: Batch 8. 45% ABV. The label lists a mash of 90% corn and 10% barley.

Nose: Mint, pipe tobacco, dried grasses.

Mouth: Spicy, mint, cherry.

Finish: Spicy and of medium length. Lingering sweetness, mint, spice and a hint of coconut.

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Thoughts: This tastes a lot like MGP rye and with the mashbill they list, that makes sense. 90/10 It isn’t far off from 95/5. In fact, based on the fact that their other styles list Indiana as a state of distillation, I had assumed it was until I read the back label.

I like this one. But then I am a fan of the MGP style of rye. This one does say “Bottled by” on the back and there is no listing for a state of distillation. The price is in line with other ryes on the market so I’d say that this one is worth a shot if you can get past the confusion on the label.

Filibuster “The Boondoggler” Whiskey

Purchase info: This review sample was provided by the distillery for the purposes of this review. It sells at Total Wine locally for $33.99.

Details: Batch 20. 45% ABV.

Nose: There is a good hit of rye spices right off the bat with mint and honey coming along with it.

Mouth: Honey, mint, black pepper.

Finish: Decent length. It follows the mouth with lingering notes of black pepper, mint and honey.

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Thoughts: This one is also pretty good. It tastes like a lot of my house-made rye/bourbon blends. I like it. And at less than $35 it is decently priced as well.

Overall, I’d say that two out of three are worth the asking price (locally) and I guess that ain’t bad when you are talking randomly appearing whiskey that you are not sure exactly who it came from.

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