Some more ramblings on a Friday

Goodness.  After this week's Reports, I think it's high time for me to bring some single malt action back to the site.  So, next week I'll be reporting on a much anticipated single malt Taste-Off.  By "much anticipated" I'm referring to my own whisky longings.

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Last night I popped into a local bar (The Reno Room) to size up Buffalo Trace and Bushmills Original.  I'd ordered BT once a few months ago while in Palm Springs, but received something that was definitely not BT.  So this time I was able to watch the bartender pour the bourbon from the bottle into my glass.  I tried it.  I liked it.  Sadly, Bushmills Original (which REALLY paled in comparison to the Buffalo Trace) remains the one Irish Whiskey that I do not enjoy.  I believe there's good malt hiding in there, but the bland grains push it down.  I try it every year or two just to double check and each time my feelings are confirmed.  At least its palate is consistent.

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The Whisky Advocate posted its top 10 whiskies of the Fall.  Upon reading the list, I felt the usual mixed feelings bubble up.  All the whiskies look delicious but none are affordable for the average consumer.  It reminded me what an expensive pleasure whisky has become.

A Malt Maniac, harmonic resonance, and The Corry.  Blend them, vat them, pour them and you'll get the new Coopered Tot post.  It's grand!

I also enjoyed Scotch and Ice Cream's post about his celebrating his son's first birthday with a fine bottle of whisky.  Feelings both personal and universal run through the review.

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Finally, here's my tweet from this morning:

In my dream last night, Woody Harrelson, Iggy Pop, Robert DeNiro and I prepped smoked pork shoulder at the beach on a cloudy morning.
— Michael Kravitz (@kravitz_hubris) August 17, 2012

As in most dreams, the action was never completed as we kept getting sidetracked by distractions.  Actually, that sounds a lot like the waking life.

Happy Friday!

NOT Single Malt Report: Canadian Club 6 year Blended Whisky (plastic-bottled in 2004, Ancient!)

After searching long and far, spelunking through the oldest caves, digging through the most ancient of ruins, sparing no expense, I've finally unearthed this great artifact from the history of distillation:

I postulated that this whisky, bottled in the year two-thousand-and-four (in the common era) by a company that no longer exists, must hold the secrets of the past or at least some leaching from its magical "unbreakable" bottle.

And it came at a burdensome financial investment.

Brand: Canadian Club

Distillery: Hiram Walker & Sons Distillery
Ownership: was Allied Domecq (now Beam Global)
Type: Canadian Blended Whisky
Region: Windsor, Ontario, Canada

Age: minimum 6 years

Alcohol by Volume: 40%
Bottled: (est.) March 1, 2004
Bottle code: 54 SL 24 LE 061 DW 15:08

How ancient is this bottle?  When it was being filled...

Justin Bieber was 10.  ADORBZ!
There was no Shake Weight.
The Red Sox still hadn't won a World Series in 85 years.
Aaron, Ruth, and Mays were still the top three career Home Run hitters.
No one had been properly Rickrolled.  Yet.
Glen Beck had yet to go on television.
Michael Phelps had zero Olympic Medals.
The cat hadn't yet asked if he could haz cheezburger.
The CIA had just admitted that there was no WMD threat from Iraq before the American invasion.
Janet Jackson had just accidentally purposely showed a pastie- (not pastry-) covered breast on live TV.
Lost in Translation had just NOT won Best Picture at the Academy Awards.
Johns Kerry and Edwards were still battling it out for the Democratic Party's presidential nominee.
Not many people outside of Illinois had heard of one Barack Obama.
Facebook was limited to Harvard University students.
The Passion of the Christ had just opened nationwide.
Friends and Frasier hadn't ended.
Kristen Perry was living in Spain and hadn't yet moved in with me.
I was young.

So this bottle is OLD.  Like before Rihanna and memory and stuff.

It was released by Allied Domecq Ltd before Pernod Ricard took over the company in 2005 and sold C.C. to Fortune Brands (which then spun off Beam Inc as its own corporation).

Canadian Club's origins can be traced back to 1858, when Hiram Walker of Detroit opened a distillery in Windsor, Canada.  He'd started making whisky in the US a few years earlier, but the Temperance movement was gaining steam in Michigan so he moved his business across the water.  He called the resulting product Club Whisky.  American whiskey companies got the law involved to force Walker to put "Canada" on the label on the theory that it would slow Club Whisky's popularity.  That backfired.  Seeing the boost in sales that resulted from the "Canada" on the label, Walker changed the name of the whisky to Canadian Club.  In the early 1960s Don Draper made it a permanent addition to his office's liquor cart and the rest is history.  Sorta.

With the weight of human history and American-Canadian relations on my shoulders, I opened the black screw-top.  The plastic angels had already walked off with some of the beverage over the last 8+ years, as the liquid level was below the bottle's neck.  Down to its collarbone.

My hands shook with excitement as I poured myself an ounce-and-a-half of history.  I took fifteen minutes to embrace this singular opportunity.  Then I began my nosing and tasting.

NEAT
At first in the glass, the whisky's color forms a strata of urine at the bottom and apple juice at the top.  After fifteen minutes it evens out to amber.  The nose is a fist full of vanilla followed by oak and mild grains.  There's more alcohol burn than one usually gets from a 40% ABV booze.  After time, there are hints of apricots and (much less subtly) white vinegar.  It's with the palate that things start to go askew.  It starts with bitter sugar cookies and imitation vanilla extract, goes to sour ladyfingers and then more bitterness, ultimately drying out the tongue.  It finishes with an oaky vanilla, bland sugar, but mostly a wallop of sourness and bitterness that lingers inconveniently like dog sh*t on a shoe.

WITH WATER (approx. 33.3% ABV)
Oof.  It may bring out brighter sugars in the nose, but the mouth gets so much bitterer.

The Malt Maniacs sometimes talk about the OBE (Old Bottle Effect) on whisky.  But I think they're just referring to glass bottles.  May I introduce OPBE (Old Polyethylene Bottle Effect)?

This whisky tasted almost nothing like any Canadian Club I've had.  I actually don't mind CC6 usually; I used to use it a bit for highballs.  The awful (and slightly worrying) sour and bitter notes are unique to this bottle.  Aside from those vaguely noxious notes, this CC6 was blander and flatter than the usual bottling.

A rousing success!  Anyone want to trade for a 2oz sample of this?!

Availability - This ancient bottling? My shady corner liquor store.

Pricing - Current (750mL) bottling goes for $12-$15

Rating - 59

NOT Single Malt Report: Taste Off! Maker's Mark vs. Four Roses Single Barrel

Quote of the day: "Tell me this doesn't smell like farty maple syrup!"

* * * * *

I just sighed deeply as I began this Report.  I'm still such a bourbon novice and this writeup may not do anything to strengthen anyone's opinion of my American whiskey knowledge.

But let's do it!

Here are the players:

Distillery: Four Roses
Ownership: Kirin
Type: Kentucky Straight Bourbon (Single Barrel)
Region: Lawrenceberg, Kentucky

Age: over 7 years, probably 8 to 12 years
Mashbill: 60% corn, 35% rye, and 5% malted barley (source)

Maturation: charred white oak barrels

Alcohol by Volume: 50%

and

Distillery: Maker's Mark
Ownership: Beam Global
Type: Kentucky Straight Wheated Bourbon
Region: Loretto, Kentucky

Age: minimum 2 years, likely 6 to 8 years
Mashbill: 70% corn, 16% soft red winter wheat, and 14% malted barley (source)

Maturation: charred white oak barrels

Alcohol by Volume: 45%

The Maker's Mark is from a 375mL bottle.  The Four Roses Single Barrel is from a 50mL mini I found at Hi Time Wine Cellars.  The bottles themselves are great.  Maker's has its distinctive shape and the dipped wax phallus at the top.  And the Four Roses had the heaviest sturdiest glass mini bottle I've ever bought (and I've bought a few).

The biggest difference (to me) between these two are the mashbills.  Maker's Mark uses wheat instead of rye in their mix and is heavily corn-ed.  Four Roses Single Barrel also has a bit of corn (51% is the minimum allowed for bourbons) but has a large balance of rye in there as well.  A second difference is that the Four Roses is, per the label, from one barrel while the Maker's is from a combination of a large number of barrels.

I really had no idea what to expect.  I'd never tried any Four Roses product previously, though I've been reading many raves about them.  I had bought the Maker's to perfect my citrusy boubon old fashioned recipe, but hadn't spent much time with it neat.  So, I thought trying them side by side would be a good way to sort out the nuances.

Just before I did the taste off, I read The Coopered Tot's six-part blind Canadian rye tasting.  It inspired me to do my mini taster blind as well.

As if trying to figure out two bourbons wasn't enough for me, I was about to set myself up for the embarrassment of not being about to tell these two very different bourbons apart.  Awesome!

But I did it anyway.  Kristen did the one ounce pours and labeled the glasses A and B.

After allowing the whiskies a 15-minute adjustment period, I dug in.  Here are my results:

Bourbon A
Color - Reddish copper
Nose - Black cherry syrup, milk chocolate, cocoa powder, the inside of the oak barrel, Cool Whip
Palate - Old school Robotussin, treacle, maple syrup, a little hot, a little aspartame
Finish - Long and warm, whipped cream, but more of that sticky aspartame thing

Comments - It's a little busy but enjoyable, though I could do without the aspartame notes.  After the first couple of sips I said aloud, "Oh no, I think I like Maker's Mark."  That means I kinda liked this bourbon and I guessed it was Maker's.

Bourbon B
Color - Clove honey
Nose - French oak-type pencil shavings, sweet oranges, cherry lolipops, gassy, maple syrup, frosting
Palate - Pencils, root vegetables, very sweet at first then mellows out, vanilla, sugar cookies, but ultimately very tame
Finish - A good length, more ethyl, floral and vanilla, marshmallows

Comments - Mild and tame, the sweetness would work better than A for mixing.  I thought that the mellowness meant that it was Four Roses.  So that was my guess.

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Well, first thing's first.  My guesses were wrong.

A = Four Roses Single Barrel
B = Maker's Mark

I hadn't looked up the Four Roses mashbill beforehand.  Had I done so, I would have seen the good dose of rye.  My brain should have recognized the black cherry, cough syrup, and cocoa notes as the rye elements I like.  I knew Maker's had no rye.  I based my guesses on the mellowness of 'B' and the aspartame notes in 'A'.  So my guesses were silly.

Secondly, blindly tasted, I liked the Four Roses better.  (Do I get to keep any of my street cred?)  It was a little hectic, not necessarily messy but active.  The diet coke artificial sweetener note was odd though. It kept showing up with every sip.  Without that, it would have challenged Blanton's for my favorite bourbon.

Maker's is still quite the sweetie.  I don't mind having it around as a mixer.  Though I don't foresee myself jonesing for a glass neat nor on the rocks, it's still better than most cheap scotch blends.

Kristen seemed to prefer the Four Roses a little more too.  But neither swayed her opinion of bourbon in general.

After the taste off was done, I blended the last 0.5oz of Four Roses with 0.5oz of Maker's Mark (creating a fake mashbill of 65% corn, 17.5% rye, 9.5% malted barley, 8% red winter wheat).

It was wrong.  It was so bad that I rushed the glass over to Kristen, exclaiming, "Tell me this doesn't smell like farty maple syrup!"  For some reason she refused to smell it.

I buried that bad blend underneath an Old Fashioned and was much happier with that result.

The bourbon journey continues.

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Maker's Mark

Availability - Everywhere

Pricing - $19 to $24

Rating - 77

Four Roses Single Barrel

Availability - Some US liquor specialists

Pricing - $40 to $45

Rating - 82

Some ramblings on a Monday afternoon

It's a quiet blog day for me.  I'm working on employment stuff as well as tomorrow's Taste Off report.

In the meantime, I recommend...

The Coopered Tot posted the results of his gigantic 6-part blind Canadian Rye tasting, along with some thorough analysis.  It's so good that it inspired me to amend part of yesterday's Taste Off.  More on my much smaller non-rye Taste Off tomorrow.

The Scotch & Ice Cream blog posted an intensive write up on three Canadian Ryes last week.  Jefferson's 10 year Rye is looking better every day.

If you're a sherry fan, Chemistry of the Cocktail did a write-up on three deeee-licious looking sherry & rye cocktail recipes.

Looks like everything is turning up rye!

On the Scotch front, if you have 15 minutes and a drink at hand, Malt Maniac Ralfy just posted a video about Kilchoman (one of my favorite distilleries) and young crafted whiskies in general.

And look at that black-shirted drinker on the left of the photo below:

Thanks to Shawn Bishop Photography and their the wide-angle lens, I look considerably more buff than I deserve to.  Anyway, that's a pic from the LA Scotch Club's Peetin' Meetin'.  And I'm reaching for the indie Ardmore, my fave of the evening.

That's all, see you tomorrow for some bourbon.

NOT Single Malt Report: Wild Turkey Rye 101

For the 101st whisk(e)y?

Wild Turkey Rye 101, of course.

Distillery: Wild Turkey (their website has no info on rye)
Ownership: Campari Group (via Austin, Nichols, & Co.)
Type: Straight Rye
Region: Lawrenceburg, Kentucky

Age: minimum 2 years
Mashbill: 65% rye, 23% corn, 12% barley

Maturation: "charred white oak barrels"

Alcohol by Volume: 50.5%

In 1869, the Ripy family started a distillery on Wild Turkey Hill in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky.  The distillery blossomed despite grain shortages, the Prohibition shutdown, and the federal enforcement of bourbon standards.  The brand, Wild Turkey itself, had been the product of large batch bourbon purchases from other distilleries.  But in 1972, the Ripy family's distillery was acquired to become The Wild Turkey Distillery.  In 1980 the company was sold to Pernod Ricard.  Then in 2009 Campari purchased the brand.

Now, let me clarify something.  Wild Turkey 101 Rye has NOT entirely vanished.  Reports of its death have been somewhat exaggerated.  It's still out there to be found (at least three local stores have started carrying it again), but it is considerably less prevalent.  As folks have mentioned (here, here, here, and here) there's a rye shortage in the US right now.  If the Lawrenceburg distillery is getting less grain, then they'll stretch it out (water it down) and bottle more of the 81 proof version.  And sell it at the same exact price.  So it goes.

Soonafter getting a few recommendations on for WT101, I read all of the rye shortage news and got caught up in the panic.  Suddenly, no one was selling this rye around here.  When I found a bottle in Palm Springs a few months ago, I thought I'd discovered a great secret whiskey source.  Well, it was a good catch and the price was right, but it was no miracle.

So it's tough to find, but it's still around, especially if you live in or near a major American urban area.

With that out of the way, I have to say, I've never met a rye I didn't like.  Something about straight rye's nose and palate, with its spice cabinet and floral cherry cough syrup highlights, always appeals to me.

There are few $20 bottles of Scotch whisky that can compete with the complexity and spice of a $20 bottle of American rye.  Do we have import tariffs to thank for this?  Or the raw power of the rye distillate?  Probably both.

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NEAT:
The color is of a red-orange molasses.  Always looks nice in a glass.  The nose starts with candied oranges, buttery oak, and barrel char.  Then there's a dry vegetal note that joins up with a whiff of hay.  A dusty cocoa and mild ground black pepper linger in the background.  Cherries in syrup and cherry cough syrup lead the way in the palate.  Pungent fruit sugars and anise liqueur follow.  It's always sweet and spicy, getting sweeter the longer it sits in the glass.  It finishes with the cherry cough syrup, anise liqueur, and juicy sweetness.  Though it's surprisingly brief for its ABV.

It works well in a Sazerac (use real absinthe please!).  It's not bad in a Manhattan.  The dusty cocoa and barrel char elements should work well with some barbecue -- I'll try that this summer.

It stacks up pretty close to the Bulleit and Baby Saz straight ryes.  I won't declare a winner here since I've tried them in completely different circumstances.  I'll just have to drink some more rye, for empirical purposes, of course.

Availability - You'll need to do some Turkey hunting

Pricing - Excellent at $18-$21 (there are folks selling it for $30, shame on them)

Rating - 84

About getting "Jewed"

While sitting at a mostly empty pub yesterday, I overheard two forty-going-on-twenty-year-old guys discussing selling their used cars.  The louder of the two kept saying over and over again that he didn't want to go under seven grand.  He listed the price as seventy-five hundred, but "seven grand, man, that's the lowest I would go."

He then proceeded to tell his listener how the eventual buyer had "Jewed him down to sixty-five hundred".

I hadn't heard the word 'Jew' used as a verb in over 20 years.  I didn't realize it was still being utilized in that manner.  But let's set aside the bigot implications for a moment and analyze the usage here.

A man (or maybe just a male of the species) is trying to sell his car via Craigslist or the newspaper.  Though he likely paid 15-25 thousand dollars for it originally, he wants a new car or needs to pay the rent or requires cash for his meth habit and is thus willing to sell the vehicle unofficially for a return he hopes is better than trade-in value.  He advertises his price of $7500 with the hope he'll find a buyer too frightened to bargain; but, just in case, he sets the bidding floor at seven grand.

Perhaps buyers are scarce in this economy or too much time passes and his ex-wife has hired a lawyer because she needs money for child support.  At that moment a buyer comes along; a buyer who's done his homework and knows the car isn't worth 7K let alone 7.5K.  So they negotiate, which is a common worldwide practice when buying and selling private goods.  The buyer starts at six grand, the seller at 7.5.

Eventually the buyer makes it clear he will leave before he pays seven thousand dollars, since he can get the same model for less from alternate sellers.  This seller, hungry to sell, shows his desperation too quickly and winds up taking sixty-five hundred in cash.

He's hurt.  His dominance over the circumstance has been challenged and overcome.  Upon relating this tale to another male of the species, he doesn't want to reveal his forfeited masculinity, situational embarrassment, and negotiation failure.  Thus he uses, quite freely, what he thinks is an insult.  But instead, to anyone within earshot, he advances his inadequacy.  Not only has he lost financially and testosteronally, but he's revealed a void in his humanity.

To the seller:  In your desperate attempt to demean a man who got the better of you in many ways, you deployed what you assumed was an epithet towards my people.  You lowered yourself and thus elevated the object of your resentment.  Congratulations, you failed again.

Things from space

REAL:

Full screen, hi-definition, 360-degree panoramas of the Mars surface are now online.

They are beautiful.


NOT REAL:

Okay, the trailer -- with its Malick-style visuals, inspirational voice-over, and the best music from the Lord of the Rings soundtrack -- is real.  But sadly, the son of Jor-El is not.