I’d like to thank Byrne PR and Lux Row Distillery for providing this review sample with no strings attached.
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I’d like to thank Byrne PR and Lux Row Distillery for providing this review sample with no strings attached.
We are still working through the backlog of samples that we received during the brackets, so let’s jump right in.
Just about a month and a half ago, I got a great email from the PR folks who work with Lux Row and MGP. And, I LOVE this email. Not wasting my time or theirs, it just said:
And in the spirit of that announcement email, let’s keep this short. Because, really, there isn’t much more to be said about this new, year-round addition to the Rebel portfolio. It’s Rebel 100 bourbon, just a bit older. Most of the information pertinent to the juice inside the bottle is right there in the name. Rebel Bourbon. 100° proof. Aged 6 Years. About the only thing I can add that isn’t in the name is that Rebel is, and always has been, a wheated bourbon going back to its initial launch as part of the Stitzel-Weller portfolio. But the fact that it’s a wheated bourbon is also on the label. Soooo…
Let’s just dig into the review proper, shall we?
Rebel 100 6 Year Old Bourbon
Purchase Info: This sample was provided by the producer for review purposes at no charge. The suggested retail price is $59.99
Price per Drink (50 mL): $4.00
Details: 50% ABV. 6 years old. Wheated mashbill.
Nose: Cinnamon, mint, almond, and oak.
Mouth: Spicy cinnamon, caramel, vanilla, almond, and oak.
Finish: Medium in both length and warmth. Follows the mouth with notes of cinnamon, caramel, and a bitter oak.
Thoughts: This is very good. If you like Rebel 100, the six-year-old version will be right up your alley. As a wheated bourbon, the oak is a bit more pronounced than if it were a bourbon that used rye as a flavoring grain, which, depending on your oak tolerance, may be a positive or a negative. Overall, I'm a fan. I usually prefer bourbon that uses rye as the flavoring grain, but this one is darn tasty. It's oak-forward but not too oak-forward. I’ll be picking up a full bottle should I see it.
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Last month, during our brackets, I included exactly one bourbon that I’d never previously reviewed. It was a reader suggestion that, honestly, I had never seen for sale in Minnesota. But when I unexpectedly ran across it during my cross-metro shopping trip, I knew that it would be a shame to pass by the suggestion.
I mean, what is the point of asking for suggestions if you then turn around and ignore them?
Here is what I had to say about this during the competition.
Wheel Horse Bourbon is a new one to me. It was suggested by a reader in the last giveaway. I don’t know too much about it, but I know that it was distilled at the Green River Distilling Company in Owensboro, Kentucky. This property has been distilling whiskey off and on since the late 1800s. It was the home of “The Whiskey Without A Headache” until Prohibition. After Prohibition, it was run by the Medley Family until the 1980s. The property was briefly the OZ Tyler Distillery, making some truly terrible whiskey, before being renamed to Green River in 2019 and deciding to stop using the TerrePure process for the future whiskeys they were making there. I was thrilled to read this, which made me decide to take another chance on the whiskey produced there.
Now let’s see how it does in a proper tasting without the influence of another bourbon clouding my tastebuds.
Wheel Horse Bourbon
Purchase Info: $25.96 for a 750 mL bottle at Top Ten Liquors in Chanhassen, MN.
Price per Drink (50 mL): $1.73
Details: 50.5% ABV. 4 years old
Nose: Strong notes of soapy anise lead off with caramel and lumber underneath.
Mouth: Notes of clove, cinnamon, herbal mint, and oak.
Finish: On the longer side of medium length and warm. Lingering notes of anise, clove, red fruit, minerals, and oak.
Thoughts: This one could be divisive. It's not bad at all, but the strong herbal baking spice notes could put some people off. I like it enough to give the rye a try, but probably not enough to buy it again unless I'm looking to use it in a cocktail that would play well with anise and clove notes. I will give this a neutral rating because it doesn’t quite align with my palate, but you may love it. .
If you want to support our work at BourbonGuy.com, please consider a one-time donation at ko-fi.com/bourbonguy or paypal.me/BourbonGuy. Or you could buy some merch that I’ve designed and/or built (tasting journals, t-shirts, stickers, pins, signs, posters, and more) at BourbonGuyGifts.com. Use code BOURBONGUYREADER at checkout for 5% off any order of $50 or more.
By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ Lexington Brewing & Distilling’s Town Branch 7 Year Old Single Malt is a product of brewstilling synergy. Whether the whiskey was made with the distillery’s pot still is unknown, but what is known is that it was aged for seven-plus years in old Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale barrels. That drink, …
By Richard Thomas
Rating: B+
Town Branch 7 Year Old Single Malt (Credit: Richard Thomas)
Lexington Brewing & Distilling’s Town Branch 7 Year Old Single Malt is a product of brewstilling synergy. Whether the whiskey was made with the distillery’s pot still is unknown, but what is known is that it was aged for seven-plus years in old Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale barrels. That drink, in its turn, is the brewery’s staple Kentucky Irish Red Ale aged in used bourbon barrels, and for years now at least some of those barrels have come from the distillery’s own bourbon output. The Kentucky single malt is bottled at 87 proof, very in tune with Irish and Scottish malts.
The Whiskey The look here is green straw (meaning not dried, so pale yellow). The scent conjured nothing so much as a bowl of Roman pulsum to me, but I know it is most unlikely anyone reading this knows what I’m talking about, so I’ll break that down. It’s like pottage, a cooked cereals dish, flavored with things like leek and herbs. Sitting next to the bowl of pulsum is a cup of fruit cocktail.
Sipping on the pour reveals a pretty chewy whiskey. The scent isn’t really all that suggestive of the flavor profile, which is much sweeter, running with a malty, citrus blossom honey accented by a caramel note and a touch of cinnamon and wood. The latter is what runs into the finish initially, turning a touch peppery, but as that fades away it leaves a light barn tobacco note.
The Price A bottle of this should set you back $40, and at that price it’s well worth picking up for anyone interested in American malts.
I’d like to thank ByrnePR and Penelope Bourbon for providing this review sample with no strings attached.
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I’d like to thank ByrnePR and Penelope Bourbon for providing this review sample with no strings attached.
Her name is Rio, and she dances on the sand Just like that river twisting through a dusty land And when she shines, she really shows you all she can Oh, Rio, Rio, dance across the Rio Grande —Chorus to Rio by Duran Duran, 1982
I am highly suggestable to earworms. It can take as little as two words out of a 1980s sitcom theme song to have me singing it for the next two weeks. And for some reason, the more annoyed I would be by the song, the easier it seems to lodge itself in my brain. I sometimes even get two earworms competing in my brain and I hear first one and then the other.
I really hate earworms. My wife thinks it is funny to trigger them in me. Thank goodness she has other, more redeeming qualities.
As you might guess from the fact that I placed the chorus at the beginning of the post, Rio by Duran Duran has been lodged in my brain all week. It’s not that I particularly dislike the song (or at least I didn’t pre-earworm), but I have been looking at this bottle for the better part of a month, so it was bound to happen. So, to not give the song any more oxygen, let’s move on to the whiskey.
Rio is the latest release in Penelope Bourbon’s Cooper Series. We looked at another a couple of months ago when we looked at the Tokaji Cask Finish Rye. Similar to that, this is a non-chill filtered and barrel-finished whiskey. In this case, it used Penelope’s blended four-grain mash bill of 74% corn, 16% wheat, 7% rye, and 3% malted barley. In this case, the bourbon was finished in two barrels. One that previously contained honey and one that was made of Amburana, a Brazilian hardwood.
Here’s what the company has to say about this edition of Rio:
“Our latest Rio release is a party in a bottle – the finishes complement each other so well, resulting in a fun and surprising mix of flavors,” said Michael Paladini, founder of Penelope Bourbon. “This year’s release delivers a dessert sweetness combined with a nice baking spice on the finish. It's a fantastic and different combination of rich and sweet, with depth.”
I have to agree. This thing is so sweet that I honestly could have been convinced it was a liqueur. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s get into the tasting notes.
Penelope Cooper Series: Rio
Purchase Info: This bottle was provided by the producer for review purposes. The suggested retail price is $89.99 for a 750 mL bottle.
Price per Drink (50 mL): $6.00
Details: 49% ABV. Cask-finished in both honey barrels and Brazilian hardwood casks. Mash bill: 74% corn, 16% wheat, 7% rye and 3% malted barley.
Nose: Honey forward with toffee and a savory herbal note.
Mouth: Sweet with a thick mouthfeel. Notes of honey, cinnamon, anise, and other baking spices.
Finish: Vibrant, spicy, and sweet. Notes of honey, spicy cinnamon, caramel, anise, and cocoa.
Thoughts: Very tasty, especially if you are a fan of honey like I am. To me, this is like a pre-mixed old-fashioned or a spiced baked good. Very sweet with lots of baking spice. Don't grab this if you want a stereotypical barbon. But if you want something a bit different, I'd highly recommend this one.
If you want to support our work at BourbonGuy.com, please consider a one-time donation at ko-fi.com/bourbonguy or paypal.me/BourbonGuy. Or you could buy some merch that I’ve designed and/or built (tasting journals, t-shirts, stickers, pins, signs, posters, and more) at BourbonGuyGifts.com. Use code BOURBONGUYREADER at checkout for 5% off any order of $50 or more.
By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ Utah’s High West earned its reputation as a fan favorite through their transparency. The company was among those that tried and proved the path of using sourced whiskey to develop a brand while mustering the resources and expertise to build a working distillery, develop whiskeys and mature them. What made …
By Richard Thomas
Rating: B+
High West Bottled in Bond Rye (Credit: Richard Thomas)
Utah’s High West earned its reputation as a fan favorite through their transparency. The company was among those that tried and proved the path of using sourced whiskey to develop a brand while mustering the resources and expertise to build a working distillery, develop whiskeys and mature them. What made them the darling of so many whiskey nerds a decade ago was that they were part of a small class that disclosed their sourcing, at least insofar as their contractual obligations allowed them to. Barrell Craft Spirits and Smooth Ambler also garnered plaudits from the enthusiast community for transparency.
High West continues to rely on sourcing to this day, but their goal from the beginning was to make an in-house rye whiskey. They crossed that milestone years ago, and this rye has found its way into their products. Double Rye, for example, mixes a wide majority of MGP-sourced rye with their in-house product. That has so much been the case that I don’t actually recall any way to get at High West’s rye whiskey in and of itself, because it is so often merely part of one of their legacy expressions.
Or that was the case until High West Bottled in Bond Rye came along in February 2024. The mash behind this whiskey is 80% rye, 20% malted rye, both from a hybrid strain of grain called Guittino. As a bonded whiskey, the stock comes entirely from a single distilling year, the expression is a minimum of four years old (the batch numeration suggests it is a five year old, but that goes unstated on the labeling) and its 100 proof.
The Whiskey The pour has a clear, bright and light amber look in the glass. The scent brings out both elements of what I would expect from its mash bill: cookie spice and peppermint on the one hand, and pumpernickel dough on the other. There is a woody note that is more cedar and than oak, plus another note of vanilla. The palate follows and develops very much in that vein: the standard pumpernickel and molasses that comes with malted rye so much of the time, plus notes of dill, peppermint, cookie spices, fennel and cedar. The finish spins out peppery and woody.
By Richard Thomas Rating: B- Although some folks think malt whiskey is a thing best left to the Scots, Irish and the rest of the world, and Americans ought to stay out of it, the American Single Malt is on the precipice of becoming a thing. The American Single Malt Whiskey Commission is now very …
By Richard Thomas
Rating: B-
Clermont Steep American Single Malt (Credit: Richard Thomas)
Although some folks think malt whiskey is a thing best left to the Scots, Irish and the rest of the world, and Americans ought to stay out of it, the American Single Malt is on the precipice of becoming a thing. The American Single Malt Whiskey Commission is now very close to seeing their vision enshrined in Federal regulations, as the TTB is considering giving their category and its definitions the force of law.
But perhaps at least as important, in terms of American malts becoming a thing, is their embrace by the big distillers. Malt whiskey had been the playground of craft and mid-sized distillers, the sector the big boys weren’t in. That scarcely changed even after Woodford Reserve Straight Malt Whiskey was introduced, because as a “Kentucky style malt” with a 51% malted barley mash bill, it was malt whiskey without being single malt whiskey.
Just because Clermont Steep is a single malt doesn’t mean it is merely made from all malted barley.
Borrowing a page from American craft distillers (who are heavily influenced by the craft beer sector rather than Scotland), Beam devised a mash of 80% standard barley malt and 20% golden pilsner barley malt. Although this is the first full single malt of Beam’s in regular release, their malt whiskey stock has made appearances in past Little Book releases, so we knew Beam was making the stuff. Clermont Steep is a project of Freddie Noe, Jim Beam’s 8th Master Distiller and basically co-distiller and lieutenant of his father Fred Noe. It’s five years old, aged in new oak barrels (toasted, charred to a modest Level 1) and bottled at 47% ABV.
The Whiskey The whiskey has a mid-amber coloring. The nose reminds me of porridge flavored with brown sugar, vanilla and cocoa powder. On the palate, the whiskey has a silky texture and a light body. The porridge-like character continues, but it’s sweeter on the tongue than the scent suggested. The notes remain largely the same, but with a mild, vague herbaceous quality replacing the cocoa powder earthiness. The finish goes down sweet and mildly tannic, as if you’d taken a sip on some tea that has been so over-sweetened with honey that it’s like 1/5 honey, 4/5s tea.
The Price A bottle of this whiskey will set you back $60.
By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ When Heaven Hill finally took the 12 year age statement off Elijah Craig Barrel Proof last year, several years after taking the Elijah Craig Small Batch no age statement in 2016, it was an even noteworthy for just how little comment it attracted. Sure, some croaked, but compared to the …
By Richard Thomas
Rating: B+
Elijah Craig Barrel Proof A124 (Credit: Richard Thomas)
When Heaven Hill finally took the 12 year age statement off Elijah Craig Barrel Proof last year, several years after taking the Elijah Craig Small Batch no age statement in 2016, it was an even noteworthy for just how little comment it attracted. Sure, some croaked, but compared to the outrage that similar transitions sparked during the middle 2010s, the response was relatively muted. It seems that the folks stoking the outrage in that bygone era have all either taken their ball and gone home or else otherwise fallen into irrelevancy.
That just leaves the question of whether the transition itself is an objectively good thing, which is something we can only even take a guess at after a few years have passed. The croakers of yeseteryear would seize upon any underaged, inferior expression to declare “See! I told you so! It’s all a scam!” Really, the only justification for that declaration is if said batch became the norm for the entire series. Hence, the need to observe and comment over time.
Which brings me to Elijah Craig Barrel Proof A124, the first batch of this year. This one is aged 10 years, 9 months, and came out at 119 proof. That makes it the youngest ever “ECBP,” and the second lowest ever in proof (including when the 12 year statement was in effect). Fans should have an inkling of the latter point instinctively, since Elijah Craig Barrel Proof is routinely above 120 proof. One way to look at this latest batch is that it’s Elijah Craig Small Batch, but a little past the upper end of its age range and uncut.
So, it’s an atypical batch. And you know what? I dug that atypical batch.
The Bourbon The pour had a pretty standard amber appearance. The nose is akin to somehow turning fruit cocktail into a caramel candy fruit, with a current of dry wood and cookie spices.
Taking a sip, one gets the biting into brown sugar and cinnamon dusted graham cracker kind of sweetness. The spice blend here is hotter than in the nose. It’s a hefty dose of cinnamon, but now with ginger too. That spicy kick turns things dry on the back end. The finish rolls out of that too, with cinnamon fading to peppery and woody before disappearing all together.
The Price ECBP is currently running at $75 per fifth bottle. Taken in the long view, it’s come up about $15 over the past decade, but has been holding steady this past few years.
Another thing to think about when considering how much or whether the loss of the age statement matters is this: Elijah Craig Small Batch costs $28 to $32 a bottle. This is a little older than the oldest barrels used to form that small batch, uncut, and costs maybe 2 1/2 times as much. Whether those two pluses are worth the extra price paid is a question worth asking, but most people agreed it was based just on the difference of 1 year, 3 months plus.
I’d like to thank ByrnePR and Yellowstone Distillery for providing this review sample with no strings attached.
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I’d like to thank ByrnePR and Yellowstone Distillery for providing this review sample with no strings attached.
I’ve sung the praises of the folks over at Yellowstone more times than I can count. Well, that’s not true. I can count pretty high. But more times than I care to count, how about that? And because I enjoy their connection with their namesake park and the ways they give back, at the end of the post, I’d like to share the press release for a fun contest that the brand is running. It happened to land in my mailbox as I was getting ready for tonight’s post, and since I’m talking about Yellowstone anyway, I thought you guys would be interested.
So first, the bourbon. Last fall, Yellowstone released the first edition of its Special Finishes Collection with a Toasted Stave-Finished bourbon. Exactly a month ago, they released the second edition, “Rum Cask.” The bourbon is exactly what you think it is. It is four-year-old Yellowstone bourbon that has been finished for nine weeks in casks that previously held rum. In fact, I think I’ll let the press release writer take over at this point. I’d just be summarizing it anyway.
The new release starts with Yellowstone’s traditional bourbon mash bill and then is aged for nine weeks in casks that previously held rum distilled using molasses from sugarcane grown in the rich, fertile soils and tropical Caribbean climate of Cuba. The resulting bourbon features a flavorful blend of spice and tropical sweetness; a medium body with notes of toasted marshmallow, crème brûlée and toffee toasted oak; and the finish is highlighted by tobacco, clove, cocoa seasoned oak and honey.
“Rum has the sweetest notes of all the casks we’ve used for secondary finishing, and it was an ideal choice for the next adventure in our Special Finishes Collection,” said Beam. “Rum is an exceptional compliment to bourbon, and they come together to create subtle notes of sweetness and brown sugar, which are soaked up and stored within the staves and perfectly complement the vanilla, caramel and rye flavors of Yellowstone. Our four-year bourbon is a classic Kentucky bourbon and makes for a fantastic base. This allows me to go in many directions with the finishes while remaining true to or original profile.”
Let’s dig in and see how it tastes.
Yellowstone Special Finishes Collection, Rum Cask
Purchase Info: This sample was sent to me at no charge for review purposes. The suggested retail price is $49.99.
Price per Drink (50 mL): $3.33
Details: 4 years old. 50% ABV. Secondary aging for nine weeks in former rum casks.
Nose: Brown sugar, oak, vanilla, and a touch of cinnamon.
Mouth: Cinnamon spice, toffee, vanilla, oak, allspice, marshmallow, and a touch of molasses.
Finish: Medium in both length and warmth with notes of brown sugar, tobacco, molasses, and oak. There is a final dark chocolate note that shows up after the rest have faded.
Thoughts: If you’ve ever had Angel’s Envy Rye, you will know that Rum finishes can sometimes take over the whiskey base. This is not one of those times. This is a bourbon, and you wouldn’t have guessed otherwise if you had tasted it blind. The secondary finishing adds some sweetness and undernotes that are a little unusual for a bourbon. Molasses and marshmallows are examples that I don’t usually find. However, they aren’t unheard of either. There is more oak than I expected in a four-year-and-nine-week-aged bourbon, which is very nice. Overall, I’m quite enjoying this one. I’d give it a shot should you see it.
Iconic bourbon brand shares its connection to America’s first national park with consumers through new adventure experience opportunity
ST. LOUIS (April 8, 2024) – Yellowstone Bourbon announced a contest for consumers to win an all-inclusive trip to Yellowstone National Park in 2024. Consumers can enter the Yellowstone National Park Getaway Contest now through July 15 by submitting a photo and a writeup about their love for the great outdoors – a hiking story, poem or another kind of written expression.
The three lucky winners and their plus-one will experience the ultimate national park adventure September 5-8, 2024, including hiking, horseback riding, sightseeing, curated meals, private accommodations and round-trip airfare. In addition, four social media influencers will join the winners for this trip of a lifetime:
Dean Unglert, reality TV star and outdoor explorer
Adam Glick, celebrity chef and adventurer
Holly Johnson, travel and outdoor content creator
Patrick Duke, adventure photographer and filmmaker
“For more than 150 years, Yellowstone Bourbon has shared a bond with the majestic Yellowstone National Park,” said Kelly Panzitta, Yellowstone Bourbon brand manager. “This contest gives people the opportunity to experience that connection firsthand and win a one-of-a-kind adventure. It’s part of our commitment to always keep the park within reach.”
Since 2018, Yellowstone Bourbon has donated nearly $500,000 to National Parks Conservation Association to preserve national parks. In 2023, Yellowstone became one of NPCA’s largest annual corporate donors at the $250,000 level.
Yellowstone Bourbon partnered with World Playground to plan the contest itinerary and Under Canvas for the winners’ and influencers’ private accommodations in West Yellowstone. For more information about the contest including official rules, please visit Yellowstone National Park Getaway Contest or YellowstoneBourbon.com. For updates about the contest, follow Yellowstone Bourbon on Facebook and Instagram.
If you want to support our work at BourbonGuy.com, please consider a one-time donation at ko-fi.com/bourbonguy or paypal.me/BourbonGuy. Or you could buy some merch that I’ve designed and/or built (tasting journals, t-shirts, stickers, pins, signs, posters, and more) at BourbonGuyGifts.com. Use code BOURBONGUYREADER at checkout for 5% off any order of $50 or more.
By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ This is one of a pair of expressions released by Islay distillery Bruichladdich in early 2024 as part of a “Luxury Redefined” series. The whiskies represented two sides of a pivot point in Bruichladdich history. The distillery was mothballed for several years, covering the mid- to late 1990s, with production …
This is one of a pair of expressions released by Islay distillery Bruichladdich in early 2024 as part of a “Luxury Redefined” series. The whiskies represented two sides of a pivot point in Bruichladdich history. The distillery was mothballed for several years, covering the mid- to late 1990s, with production restarting in 2000. The post-2000 whisky production was focused on a grain-forward style, emphasizing estate-grown barley identity and a relative youthful maturation profile. For many years, Bruichladdich releases followed two patterns representing this divide in style: 20th Century malts, often quite aged and usually appearing in the Black Arts series; and unpeated, youngish, grain-rooted malts made in the 21st Century.
But now some of the initial production runs of post-Y2K Bruichladdich are mature enough to count as middle aged malts, which is where Luxury Re/Defined came in. The 18 year old expression was certainly not youthful, but made in the 21st Century. The 30 year old expression covered here is very much “old” Bruichladdich.
Bottled at 43% ABV, Bruichladdich Re/Define 30 is drawn entirely from ex-bourbon barrel-aged stock.
The Scotch My pouring had a faded, dulled copper look to it, so on that note it’s already showing some age, being a little darker than the standard gilded Scotch look. The whisky is strongly aromatic, with the aroma rising to greet you from the table. The nose has a rich, sweet character, which is like a citrus blossom honey at its core, plus lesser notes of coconut, almond and vanilla.
Sipping takes the malt on about a 45 degree turn, as the whisky brings up new elements and comes into better balance (although the scent is just lovely with its emphasis on that wonderful place of citrus blossom honey). That honey is still there, but now sharing the spotlight with drying leaf tobacco and a mix of cloves, black pepper and slivers of wood. The finish brings the coconut and almond back to share some time with the tobacco leaf note, this fading down to leave a hint of oakiness.
The Price Bruichladdich asks £1,500.00 (or $2,000) for this bottle, so it’s not nearly as approachable as the Re/Define 18.
It isn’t often that I look at something this expensive, so I thought I’d give a little backstory on how it ended up on my shelf.
It was 2013, and my wife was planning the yearly trip she takes with her mother. Usually, it is somewhere local, like the North Shore of Lake Superior or Door County, Wisconsin, but this time, my mother-in-law wanted to see Niagara Falls. She’d never been and wanted to see it before she no longer could. Normally, the trip is just the two of them, but I’d never been out of the country and asked if I could tag along. They were driving, and I didn’t have enough vacation time to spend the entire week with them. So it was decided that I would fly out, they would pick me up in Toronto, we’d do some sightseeing, and then I would ride back with them.
Want to raise the suspicions of a Canadian customs agent? Fly in on a one-way ticket. She asked a lot of questions about what I do for a living, why I was there, who I was meeting, and why I didn’t just ride along with my wife when they drove in. The defeated way I admitted to not having enough vacation must have done the trick, though, because that was the last question before I was allowed to go.
But anyway, back in 2013, I was chronically online—like all the time. Twitter was my jam at the time, as it was still a few years away from becoming the total cesspool that I abandoned for my own mental health a few years later. I met a lot of really cool friends based on a combined love of all things whiskey. And when I mentioned online that I’d be in Toronto for a couple of nights, well, that was when Canadian Rick took over.
He didn’t go by that or anything, but that was how my wife and I thought of him.
Rick was very possibly the nicest guy I’d ever met. He set up an entire meet-up for local whiskey lovers at our hotel room. But before that, he surprised us at the Forty Creek distillery. He’d found out that we were going to be taking a tour and sat in the parking lot waiting for us to show up so that he could introduce himself to us and welcome us to Canada. And he did that by flirting with my mother-in-law and giving my wife and I the heel portion of a bottle of a very old Alberta Premium. I think it was about 30 years old. There was just enough left in the bottle for a pour for each of the two of us.
It was delicious. It literally sent a shiver up my spine as I sipped it. Until very recently, it was the oldest whiskey (or whisky since it is Canadian) that I’d ever tasted.
The next night, everyone showed up at my hotel room, and we had a lovely tasting. They tried their best to get me to enjoy Scotch the way they did, to no avail. I gained an appreciation but not a liking. (For context, it was sincerely said of one of the samples: “It has the aroma of Band-Aids and candle wax, mmm, delicious.” I did not think that sounded delicious…) Luckily for me, they also brought a bunch of Canadian whiskey along. Now that I liked. Enough so that we had to stop at a couple of LCBO locations on our drive home, even though I was massively hungover and working on very little sleep as my wife drove us back.
After our trip, Rick made sure to keep in touch. We visited on Facebook, via email, and, of course, Twitter. We even shared whiskey samples back and forth. He’d ask for Bourbon and, in return, send Canadian. Eventually, I pretty much gave up social media, and we drifted apart. I know I’m not doing justice to just how nice Rick was, but you’ll just have to take my word for it.
Right as we were starting our brackets last month, we received word from a mutual friend that Rick had passed away. And as you do when you learn that a friend that you’d drifted away from is gone, I wondered why on Earth I hadn’t tried harder to keep in touch. Even though I know there were some lovely whiskeys, I have no idea what we tasted that night in Toronto, but I remember the joy that we all had in tasting them together. There is a lesson there somewhere.
So, what does all that have to do with the bottle of Canadian Club that we are talking about tonight? Well, it was on that trip that I fell in love with good Canadian whisky. I’d been seeing this bottle of 45-year-old Canadian Club just sitting in the case for almost a year. And when I thought of Canadian Rick and his heel of 30-year-old Alberta Premium, something tugged at me to buy it. And when my daughter gave us a $150 Total Wine Gift Card for Christmas this year, I knew exactly what I wanted to put it toward. $300 is a lot for a bottle of whiskey. I’ve never spent that much previously, and it is very likely that I never will again.
And I’m very glad I did. It was the perfect bottle to open to toast Rick’s memory with when we heard the news of his passing. It was the only pour out of the bottle before we did the tasting notes for this post, and it will be a while before we pour another, I’m sure. But maybe someday, when there are only a couple of pours left in the bottle, I’ll need to pay it forward and pass that heel along to a friend newly met.
Canadian Club Chronicles “The Icon” 45-year-old Canadian Whiskey
Purchase Info: $309.99 for a 750 mL bottle at Total Wine, Burnsville, MN
Price per Drink (50 mL): $20.67
Details: 45 years old, 50% ABV.
Nose: Delicate, pleasant oak, along with cinnamon and floral vanilla.
Mouth: Creme brulee, marzipan, oak, and cinnamon.
Finish: Refined, balanced, and of medium length. Lingering notes of vanilla custard spiced with cinnamon and a gentle oak.
Thoughts: This is delicious. The first descriptor that popped into my head was" refined." It is extremely well-balanced, with neither the proof nor oak overpowering anything else. A few years ago, my wife and I tasted a vintage bottle of Canadian Club from the 1970s. It was very floral. Much more so than the currently produced product. You can still taste the floral 1970s Canadian Club roots even at its advanced age. This is definitely something that will live on the special shelf and only be poured on special occasions or for special people.
I didn’t get a chance to tell you anything about this whisky, but if you’d like to learn more about it, Whisky Magazine had a nice write-up when it was released in late 2022, and of course, here is the original press release.
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