Rant/Rave: Bourbon

[33anda3rd]

Swirls, I mentioned this above but at Buffalo there are only a few mashbills. Rye, W.L. Weller, BT Mash #1, BT Mash #2.

Rye mash is: Sazerac, EH Taylor Rye, Van Winkle Rye, Thomas H Handy Rye.

W.L. Weller mash is: all the other Van Winkles, all the Wellers.

BT #2 has a bit more rye (15%) in the mash. It is Virginia Gentleman, Rock Hill Farms, John J Bowman, Hancocks Reserve, Elmer T Lee, Blanton's, Bowman Bros, Ancient Age, Abraham Bowman.

Then there's the BT #1: Your Buffalo Trace is in there (which if you're getting it at $25/bottle you're doing pretty well.) This mash bill also goes into EH Taylor Small Batch, EH Taylor Single Barrel, Eagle Rare, Eagle Rare 10, Eagle Rare 17, George T Stagg. Those are tough to find and cost more. But that mash bill also goes into Old Charter and Benchmark.

Buffalo uses one and only one yeast strain for all of these. Every whiskey, same yeast, from only four mashes. Really only two mashes when you back out the straight rye and the wheated. The difference within the BT1s and BT2s are the barrels, primarily where they are in the rickhouse and how long they rest. Cheap bourbon goes to the top of the rickhouse. It's hottest there and ages the fastest, and these are getting to the minimum age required to call the product "Kentucky Straight Bourbon" and then getting bottled and shipped. The better stuff that will rest for 12, 15, 23 years sits at the bottom of the rickhouse where it's least hot and the aging will be slower. The tasting panel and Harlen are pulling samples from barrels, blind tasting, then making decisions on which bourbon goes in which bottle.

So then, for you it's Benchmark. Same mash and yeast as your BT. But it sits at the top of the rickhouse and ages faster and for less time. And it costs like $11-14/bottle depending on where you are.

If you want to venture out, Very Old Barton Bottled in Bond and Wild Turkey 101 are very fine whiskeys with some proofiness to them. Elijah Craig Small Batch at ~$30 is great. I'd add that one to never scoff at is Maker's Mark as well, especially the 46 and the cask strength. When old Mr. Samuels fired the company distillery back up he went and asked Pappy VW how Pappy makes his wheated bourbon and learned from Pappy. Maker's Mark is a fine wheated whiskey, with the 46 being aged a bit extra.

[thrill]

Four Roses is my go-to cheap bourbon.

[33anda3rd]

Four Roses is my go-to cheap bourbon.

Good choice. I like a high-rye bourbon too. This is what a Bulleit drinker should be drinking.

Bulleit of course is the bourbon favored by Augustus Bulleit in the 1800s*, which Tom Bulleit started distilling in 1987**.

*a lie, his bourbon was actually rye
**a nice bit of marketing and a truth only in a weird sense, their corporate overlords at Diageo (who bought the brand from Seagram's after Seagram's bought it in the 90s) bought them the hallowed grounds of Stitzel-Weller a few years ago and they distill there now but Bulleit bourbon has been sourced from Four Roses for years. Any dollars one is paying for Bulleit over the sticker price of Four Roses Yellow Label is money spent on marketing only.

Also google the story of Hollis Bulleit, who helped build the family brand, and how she has been treated by that family because of her sexual orientation. Disgusting. Bulleit is for Trump voters.

[Swirls]

Benchmark is only $8.99 at Total Wine, but it doesn't look like it's available in Minnesota. Only the Kentucky stores and Madison, WI, although I may be able to get it shipped from one of the other stores for local pickup. I know Four Roses is widely available, so perhaps I'll try that. I'm not familiar with high-rye bourbons, so I'll give it a shot.

Thanks for the help, as always. You know more about booze than I could ever hope to. I have this book coming this week from Bespoke Post, so perhaps I'll be slightly more educated fairly soon:

https://smile.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Wh ... 1579657516

[GeddyWrox]

33 needs to change his avatar to Paul Newman's character Fast Eddie from The Color of Money.

(Loved that movie, BTW)

[Michael]

Thanks, 33anda3rd! I'm running through options.

33 needs to change his avatar to Paul Newman's character Fast Eddie from The Color of Money.

(Loved that movie, BTW)

The Color of Money is a sequel to one of my all-time favorite movies, The Hustler from 1961. The movie is dramatized, but at its core I think The Hustler understands what it means to be a competitive gambler more than any other movie I've ever seen.

[33anda3rd]

Benchmark is at France 44 in Minneapolis ( link ) so it's distributed there.

If you like Buffalo you might not like Four Roses. Buffalo's mashbill is only 8% rye. Four Roses Yellow Label is two different mash bills, each fermented with five different yeast strains for 10 whiskies going into the blend. One of the mashbills is 20% rye, and one is 35% rye, so the least amount of rye in one of the whiskeys blended into it is 2.5X the rye content of the Buffalo Trace. Four Roses is very much a spicy high-rye bourbon.

Other than Jack Daniel's, no US whiskeys have a mash bill with the rye as low as the 8% in your BT. So anything you move to that's not Jack, or in the BT Mashbill #1 that I listed above will have more spice, and will be sharper and drier than what you're drinking now. I'm not saying that to put you off of trying something new, quite the contrary I think trying new things is great, just giving you a heads up that as you move away from Buffalo you'll get that effect.

Turkey products, including their 101 bourbon, Rare Breed, Russell's Reserve are 75 corn / 13 rye / 12 malted barley. (Russell's Reserve is great, and Wild Turkey 101 is an awesome value bourbon.)

Heaven Hill products--Evan Williams, Elijah Craig, JTS Brown, JW Dant, Fighting [expletive], several of these good values--are also 75/13/12. Elijah at ~$30 is extraordinary, Evan Williams is very good, Fighting [expletive] is shockingly very good, and JTS/JW are ok bottom-shelf bourbon.

Dickel is 80/12/8.

Beam's normal stuff including Knob Creek is all 76 /13 / 11 (might be +/- 1 on those) and their Old Granddad is the Beam High Rye mashbill at 63/27/10. If you're going Beam, go Knob or go Black Label so you get some extra time in the barrel to ease out some of the sharpness. Old Granddad Bottled In Bond is one of my absolute favorite bourbons.

A lot of the stuff coming out of LDI, which is a ton of stuff from Redemption to High West to you name it, is 20-36% rye. These, you're paying more for marketing than what's in the bottle, and generally speaking LDI ryes are better than bourbons, at 95 rye / 5 malted barley and with a nice sharp, spicy dill note to them. If you've ever tasted a rye and thought "wait....is that....dill?" it came from LDI.

[33anda3rd]

Thanks, 33anda3rd! I'm running through options.

33 needs to change his avatar to Paul Newman's character Fast Eddie from The Color of Money.

(Loved that movie, BTW)

The Color of Money is a sequel to one of my all-time favorite movies, The Hustler from 1961. The movie is dramatized, but at its core I think The Hustler understands what it means to be a competitive gambler more than any movie I've ever seen.

The Hustler is a top-five movie for me. Gleason, Newman, George C Scott, and Piper Laurie are extraordinary in that movie. If it comes on TMC I'm locked to the sofa for a couple hours.

[Jocephus]

i, on behalf of the sons, got my father this bottle for his birthday 2 weeks back.


it was around 75$ which in my head put it slightly above average, etc, or at least, compared to what dad usually gets. i think dad's getting more into scotch than whiskey as he ages (71) and i think that's a smart move. seems like scotch would be a little easier on system although dad has always had an iron stomach, food or booze. since i'm in town with the folks i have to shop for the brothers who are out of town so i like to try and find something different and i was pretty sure he'd never had this before. anyways, he went to the cabin this past weekend and had some and he gave it an a+ so i think he liked it. or he could be lying hah.

[33anda3rd]

Michael, if I may....

Derrumbes San Luis Potosi. Roughly $80. Altitude is so high/desert-y that trees don't grow there and the plants grow like weeds. All wild harvested and the result is like a confit of mezcal--like someone infused mezcal with mezcal. But it's not that smoky. They're roasted in a pulque yeast and get kinda funky. You get notes of coriander, cilantro stems, picholine olives.

They also make a Durango that is very low smoke, very forest-floor in flavor, lots of mushroom and umami notes. Derrumbes as a brand is all D.O. mezcal, the label indicates the region.

If you want to try a sotol, La Higuera Leiophyllum is super interesting. Grassy, herbal, minty, bright. Comes from a dasylirion plant that unlike other agave species will push agave every year. Hand milled, double distilled, no water added on the second pass, cooked in a conical oven that doesn't impart a lot of smoke. It's really interesting, when I tasted it earlier this month I had to have it.

La Higuera also makes Cedrosanum that goes through a lot of the same process but is like a dessert sotol. Creme brulee, burnt sugar, but with a dry finish.

If they don't have any of these at Binny's or Independent Spirits, ask them to order you a bottle from Cream, they are the distributor on all of these. They have the most interesting agave spirits portfolio in town, my man Christophe Bakunas over there is an agave spirits Jedi and he manages a beautiful portfolio.