Bourbon and Rye Day Friday: Baker's 7 year old versus those two batches of Booker's at 107 proof

I've always liked Baker's better than Booker's bourbon. Named after Jim Beam's grandnephew, Baker's has always been bottled at 107 proof and at 7 years of age. I do hope those two factors remain in future Baker's bottlings, but who knows. In addition to the recent Booker's announcement, Beam removed the 9yo age statement from Knob's Creek this year, took away the 8yo statement on Jim Black a year before, and OGD 114 may be disappearing next year. So what awaits Baker's?

Well, it awaits a Taste Off here. I took Booker's batches C05-A-12 and 2015-06, proofed them down to 53.5% and let them sit for a day. Then I lined them up next to Baker's batch B90-001 (a batch number that hasn't changed for several years) to see what worked best at that ABV.

For stats on Booker's batches C05-A-12 and 2015-06, see their reviews.

Baker's 7 year old 107 proof, batch B90-001
Owner: Beam Suntory
Brand: Booker's
Type: Straight Bourbon Whiskey
Distillery: Jim Beam Distillery
Location: Clermont, Kentucky
Mash Bill: 77% corn, 13% rye, 10% malted barley (probably)
Age: 7 years
Batch: B90-001
Alcohol by volume: 53.5% ABV

Nose
Baker's @ 53.5%abv - Brown sugar, caramel and limes. Hints of roses and cucumber skin. Play-Doh. More toffee pudding with time.
Booker's C05-A-12 @ 53.5%abv - Flowers, paint, oregano, sawdust and a little bit of hazelnut.
Booker's 2015-06 @ 53.5%abv - Orange oil, pine needles and sap, floral soap. Hints of vanilla and simple syrup.
Winner: Baker's, just slightly over 2015-06

Palate
Baker's @ 53.5%abv - NOT HOT. More savory than sweet. Smaller notes of wood smoke and toffee. Larger notes of mint, dark cherries and ginger.
Booker's C05-A-12 @ 53.5%abv - Bitter, floral, salty and nutty. Black pepper and root beer. Grows nuttier with every sip.
Booker's 2015-06 @ 53.5%abv - Less bitter than C05. Salty. Lots of toasted (grain and oak) notes. Wood spice.
Winner: Baker's

Finish
Baker's @ 53.5%abv - Mild. Tangy and salty. Subtle maple and corn sweetness. Black pepper.
Booker's C05-A-12 @ 53.5%abv - Bitter. Hot. Dry as hell. Fouls up the palate.
Booker's 2015-06 @ 53.5%abv - Not bitter. Warm. Ginger.
Winner: Baker's, just slightly over 2015-06

With 5 additional drops of water
Baker's - The nose is slightly more floral, nutty, narrower. The palate gets a spicy rye edge to it, along with vanilla frosting. Holds onto the savory note. The finish is similar to the palate.
Booker's C05-A-12 - The nose gets more desserty (sugar and corn syrup) with a side of barrel char, then out of nowhere it's all peanuts. The palate gets very sweet. Otherwise it's bitter, nutty, and full of floral soap. It finishes nutty, peppery, perfumy and bitter.
Booker's 2015-06 - The nose is very corny, like polenta. Then vanilla, Play-Doh and molasses. The palate is mild, with small notes of vanilla, caramel, ginger beer, and sawdust. Nuts and sawdust in the finish.
Winner: Baker's, again 2015-06 isn't too far behind.

MORE WORDS
That Baker's was the overall winner didn't come as a surprise to me, but there were two revelations. Firstly, Booker's 2015-06 wasn't that far off in my esteem when proofed down, and if I were to consider how it registers at full proof, it's probably about even with Baker's. Secondly, I wasn't terribly thrilled by any of these three whiskies. I thought I'd be doing a whole writeup about how awesome Baker's is, but......it's perfectly fine bourbon, nothing more. Though it does tend to be cheaper than Booker's in bars, I'm in no hurry to buy another bottle of Baker's any time soon.

Booker's batch C05-A-12 is flat out fugly when proofed down. I think that kind of broke my spirit. My palate is still messed up from it, 7 hours later. Don't be surprised if this is the final BARD Friday of 2016. BARD Friday will start up again in January. In the meantime, there are a couple of other spirits I have in mind for the last two Fridays of this year.

(Note: the two Booker's ratings will not change)

Baker's 7 year old, batch B09-001
Availability - All US specialty retailers, as well as many non-specialty retailers (depending on your state)
Pricing - $40-$60
Rating - 83

Booker's, the billionaire's bourbon, batch 2015-06 Noe Secret

In 2015, Beam Suntory announced they were starting a line of men's lingerie, called Booker's Secret. Like Versailles (in Kentucky) is pronounced the way it's spelled, this lingerie is also pronounced the way it's spelled, correctly. Likely this underwear didn't originally have anything to do with the bourbon brand, because you don't want your bathing suit area anywhere near barrel proof bourbon. Take a fella's word for it. Perhaps it was another one of the late Booker Noe's entrepreneurial brainstorms. In any case, the lingerie brand failed because Beam priced its products too low, ultimately leading to their wildly successful 2016 decision to double the price of Booker's bourbon. The lingerie line's demise was commemorated in the naming of this particular bourbon batch, No(e) Secret.

Owner: Beam Suntory
Brand: Booker's
Type: Straight Bourbon Whiskey
Distillery: Jim Beam Distillery
Location: Clermont, Kentucky
Mash Bill: 77% corn, 13% rye, 10% malted barley (probably)
Age: 6 years, 8 months, 7 days (seriously)
Batch: 2015-06 Noe Secret, the sixth release in 2015
Alcohol by volume: 64.05% ABV

NEAT
The nose starts off with a solid combo of honey, cinnamon and lime juice. Then pears, anise and barrel char. With about 20 minutes of air, it develops vanilla and carob notes. The palate leads with a serious quantity of The Beam Peanut Note®. Loads of sugar, but much of it has a peachy fruitiness. Ethyl, cinnamon red hots candies and cherry hard candies. Brown sugar and a mild bitterness. It finishes with ethyl heat and wood spice. Burnt peanuts, black pepper and tangy citrus. Never gets too sweet.

WITH WATER (~53.5%abv, Baker's level)
The nose becomes more floral and picks up a hint of maple syrup. Anise, caramel and a slight malty note. With time, sawdust takes over. The palate is bitterer, though it's not a deal breaker this time because it reads more herbal than it usually does. There's a mild sweetness, ginger, mint and chili oil. It finishes with wood, heat and more sweets (cherry candy), but none overwhelms the others.

WORDS WORDS WORDS
At least this babe can swim, unlike the batch from yesterday's review. The nose remains the best part, neat or proofed down, again. The palate is serviceable with or without water. And the hot woody bitterness is a full step lighter than any other Booker's bourbon batch I've tried.

This is the first batch I'd actually consider buying, though at the $40-$45 end of the spectrum. It would be probably be a lot of fun in Old Fashioneds or high proof Sazeracs. Still, if Beam doesn't magically raise the quality when the price goes up, then I won't be missing anything when I ignore it on the top shelf.

Availability - This batch might be lingering at some retailers, though probably not for long
Pricing - Booker's in general can still be found for $40, though it averages around $60 countrywide (Note: This is before the price increase hits.)
Rating - 83

Booker's, the billionaire's bourbon, batch C05-A-12

There seems to have been two versions of batch C05-A-12. One is the bottling I'm reviewing today, aged 7 years 1 month and weighing in at 65.0%abv, possibly specific to the US market. Then there's one that's aged 7 years 5 months, with a 64.25%abv which I've seen on European sites. If any of you brilliant bourbon boyos know the story behind that, please weigh in via the comment section below.

Here's what I've gleaned from the internets about this batch.
--The 'C' means it's from Beam's Clermont distillery and/or warehouses.
--The '05' refers to the year this stuff was distilled and barreled, as in 2005.
--The '12' represents the number of dead rats they found in the barrels when blending this batch. There were actually 11 and a half, but because Booker didn't "do decimals", the company rounds up.
--The 'A' stands for Anthropophagus, the Joe D'amato classic wherein George Eastman eats a fetus and then his own intestines. A metaphor.

Bottle shot

Owner: Beam Suntory
Brand: Booker's
Type: Straight Bourbon Whiskey
Distillery: Jim Beam Distillery
Location: Clermont, Kentucky
Mash Bill: 77% corn, 13% rye, 10% malted barley (probably)
Age: 7 years, 1 month
Batch: C05-A-12
Alcohol by volume: 65.0% ABV

NEAT
Berry and cherry candy on the nose. Walnuts. OAK. Chambord. Floral perfume, little bits of vanilla and caramel corn. Very berried on the palate too, like lollipops. Chili pepper heat. Bell peppers too. Very sweet and grapey. A hint of peanuts. The most controlled wood content I've experienced in a Booker's, though that's not saying much. The finish goes corny. Some tart fruit in the back. Sweet and smoky. And here comes the burnt bitter oak note I always find (and wish I didn't) in Booker's.

WITH WATER (~53.5%abv, Baker's level)
The nose gets more floral and more vanilla-ed. Hard toffee candy. Salt water taffy. The water has washed away most of the fruit in the palate. Feels woodier and hotter. Oooh, and bitterer. Medicinal. Maybe some hard cheese. The finish is bitter, woody, saccharine.

WORDS WORDS WORDS
I'll start with the positives. This is the best Booker's batch I've had thus far. The neat palate is palatable, but the nose is by far the highlight throughout.

As mentioned in the notes, I always find an off-putting hot bitter wood note in Booker's that's dialed up to a degree I haven't found in any other major (non-crafty) high proof bourbon, nor any other Beam product. When neat, this batch avoids this note until late in the finish. When proofed down it fills the finish and sneaks into the palate. In fact this batch tastes awful when water is added. It's decent when neat and the nose never fails. But I still can't see myself even paying the old price for it when Beam has other better cheaper products.

Availability - This batch is probably long gone
Pricing - Booker's in general can still be found for $40, though it averages around $60 countrywide (Note: This is before the price increase hits.)
Rating - 81 (neat only, proofing it down drops it ~20 points)

Two paragraphs on Booker's bourbon

Hmmm......just glancing at current international business and political news and......oh look, the Western world has officially entered the GREED IS FUCKING GREAT AND PEOPLE ARE FUCKING* SHEEP era. Of course, the world whisky industry has been in that mode for at least four years now, and I don't see any chance of it stopping until there is no world whisky industry. In the most recent occurrence of customers-be-damned behavior in the whisky world, Booker's bourbon will see its retail price double. The online bourbon community had some feelings about it, to put it mildly.

For those of you who are Booker's fans—though I am not amongst your number—I understand your frustration. Suntory has done a crap job with many of their brands for some time now. I'm sorry to see this habit bleeding over into American whisky. But for those of you who keep raving about what a great business maneuver this is, all I have to say is...Who cares? Seriously. Who cares if it's great corporate strategy? Do you have considerable financial investments in STBFY? Are you an employee of Beam Suntory? If the answer to the previous two questions is "no", then why do you feel the need to cheer this avarice? This price bloating has no positive effect on your life, but will have very negative repercussions on your purchasing power, and (if you even are a whiskey fan you may want to be concerned that this) will have more destructive long term effects on the bourbon industry than whatever short term gains Suntory may hope to achieve. Or maybe you just want to see the whole whisky industry collapse. I wish I could join you in that endeavor, but I can't. There are millions of people employed by these companies and peripheral industries. When the whisky boat sinks, it ain't the corporate officers who drilled the hole that suffer. It's the blue-collar workers who don't have a lifeboat.

In honor of this latest cheerful news, I will review the following whiskies this week:
Wednesday - Booker's bourbon, batch C05-A-12
Thursday - Booker's bourbon, batch 2015-06 Noe's Secret
Friday - Baker's 7 year old bourbon

*adjective or verb?

The Dusty Vat, my only great blend

Blending scotch whisky is an art form. Blending scotch whisky is an art form at which I have failed. Blending scotch whisky is an art form at which I have failed, repeatedly. Blending scotch whisky is an art form at which I have failed, repeatedly, damn it.

But then, this past August, I was in possession of several partial ounces of unexciting single malts. These were reviewed samples that I just could not finish. Amongst these samples were three dusties. Since I had little desire to drink them on their own, I thought what the hell, I might as well blend them. Plenty of lessons had been learned from my previous failures with scotch blends and I hoped to apply them to this mysterious alchemy.

The end result was exactly 6 fluid ounces of a blended malt, with ingredients from Speyside, Highlands, Lowlands, Islay and Campbeltown. I named it The Dusty Vat.

Ingredients

18mL Glenallachie 11yo 1985 Signatory cask 4063 (43%abv)
19mL Bladnoch 16yo 1980 Signatory cask 89/591/20 (43%abv)
19mL Port Ellen 14yo 1983 Signatory cask 266 (43%abv)
20mL Glenturret 10yo official bottling (40%abv)
39mL Tomintoul 16yo official bottling (40%abv)
5 mL Laphroaig 10yo official bottling (2016 UK release, 40%abv)
25mL Kilkerran 12yo official bottling (2016 UK release, 46%abv)
25mL Macallan Cask Strength (60.1%abv)
7mL filtered water, applied to Macallan CS before adding to the vatting

So, yes I sorta buried the lede. There's Port Ellen in the mix. But it wasn't particularly good whisky, so I hope nobody gets the vapors over me putting it in a blend.

As mentioned in the ingredients, I proofed down the Macallan CS (for 48 hours) before blending it in, to make sure it didn't overwhelm the other ingredients.

Speaking of overwhelming a blend, Laphroaig. If you're going to do your own blending, please please please be gentle with the Laphroaig because its character easily dominates everything else in the recipe. Personally, I recommend keeping Laphroaig at 5% or less of the vatting. In this case it makes up 2.8% and is fully present, bringing a lovely layer to the mid-palate.

The Highland/Speyside contingent makes up 61.5% of the malt. Ex-bourbon cask whisky makes up at least 80% of the vatting, and most of those casks were likely refill. Even the Macallan CS felt more like American oak than European when drunk on its own. My goal was to focus on the spirit and not oak, much like whisky producers of earlier times ⇐ admittedly a romantic notion.

THE DUSTY VAT blended malt, 43.05%abv

The nose is full of "barley barley", as per my notes. A hint of woody peat smoke. Peated Good & Plenty candy. Fried plantains, grilled pear and oxidizing/browning apples. Hints of vanilla bean and oloroso sherry cask. There's also an actual dusty note lingering about. 

On the palate there's LOVELY peat, WTF?! Then lemons, caramel candies, toasted marshmallows, graham crackers and a nice sharp bite. It's malty, has a bit of musty warehouse to it and a bright plummy foreground.

Wood smoke and earth lead the finish. Some peppery heat, barley and scorched marshmallows. An almost total lack of sweetness.

Wow. It's now gone and I am sad. I'm just going to lie to myself (and you) and say this is what '50s Teacher's must have tasted like. Though the majority of the blend's ingredients are mediocre-to-OK Speyside, the dusty and old school style whisky transforms the thing. That touch of Laphroaig also goes a really long way (as mentioned above). I'm staring at the empty bottle now. I don't know if I can ever top this vatting, but in my heart I'll always have The Dusty Vat.

Availability - Gone. :-(
Pricing - Buying the individual ingredients would cost hundreds of dollars or pounds or euros nowadays
Rating - 88

Bourbon and Rye Day Friday: Two scenes from High West's A Midwinter Night's Dram

Corporations and independent distilleries

Our favorite indie distilleries are getting bought up, one by one. And I don't expect it to end any time soon. In some cases, the distillery had already proven to make a high quality product (see: Westland), thus a future was clear and the purchase had promise. In other cases, the distillery had created overpriced low quality product (see: Hudson Whiskey), and, well, I don't know why William Grant bought them.

In yet other cases, the wisdom behind the purchase is questionable because the distillery had not yet proven to distill a product of quality but instead gained notoriety from good blending of great sourced whiskies. For instance, High West. This is not meant as a poke at the Perkinses. There hasn't been enough time for their own whiskey to come to the market. But that's not their problem now, and they made out with a nine figure sale.

My question to Constellation Brands is...why buy them now? High West's great success was from blending together purchased barrels to create Rendezvous Rye, Bourye, and their brethren. How do you scale that up? Is there some sort of scheme to push ahead in line to grab more MGP distillate? How do you plan on making teenage Barton rye appear upon demand? Or are you banking on as-of-yet unproven products?

I've been thinking about this a lot recently, because it'll probably be only a few months before Smooth Ambler is scooped up too [UPDATE: Holy crap.] . And then another half dozen companies that did well thanks to MGP distillate. Willett, perhaps?

Awkward segue

Anyway, this has (hopefully) little to do with today's whiskey review. Rendezvous Rye is a favorite in my house, and I've enjoyed seeing High West tinker with their formula by doing extra maturations for private barrels. A Midwinter Night's Dram takes this to a more committed direction as the producers create a widely(-ish) distributed Rendezvous varietal by sticking it in port barrels and French oak barrels for an unspecified amount of time. Is it a short finish or an extended secondary maturation? I don't know.

So there's my intro, or my two intros. And sure enough I have tried two editions (or "scenes") of A Midwinter Night's Dram. Thank you to WhiskyWithRyan and Florin (a prince) for these opportunities.

The Stats

Product: A Midwinter's Night's Dram
Distillery: Barton/Tom Moore and MGP distilleries

Producer: High West
Ownership: Constellation Brands
Type: Blend of Straight Rye Whiskies
Region: Utah (High West), Indiana (MGP), Barton (Kentucky)

Age / Mashbill: 16 years, 80% rye 10% corn 10% malted barley (Barton) + 6 years, 95% rye 5% malted barley (MGP) -- more of the latter than the former in the mix

Primary Maturation: charred white oak barrels
Secondary Maturation: "port and french oak barrels"

Alcohol by Volume: 49.3%

ACT 2.6, SCENE 1120

I recently met with a pair of local whiskey geeks to do some public drinking. One of these gentlemen, Ryan, brought his bottle of AMND. Because I took my notes in outside my usual hermetically sealed tasting location, and spent much of the time in conversation, I'm going to give this a grade range rather than a specific score.

You can see the rosy brown color in the accompanying photo. The nose has a vanilla + smoked toffee shell with a lemon + cocoa interior.  The port is subtle in the palate, at first. A few scattered red berries. Peppery rye, dark chocolate and mint. Then the port influence expands with time as a nice tart berry fruitiness moves to the fore. The finish brings the nose and palate together. Vanilla, mint, tart raspberries, lemon candy and black licorice.

I wasn't blown away by the whiskey's nose, but the finish was so layered and lovely that I'll happily ignore the weak link. I'd expected this to be a port-soaked soaked thing, but instead the elements held a good balance most of the time. Good stuff.

RATING RANGE: 86-89 (B/B+), for Act 2.6, Scene 1120 only

ACT 2.9, SCENE 1322

This second scene/batch's nice sized sample comes to Diving for Pearls courtesy of Florin. I've been looking forward to trying it for, what, two years? Now's a good time.

Since I am tasting this in my hermit zone, it will get scientifically precise score, rounding up to the nearest ten-thousandth.

The nose is the opposite of Corti Brothers Exquisite Whiskey's schnozzola. One can actually smell the whisky part. But there are plenty of blackberries and blackberry jam. Also black pepper, wood smoke and orange peel. Burnt grain and soil. A little bit of milk chocolate in there, and a small flower blossom note. Okay, more chocolate's coming; it's sort of hot fudgy.

The palate also has plenty of well-aged, but still peppery, rye. There are some tart berries, sour limes and a zippy bitterness. I'd expected chocolate, but found toffee instead. Also some fizzy raspberry schweppes. Fresh ginger and cayenne pepper. Ah, bitter cocoa. Hints of clove, cinnamon and nutmeg. Grape juice tries to poke out but the spicy rye hammers it down.

The zippy bitterness runs into the finish, as does the pepper, nutmeg and clove. It has weird glue and notebook paper notes at first, but those vanish with later sips. There's some grapey sweetness, toasted marshmallows, and wood smoke, but a youthful rye rumble continues underneath.

Perhaps the port is slightly louder in this scene, but a desserty Rendezvous Rye is an acceptable Rendezvous Rye to me. I liked this batch better than my high strength Barrel Select bottle I reviewed in October, and it stands up pretty well to the regular Rendezvous. Which is all good news. I hope High West keeps produces subsequent scenes.

A Midwinter Night's Dram distinguishes itself as a different product than the RR, is more expensive to produce and is legitimately scarcer. The question is, how much of a premium would one be willing to pay for it? If I find it for $80 or less, then I'll go for it. But I can't say its quality calls for most of the prices I'm seeing online. It's very good American whiskey, but I'm not paying three figures for very good American whiskey.

Availability - A few dozen specialty retailers in the US
Pricing - $70-$140, a few idiots are charging $200+
Rating - 87 (for Act 2.9, Scene 1322 only)

Single Malt Report: Benromach 25 year old (2004)

On Monday, I reviewed Benromach 10 year old 100 proof.
On Tuesday, I reviewed Benromach 1999 Origins batch 2.
Today, I'm reviewing the discontinued Benromach 25 year old release.

HISTORY

Benromach distillery has been mothballed and passed around quite a bit.

• It was built in 1898 just before the Pattison's disaster took its toll on the industry, but its owners (who also owned the now-forgotten Glen Nevis distillery in Campbeltown) kept the place open.
• Thirteen years later, it was sold to Harvey McNair.
• Three years later, it was mothballed.
• Five years later, it was reopened.
• Then it was sold to John Joseph Calder...
• ...who immediately flipped it to a group that called itself Benromach Distillery Limited
• Twelve years later it was mothballed.
• Six years later it was reopened.
• The following year Joseph Hobbs bought the distillery...
• ...then immediately flipped it to National Distillers (yep, the US folks)
• Fifteen years later ND sold it to proto-Diageo (DCL/UD).
• Thirty years later, 1983 (if you're keeping track), it was mothballed again.
• Ten years later, Gordon & MacPhail bought it.
• Five years later, it was reopened.

It's been eighteen years since then, and Benromach has not been closed or resold. Thank goodness. The 25 year old single malt I'm reviewing today was bottled by the Gordon & MacPhail ownership, but was distilled and casked by United Distillers. Thank you to Florin (a prince) for this generous sample.

REVIEW

Distillery: Benromach
Ownership: Gordon & MacPhail
Ownership at time of distillation: United Distillers
Region: Speyside (Findhorn)

Age: minimum 25 years

Maturation: refill American oak hogsheads
Bottling year: 2004

Alcohol by Volume: 43%
Chillfiltered? ???
Caramel Colored? Not much, if any

Its color is a mild yellow gold, which has me thinking there's a minimum of e150a in here. Lovely musty warehouse notes arrive first in the nose. Then caramel, farmy peat and a little bit of roasted malt. Some smaller notes of peaches, yogurt, popcorn and buttery (American) biscuits. It's all quite delicate. The palate is malty, spicy and mildly sweet. Oranges, cinnamon, powdered ginger, cayenne pepper and vanilla extract. It really improves with time. The citrus gets bolder and tarter. There's a nice transition: bitter bite → toffee kiss. The finish is a bit short. There's the musty warehouse and a whiff of smoke. Lemon candy, malt and gingery spice.

A much gentler mammal than this week's other two Benromachs, the 25 year old's rough edges have been mostly trimmed off with time and down proofing. Its peating is very subtle, but there is more oak present than I had expected. It's not particularly complex, but it hits most of its notes well. The finish is the one disappointing part, and I wonder if that's mostly due to it being watered down. Long-aged whiskies don't swim well, and had this batch originally had a mid 50s abv, then a not inconsiderable amount of water would have been applied before bottling. Even though that's just speculation, it's time for you to sing the song with me...Had they bottled this whisky at 46%abv...

Availability - Auctions/secondary market
Pricing - ???
Rating - 84