Rant/Rave: Bourbon

[themiddle54]

State. In Illinois you must have a liquor license to sell the booze. Most estate sales teams don't have a clue how to put a price on booze and don't have the desire to pay the fee for a liquor license and do it, so if the family or the estate salesperson doesn't go "ooooh, I'll take this" or some enterprising person doesn't go "hey I'll give you $150 to give me all the booze in this house" it gets tossed. Everybody knows "Pappy Van Winkle" because it's so hyped, but not a lot of people know if they see a case of WL Weller hip flasks that it's worth several grand. So, y'know, down the drain it shamefully goes. I like to think of my scavenging these sales as a public service, especially since I give most of it away either to visitors at home or friends on special occasions, bar openings, etc.

[GeddyWrox]

Thanks Middle

[vinsanity]

Good tips; back to bourbon to not read the whole thread. What kinds of easily available stuff do you guys recommend? I've tended towards ryes - Bone Snapper, love the Traverse City rye. Town Branch is a non-rye bottle I've had around that I enjoy. But I'm always looking to expand.

[themiddle54]

Easily available bourbon that's good and generally not too expensive:
4 Roses Yellow Label
4 Roses Single Barrel (little pricier)
Old Fitzgerald
Wild Turkey 101
Buffalo Trace
Russell's Reserve (little pricier)
Knob Creek (probably my favorite supermarket bourbon)
Woodford Reserve (little pricier)
Old Grand Dad Bonded
Very Old Barton
Evan Williams Black Label
Benchmark
Ezra Brooks
Heaven Hill

Easily available rye:
Old Overholt
Rittenhouse
Hochstadter's Vatted Rye
George Dickel

Don't ever spend money on the label and the marketing and the word 'organic' on the label or for the juice being local. Journeyman, Koval, Corsair, FEW. These are selling retail at like $50 and they're just not worth it. They might be worth it in 6-10 years when these distilleries have a 10- or 12-year product. Maybe. The jury's out. But they're young and they're making young whiskeys and they're just not worth paying 2X the price of almost everything else I listed above. Templeton, Bulleit, and Angels Envy have one thing in common: they're all distilled at the same big corporate distillery in Indiana. Angel's built a distillery in Lousiville and is distilling now but it's about 5 years according to their rep until any of the juice they're distilling themselves will be in bottles for you to buy. Stuff like this, and the local/organic stuff with the fancy labels, they're overpriced and not worth the premium.

Now for my standard caveat in this thread: drink what tastes good to you, what you like. If you like Templeton, and think it tastes best, go for it and ignore what I'm saying. But unless you're getting some really good bourbon from a distillery that's been around for ages you're paying as much for marketing as you are for what's in the bottle. When a bottle of Overholt is $16/750mL, and is damn good, I personally would not go $50 for a Journeyman Rye or a FEW Rye. I'd rather have the extra $34 for a bottle of Cynar or Fernet or Genepy or Gin to round out my bar.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Good tips; back to bourbon to not read the whole thread. What kinds of easily available stuff do you guys recommend? I've tended towards ryes - Bone Snapper, love the Traverse City rye. Town Branch is a non-rye bottle I've had around that I enjoy. But I'm always looking to expand.

Only rye I drink is bulleit and put it in old fashioneds.

tm54 knows a lot more than I do, but my general bourbon/price list is:
Old forrester/<$20
Four Roses single batch/$20-$30
Eagle Rare/$30-$40

Don't get much above that.

[GeddyWrox]

My favorites are

- Bulleit Rye (anything under $30 is a good price)
- Elijah Craig (mid to upper $20s is a good price)

Woodford Reserve is very good, but it's more expensive, usually in the low $40s, IIRC
Buffalo Trace and Four Roses are good too, but I just like Bulleit and Elijah Craig better

[vinsanity]

Templeton, Bulleit, and Angels Envy have one thing in common: they're all distilled at the same big corporate distillery in Indiana. Angel's built a distillery in Lousiville and is distilling now but it's about 5 years according to their rep until any of the juice they're distilling themselves will be in bottles for you to buy. Stuff like this, and the local/organic stuff with the fancy labels, they're overpriced and not worth the premium.

Didn't know that about that. Been years since I've had Bulleit, may have to give another go. I love the name of Angel's Envy and I love the Templeton Rye. I think the largest bourbon distillery in the country is in Indiana, right? Then changed slightly before it's bottled?

Now for my standard caveat in this thread: drink what tastes good to you, what you like.

Of course, I probably need to get out to more tastings to try different stuff. I was just looking for some things to branch out. I've been to a couple and tried some that reasonably findable like Town Branch. There's a few places around here that rotating bottles I should try more of.

[themiddle54]

Templeton, Bulleit, and Angels Envy have one thing in common: they're all distilled at the same big corporate distillery in Indiana. Angel's built a distillery in Lousiville and is distilling now but it's about 5 years according to their rep until any of the juice they're distilling themselves will be in bottles for you to buy. Stuff like this, and the local/organic stuff with the fancy labels, they're overpriced and not worth the premium.

Didn't know that about that. Been years since I've had Bulleit, may have to give another go. I love the name of Angel's Envy and I love the Templeton Rye. I think the largest bourbon distillery in the country is in Indiana, right? Then changed slightly before it's bottled?

Here's an exhaustive list of where your whiskey is distilled. Doesn't mean it's aged/bottled at these places. Some, like the stuff coming from MGP (that's the giant distillery in IN) don't barrel/age anything, they just distill and send it out.

My moderate snobbery about the product from there has nothing to do with the product. What comes from MGP is well made distillate, and is consistent. It's quality/consistency is superior to anything that a start-up distillery could possibly hope to produce IMO. My snobbery has to do with the price one pays for the product out of there. If, say, Templeton has no distillery, has no equipment fees for stills, has no payroll fees for stills, has no grain bill to pay for the mash, pays not utilities to power the stills or mash tuns, if they have no hefty fire insurance to pay for running stills, and so on...why does it cost what it costs?

Prices at Binny's, per their website. Our big liquor store in Chicago
MGP Distilled:
Templeton: $34.99
Bulleit Rye: $32.99
Angels Envy Bourbon: $49.99

House Distilled:
Wild Turkey 101: $21.99
Knob Creek Rye: $29.99
Old Overholt Rye: $16.99

Why is the stuff that's distilled in house, where costs are way higher, cheaper than the stuff where the distillate is sourced? What is the consumer paying for in the TWENTY EIGHT (!!!) dollar gap between the Angel's Envy and the higher-octane Turkey 101? The consumer is paying for that fancy bottle with wings on the back and the marketing that the Angel's was finished in port barrels (big whoop) and for marketing. Angel's hires four full-time "Whiskey Guardians" in Chicago who market the brand, push sales, and drink in bars buying Angel's for guests to enhance the brand. Buying a bottle of Angel's Envy pays their salary--another cost Turkey doesn't really need, the whole Campari group has fewer employees on the street in Chicago than the tiny-by-comparison Angel's Envy. That's my challenge with some of this stuff. It sells itself as 'craft' but the only craft is aging, blending, labeling, marketing. They farm out the most difficult step in the process then ask you to pay more.

[thrill]

$35-40 - easily available. Really love this rye.

[SHOW]

[SHOW]

$30-40 - not easily available.

[SHOW]

$60-100 - not easily available but not impossible to find.

[SHOW]

My favorite whisky of all-time but you'll never find it.

[SHOW]

[themiddle54]

Those are all great picks thrill. I picked up a 3-year Willet for $55 retail a month ago, and a Sazerac Rye for $30 a few weeks ago. So those have definitely been out in the wild recently and if anyone has a good local store that gets quality stuff but doesn't move it too fast, there's a chance they might be on the shelf.