Sonoma Distilling Co. was founded in 2010 as Sonoma County Distilling and is a small but growing distillery located in the bucolic town of Rohnert Park, California, in Sonoma Wine Country. I liked their early bottlings of rye and bourbon enough to join their whiskey club, which…
One always approaches the tasting of a new or unfamiliar distillery as a potential for opening new, exciting doors of previously undreamt flavor… and while sometimes that’s true, I’ve found that more often you realize that the “unknown” distilleries are largely unknown for a reason. They exist to provide malt for blended whiskies because they blend well. They blend well because…
This one is a blend of bourbons from unnamed sources, although the label indicates that they originate from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Indiana. The last one suggests MGP bourbon, but there is a growing list of Tennessee producers and Kentucky could mean anything. Trying to guess the components is probably an exercise in futility. The marketing materials indicate that this is actually a blend of…
This special edition Chivas was bottled as a tribute to the Manchester United Football Club (that’s soccer to us yanks). Why? I don’t follow soccer so I don’t know. For some reason Chivas thought the entire world needed access to soccer-themed liquid merchandise because they even went so far as to run 750ml bottles for the US market. Maybe that particular miscalculation is why I got it on sale for only $18.
Stellum Spirits Rye is a cask-strength blend of straight rye whiskies distilled in Indiana (so that’s MGP), Kentucky, and Tennessee. The vast majority of the blend is MGP rye, and even the marketing materials references how the heart of the blend is a 95% rye mashbill, a familiar mashbill to fans of MGP-sourced ryes. This blend is bottled at a rousing 58.12% ABV. The stated goal of the brand is to create…
The port wine in question is a finish, but unusually the whisky is first aged in GlenDronach’s typical combination of Oloroso and Pedro Ximenez (PX) sherry casks. That makes this bottling kind of a “Double Fruit”, if you will. The whisky is bottled at 46% ABV, without chill filtration or added color, which is standard practice for GlenDronach, and always a laudable choice.
So why do I continue to pan every whisky that I either dislike or think is overpriced for its intrinsic value? Why not take the easy road and say everything tastes like Heather in Springtime and be done with it? Why do I continue to expose my sensitive ego to every Keyboard White Knight who just can’t handle a negative review of their house dram?
I am on vacation, so no “real” post this week. Instead, two minor updates…
So here we are, today, once again taking a look at a well-marketed bourbon without the faintest clue to where the liquid is actually distilled. At least Infuse Spirits, makers of the Broken Barrel brand as well as a slew of – hah – infused spirits, is trying to do something innovative. They are doing something similar to what John Glaser of Compass Box wanted to do with the original Spice Tree…
No real review this week, since I attended a blind Zoom tasting of 12 American single malt whiskies and I’m still recovering. What follows are some other stream-of-consciousness notes from our tasting. If you have an opportunity to gather a few like-minded friends to taste some whisky together (online or in person if your situation warrants), I highly recommend it.
