Doc Swinson’s is a brand owned by Distiller’s Way LLC, an independent bottler aka NDP (non-distiller producer) specializing in selecting, blending, and finishing sourced American whiskey. They kind of burst onto the scene in the last two years, suddenly winning a number of awards. They’re probably best known for their “Alter Ego” series of finished bourbons, but I first truly considered them when I noticed this single barrel of rye at my local Costco…
This is a distillery-exclusive (plus a handful of Tennessee retailers) bottling of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee rye at barrel proof (in this case, a whopping 63.8% ABV). It’s bottled from barrels located on the highest floors of the Jack Daniel’s rickhouses, and since heat rises that means the barrels at the top experience the highest temperature fluctuations and thus age the fastest. The rye in this case is distilled from…
Balcones Texas Single Malt Whisky is made from (you guessed it) 100% malted barley. According to sources on the web (since the Balcones website is a glossy brochure with no real information), they use 100% Golden Promise barley, much of it grown in Texas. This is mashed and distilled using their copper pot stills and then aged in a combination of…
Well, it’s not every day that you get to try a whiskey that represents and entirely new category of spirits. Lost Lantern claims to be (and may very well be) the first company to blend (or “vat”) together American single malt whiskies, making the first American Vatted Malt Whiskey. … a self-styled independent bottler out of Vermont, got its start by bottling American whiskies under its independent bottling label. This is a very familiar story to anyone who drinks single malt scotch. The company then released their first vatted malt (Edition 1) in 2020. It’s a vatting of 6 American single malts (2 barrels of each), and…
Elijah Craig straight rye, which is distilled at Heaven Hill not sourced from elsewhere, shares an unusually high barley component with its bourbon siblings. That 14% barley is mashed with 51% rye (the legal minimum) and 37% corn. As Rittenhouse Rye is also made by Heaven Hill and only differs from this by 2% barley (and 2% corn) and 3% ABV, one could be forgiven for calling this…
My first time tasting Pinhook products was this “Inaugural” release of Straight Rye Whiskey distilled at the Castle & Key facility. Each Pinhook seasonal batch is named after a Kentucky Derby racehorse, and this one (Inaugural 2020) has an illustration of “Rye’d On”. The rye is distilled from a mash bill of 60% rye, 20% corn, and 20% malted barley. It’s non chill-filtered straight rye aged for…
Rare Breed is Wild Turkey’s approach to the fairly-standard “Small Batch, Cask Strength” expression that you’ll find in most distillery lineups. Rare Breed is made from a batch of Wild Turkey Kentucky straight bourbon aged in number 4 char bourbon barrels for 6, 8, and 12 years and bottled at cask strength. While a lot of bourbon distillers these days (especially the trendy ones) are marking up their cask strength bottles to portray them as…
This “Barrel Proof” edition is a small batch release (just like Larceny’s non-cask-strength bottling) of Kentucky straight bourbon bottled at a whopping 61.1% ABV from casks aged between 6 and 8 years. The producers did not use chill filtration, according to the back of the bottle, which is rare to see on an American whiskey label. Heaven Hill releases a new batch of Larceny Barrel Proof…
The Horizon is a blend of straight bourbons, mostly (94%) 4 year and 11 month-old bourbon with a mash bill of 21% rye, 75% corn, and 4% malted barley, plus a bare 6% of 6 year and 8 month-old bourbon with a mash bill of 36% rye, 60% corn, and 4% malted barley. The barley is in there to provide enzymes that kickstart fermentation. I’m not sure whether the difference between these two parcels of bourbon is enough to warrant such a…
So back to Seagrass. Imagine if you will several parcels of rye whiskey sourced from all over the place (to wit, Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee, and Canada) and finished in Martinique Rhum Agricole casks, Madeira wine casks, and APRICOT BRANDY BARRELS. What is this madness? I would happily slap down 90 bills for anything finished in an apricot brandy barrel, alone. I had no choice; I had to buy…