signde - BourbonSphere

Elijah Craig Barrel Proof C918, Knob Creek Single Barrel "The Green Monstah", and Stagg Jr Batch 10 (126.4) Reviews

The state of American whiskey in 2019 is a weird place. The demand for allocated bottles has been in a fever pitch and seems to have no end in sight. Even worse, the list of whiskeys that are now considered allocated has become a sad state of affairs. A quick look the recent influx of posts on /r/whiskyporn that are treating bourbons like Weller Special Reserve and Blanton's as coveted major scores has anyone that's been around a while thinking we've hit rock bottom yet despite that sentiment the WTFs just keep coming.

But for all the silly shit that is happening in the whiskey scene, there are some bright spots, and one of those is that we are in a golden age of well aged, high proof, decently priced, not impossible to find bourbons and ryes. There are so many more good high proof options today than there were 6-7 years ago and even with the crazy demand, most of them are not that hard to come by. So with that in mind, I thought it would be fun to compare three popular options against each other, all of which I was able to find at retail just by walking into a shop, no special favors required.

Elijah Craig Barrel Proof C918

Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey; Aged 12 years; 65.7% ABV; $75

Nose: Woody and sweet, just like what you should expect from a twelve year old cask strength bourbon.

Taste: Lots of lush sweet caramel up front and some rye spice bite in the backend. The ever increasing peanut note I am getting in Heaven Hill these days is there in the form of peanut butter marshmallow smores. The finish lingers for quite a while with an oak laden sweet spice punch. There is plenty of wood depth there but there are also twangs of a younger, green wood taste that I sometimes get in this product's younger brother, Henry McKenna Bottled in Bond.

Thoughts: This is good but if I am going off memory it is far from the most complex ECBP I've ever had. The touch of green wood is the biggest detractor here for me, I don't recall ever getting that in the older ones. It's probably just me but I feel like these just aren't as good as the releases from 2-3 years ago. Still a very solid high proof bourbon and if found a retail is a buy on sight for me.

Rating: B/B+

Knob Creek Single Barrel "The Green Monstah" Selected by Barrels & Brews

Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey; Aged 15 years 1 month (label is incorrect); 60% ABV; $50

Nose: A remarkable balance of a ton of wood and just as much sweetness. Very, very good.

Taste: Sweet nutty flavors like peanut brittle with lots and lots of oak. It's a bit dry but there is a lot of flavor to make up for that without being bitter. The finish rides out with dark cocoa sweet vibes and touches of rye spice but again it's super oaky and yet just as sweet. Not much to say other than it's a flavor bomb.

Thoughts: I've had mixed results with these older aged Knob Creek Single Barrels but this one is a home run for me. I did a bottle split of Booker's 30th with a friend and this is easily better for me and probably the best Knob Creek Single Barrel I've had yet. The Barrels & Brews guys have been doing a hell of a job with their selections and this one is no different.

Rating: B+

Stagg Jr Batch #10

Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey; No Age Statement; 63.20% ABV; $50

Nose: A sweeter, fruitier nose than the other two which make sense given the likely age of 9ish years. Cherries, peaches, stone fruits, and woody caramel.

Taste: A balanced, classic taste of bourbon with an equal combo of fruit, sweet, and oak. Sugary salted fruit pie crust comes to mind for the sweet notes along with just enough wood depth to balance things out.

Thoughts: This is a completely different vibe than the ECBP and KCSiB which makes sense since it the youngest in the bunch. That's not necessarily a bad thing here though as it's able to showcase more dimensions that just being an oak bomb. This isn't as good as Batch 9 which I still think is the best release of Stagg Jr yet but this is a quality product that I think as time goes by is slowly but surely chipping away at ECBP as the most consistent best bang for your buck high proof bourbon. At retail, these are a buy on sight for me all day long.

Rating: B

Note that price is not considered when assigning a rating.

Four Roses Small Batch 2018 130th Anniversary Review

Like most folks who are serious about bourbon, I’m a huge Four Roses fan. I’ve never had a limited product from them that wasn’t good though not all of them are grand slams. Granted, they were a lot better bargain just a few years ago when they retaile…

Like most folks who are serious about bourbon, I'm a huge Four Roses fan. I've never had a limited product from them that wasn't good though not all of them are grand slams. Granted, they were a lot better bargain just a few years ago when they retailed for $70 but I've still had enough good experiences that I don't usually think twice about buying them when given the chance even though they cost around double that now.

This vintage is a blend of the following recipes:

10 year OBSV
13 year OBSF
14 year OESV
16 year OESK

Three out of four of those are recipes I usually gravitate towards and the fourth (OBSF) is one I've had at least some success with as well so I'm expecting good things there.

Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey; No Age Statement; 54.2% ABV; $140

Nose: Very sweet. A hefty dose of brown sugar. The traditional Four Roses red fruit notes are muted which is surprising to me given this has two V yeast components which are known for that.

Taste: Very sweet like the nose with a considerable amount of oak influence without being bitter or dry. Up front it's straight up liquid brown sugar with a little fruit character. The sweet note lingers for quite a while then quite a bit of mint flavors come through which I would attribute to the F yeast component. Oddly, the mint flavors aren't really that spicy, as if the heavy handed brown sugar notes are keeping the spice in check.

Thoughts: This is a pretty good bourbon with a lot of great sweet and oak flavors but compared to other Four Roses special releases it's not really that memorable. It checks all the right boxes of what makes a great standard bourbon but it's missing the whiz bang of red fruit / sweet / spicy that is where Four Roses bourbon shines. It's a really high bar if you want to compare Four Roses limited editions this one would be in my bottom bracket out of releases over the past 6 years.

Rating: B / B+

Note that price is not considered when assigning a rating.

L’Encantada XO Review

I’ve covered L’Encantada offerings several times now. For those that don’t know, these are all the rage in the Armagnac world at the moment which was kicked off by some truly exceptional single casks selected by one specific Brandy group a couple …

I've covered L'Encantada offerings several times now. For those that don't know, these are all the rage in the Armagnac world at the moment which was kicked off by some truly exceptional single casks selected by one specific Brandy group a couple years ago. I've tasted most of those original Lous Pibous casks and they remain the best Armagnacs I've ever had. Ever since then, I feel like we've all been chasing the dragon trying to recreate that magic but thus far I've had mixed results. These days, I'm often leery of new L'Encantada picks because while none of them have been bad, my experiences with the ones I like vs. those that aren't worth the ever increasing cost of admission is batting around .500. It could just be me getting more crotchety when it comes to brown water but I'd suspect it's more likely that the best casks they have to offer have already been selected.

Having said all that, here today we have something which is a little different. Unlike all other L'Encantada products I've had which have been single casks, this product is blend:

Domaine Lous Pibous 1989 barrel #61
Domaine Lous Pibous 1987 barrel #87
Domaine Del Cassou 1994 barrel #55
Domaine Bellair 1997 barrel #181

I'm intrigued. My hope here is the range of ages makes for a nice of balance of the fruiter notes you get in younger armagnacs and the lush dark woody notes you get in older ones.

Bas Armagnac; No Age Statement (blend of four vintages); 46.8% ABV (cask strength); $100

Nose: Very bourbony - it smells like a middle aged 90ish proof bourbon. It's laden with caramel, a little bit of stone fruit, and a trace baking spice.

Taste: Fruity and sweet with heavy dose of strawberry. Armagnac almost always leans towards purple fruits for me but this is straight up strawberry jam. There are some wood sugar / caramel notes here too, like what a middle aged bourbon would carry. The finish is a bit short as is expected given the proof but some nice muted baking spice shows up to round things out.

Thoughts: I like this. It's got a lot of bourbon sweet notes and the blast of strawberry is really nice. Even better, it has none of the dry/bitter/overoaked notes I've been getting more often in some of the older L'Encantada picks I've had lately. The only thing here that's really holding it back is the proof. If this was in the 105-110 range I think this would be a knockout. All in all, this is a nice blend and I have no regrets for the price paid.

Rating: B

Note that price is not considered when assigning a rating.

Michter’s 10 Year Single Barrel 2014 vs. 2017 Reviews

I’ve covered a 2014 version of Michter’s 10 Year Single Barrel a couple of times before which you can here and here. The TL;DR is that they are surprisingly good bourbons. I’ve been skeptical how long the quality would hold up because at…

I've covered a 2014 version of Michter's 10 Year Single Barrel a couple of times before which you can here and here. The TL;DR is that they are surprisingly good bourbons. I've been skeptical how long the quality would hold up because at some point Michter's has to exhaust their supply of primo sourced bourbon. Here today we will put that question to the test.

2014 Michter's 10 year Single Barrel

Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey; Barrel No. 14A21; Aged 10 years; 47.2% ABV; $75 (2014)

Nose: Rich and mature with lots of compacted sweet notes. It has a bit of a condensed bourbon character that I typically only get in dusty bourbons with a lot more intensity than you'd expect for the proof.

Taste: More of the same from the nose. It's very lush and heavy on dessert type flavors like honey, caramel, and pie crust. The oak is noticeable and provides a lot of wood depth but it's not overly bitter or dry. There are faint hints of a dusty type flavor that I usually get in bourbons from 20 or more years ago. The finish is a touch short and has a bit of an earthy old wood note but it's faint.

Thoughts: A fantastic dram. From memory it's not the best 2014 single barrel I've had but it's very good. If not for that touch of earthy bitterness in the finish this would be an A-. Either these 2014s are some primo honey 10 year barrels or there is older whiskey in the mix.

Rating: B+

2017 Michter's 10 year Single Barrel

Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey; Barrel No. 17B314; Aged 10 years; 47.2% ABV; $120 (2017)

Nose: Smells younger and more green than the 2014. This is much closer to a typical 10 year profile as a similarity to Henry McKenna 10 year comes to mind. Also a rye profile is more noticeable here as there are some mint / eucalyptus spice notes.

Taste: No surprises here, tastes like it smells. Its a bit sweet but after tasting the 2014, it's not nearly as lush and almost tastes young/green. There are more fruit and mash type sweet notes than dark caramel / burnt sugar. In the finish a bit of dark chocolate comes out but you have to reach for it.

Thoughts: It's a perfectly fine bourbon but it's nothing special and not really any better than an ordinary bottle like modern Henry McKenna which it actually tastes like in a lot of ways.

Rating: B-

Overall Thoughts: When the 2016 came out was able to try samples from several different single barrels. It was immediately evident none of them tasted anything like the earlier versions and the experience here today echoes that. For comparisons perspective, the differences in profile between these two is similar to the differences I observed in dusty vs. modern Henry McKenna.

Note that price is not considered when assigning a rating.

Old Forester 1910 Review

I’m not the biggest fan of Brown-Forman whiskeys. Out of about ten vintages of Birthday Bourbon I’ve tried, I’ve yet to have one that didn’t make me want to gag from bitter varnish notes. As for their non limited edition releases, I find a common banan…

I'm not the biggest fan of Brown-Forman whiskeys. Out of about ten vintages of Birthday Bourbon I've tried, I've yet to have one that didn't make me want to gag from bitter varnish notes. As for their non limited edition releases, I find a common banana note in most all of them that just doesn't sit well with me. Granted, Old Forester 1920 from the Whiskey Row series is pretty good - it's easily their best product and the only one that I've ever bought more than once. Here today we have 1920's followup and what is supposedly the last product in the series. The schtick here is it's a bourbon that was rebarreled and then aged in fresh, lightly toasted, heavily charred barrels. Rebarreling can be a slippery slope, as my recent experience with Knob Creek's Twice Barreled Rye didn't turn out so well. I'm not exactly optimistic but I am hopeful Old Forester has a better showing coming on the heels of something as good as 1920.

Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey; No Age Statement; 46.5% ABV; $60

Color: I don't usually remark on color but this stuff is noticeably dark. It has the deep brown of bourbons in the 12-15 year old category.

Nose: Smells like a rather mature bourbon. That familiar Forman banana note is definitely here - it smells like banana creme brûlée.

Taste: A lot more of the same from the nose. It drinks like a very mature bourbon with a lot of wood notes yet still has a lot of sweetness to prevent it from being overly bitter. The banana notes are fairly heavy handed. Again, this tastes like some sort of banana caramel dessert. If you take the wheated aspect out of the picture, in a lot of ways the profile here reminds me of Weller 12.

Thoughts: This is pretty good. I don't really have any major faults with it other than being a little boring and the banana notes being a bit pervasive. Unlike in other Forman whiskies where that banana note is younger / more green, the maturity of the profile here actually makes it kind of nice. This still isn't as good as 1920 but I do think this is my second favorite Forman product.

Rating: B- / B

Note that price is not considered when assigning a rating