Rant/Rave: Bourbon

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33anda3rd
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Re: Rant/Rave: Bourbon

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They only told us the floor. There could be quite a difference because HH is as you remember it: huge. They hold the 2nd largest inventory of aging whiskey in America and their rickhouses are enormous. Barrels near windows make "honey" whiskey--the good stuff--according to distillers. The barrel has a lot to do with it also. It's virtually impossible to find two that are the same. Buffalo Trace showed us with the Single Barrel Project a few years back how different a distillate can be even when you micromanage all the aspects of the wood.

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Re: Rant/Rave: Bourbon

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Re: Rant/Rave: Bourbon

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Not bourbon, but a bottle of rare scotch sold for $1.1 million USD.

Jim Murray, who publishes the Whiskey Bible every year, is a fairly polarizing figure. He's the guy notable for assigning scores to whiskies and names the most coveted of the Whiskey Of The Year awards--this year it's the 2017 William Larue Weller. He is complex, professionally and image-wise. When he started hyping Japanese whisky it did two things: brought Japanese whisky to the public's consciousness which created a boom in that segment, while also helping lead to the elimination of age-statement Japanese whisky by creating crazy demand on the secondary market. There's good and bad to his work. Polarizing as he might be with whiskey people, this year he took a stand on some of these ridiculous prices, the hoarding of bottles as trophies, and the folks who buy them to never open them. Basically calls out the "millionaire speculators" who buy whiskey at auction with no intention of drinking it, and ruining the market for everyone else. I like that stance.

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Swirls
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Re: Rant/Rave: Bourbon

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I was in the liquor store today to buy a new bottle of Buffalo Trace, and I saw Henry McKenna 10 year Bottle in Bond for the same price as BT... $26. Anyone have any thoughts on it?

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Re: Rant/Rave: Bourbon

Post by AWvsCBsteeeerike3 »

I didn't care for it because it was too hot but of course you're going to get that probably with anything bottled in bond.

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Re: Rant/Rave: Bourbon

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Swirls wrote:I was in the liquor store today to buy a new bottle of Buffalo Trace, and I saw Henry McKenna 10 year Bottle in Bond for the same price as BT... $26. Anyone have any thoughts on it?
I'd take the McKenna 10 any day. It's one of those that used to be a lot of peoples' daily drinker until the bourbon craze came along and wiped out the availability of it. You don't find a 10 year Bottled In Bond very often these days. Also, it's delicious.

I posted upthread a bit about Heaven Hill eliminating their Heaven Hill 6 Year Bottled In Bond, which was gutting to me because it's my favorite value bourbon, but I'm hoping that the silver lining to that cloud will be Heaven Hill putting out more McKenna 10.

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Re: Rant/Rave: Bourbon

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33anda3rd wrote:
Swirls wrote:I was in the liquor store today to buy a new bottle of Buffalo Trace, and I saw Henry McKenna 10 year Bottle in Bond for the same price as BT... $26. Anyone have any thoughts on it?
I'd take the McKenna 10 any day. It's one of those that used to be a lot of peoples' daily drinker until the bourbon craze came along and wiped out the availability of it. You don't find a 10 year Bottled In Bond very often these days. Also, it's delicious.

I posted upthread a bit about Heaven Hill eliminating their Heaven Hill 6 Year Bottled In Bond, which was gutting to me because it's my favorite value bourbon, but I'm hoping that the silver lining to that cloud will be Heaven Hill putting out more McKenna 10.
Well, this particular liquor store about a half mile from my house had at least six bottles of it sitting on the shelf - no clue if they had any extra in the back or not. All with the same barrel/batch date. Barrel #4998, batched 4/7/08.

I drank some of it for the first time today - being 100 proof it obviously had a bit more bite to it than BT. It also seemed like it had more spiciness to it - I recall you saying that BT and Evan Williams basically had the lowest rye mash bill of any whiskey around, which is what I'm used to drinking. I'm guessing the McKenna 10 BIB has a much higher rye mash bill?

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Re: Rant/Rave: Bourbon

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IIRC it's 75/13/12 which would put it at a bit over 1.5X the rye content of Buffalo Trace (reportedly 8% rye.) You should get that extra spice and also more floral notes on the nose. It's the same mash bill as Evan Williams so it should taste a bit like bottled in bond Evan, the white label, but cleaner and with the sweetness coming as much from the red caramel under the barrel's layer of char as from the corn.

The layer of char is why it should come across cleaner--that char is basically charcoal and as the bourbon goes in and out of the barrel as the weather shifts it passes through that charcoal which filters it in the barrel. Beneath the char is the reddish layer of wood that's kinda caramelized but not charred and that's where a lot of flavor comes from. Those extra years (probably 6 of them) beyond the Evan Williams is getting 6 extra years of natural filtration and exposition to caramelized wood.

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Re: Rant/Rave: Bourbon

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Chicagoans: The Franklin Room (one of my favorite whiskey bars) is having Pappy Week from 11/11-11/17. They got quite a bit in, the manager there did an IG story showing the delivery this week and my eyes popped. Cases and cases. For Pappy Week they are doing 50% off pours, and they don't mark it up a silly amount to begin.

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Re: Rant/Rave: Bourbon

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Last night I snagged a bottle of Elijah Craig Small Batch at my local liquor store for $69.99. They said they only got 3 bottles in, and were super excited to get that many.

By far the most expensive bottle of bourbon that I've ever purchased. And I've definitely never had a barrel proof bourbon before - I realize the intention is that you cut it with water before drinking it, but what is the preferred (or even normal) way to go about drinking it? Just neat or with whiskey stones? I normally drink old fashioneds, but I feel like this would be wasted by putting it into a cocktail rather than just sipping it by itself.

What are your thoughts, GRB experts?

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