Whiskey Thread

It's all a game. Our Total Wine had probably 6 cases of BT and that was an hour after I saw a post on social media. When I was checking out the clerk said "We've been selling a lot of this today. WHY is this even 'allocated'? 80 percent of the time, our manager orders 6 cases once a month and 6 cases show up.....Thanks for your business and happy new years".

I'm really liking Smoke Wagon bourbons. I've yet to find one in a store, but some people here in north Texas have found a few bottles. I can mail order it and it comes out of....Maryland? Yet it is aged and based in Las Vegas.......They have a flat $15.99 shipping so my last order was 6 bottles as I gifted out 4 of them. Makes it cheaper to pay the shipping than running around looking for it.

Does Thru-Hiking Have a Drinking Problem?

outsideonline.com/outdoor-adve…yz6IFtGDqZltc16OkqCiohtnw

It depends on the person.

I had a *A* beer in a lot of trail towns. Thinking back, I never had two. Even at The Doyle. Somewhere in NE I had a real steak at a real restaurant and had *A *mixed drink. That was it.

After my hike I watched a good part of an AL playoff game between Boston and a team I don't remember. (Was taking the train home the next morning) This was at a Boston bar. I had 2 beers that night with dinner, becasue, lets be honest, purchasing alcohol while watching a sporting event at a bar is like paying rent for the chair and tv.

Alcohol is too heavy. If anything the thru-hiking has a Weed problem.

Currently enjoying a Maker's Mark with a little ginger ale. First I've had in a long time. Might have to have a second.

Did a few more tours on the Bourbon Trail yesterday (including Maker's Mark). The bartender at the first tour lives in Lebanon KY where my third tour was located. She recommended one specific liquor store in town for bourbon hunting so i made an effort to stop in before heading home. Glad I did!

They had Eagle Rare in the glass display case and the $80 price tag was the same as the bottle of Yellowstone Bourbon I just purchased at the last tour. You know what they say... "A bottle in the hand is worth two on the wish list." Or something like that.

As I was leaving, I saw a true unicorn bottle in the back of the display - a Weller 'Craft Your Perfect Bourbon'. Just for fun, I asked for the price. $650 They obviously wanted to keep it more than I wanted to buy it.

Came home with a nice haul. I'm liking this wet January challenge!

I visited Garrison Brothers Distillery in Hye Texas for a tasting this past weekend. It was an interesting comparison to Kentucky bourbon since the summer heat causes much more water evaporation from the oak barrels. Their Cowboy bourbon goes into the barrel around 115 proof but is bottled around 135 proof. Surprisingly smooth. I picked up a bottle of their single barrel for eventual delivery back home during my daughter's next visit.



We also visited Still Austin in Austin for a tour and tasting before heading to the airport. I was warned that they wouldn't be able to sell bottles on Sunday so I did some pre-visit shopping for their cask strength bourbon. The Peerless single barrel just happened to follow me home.



Bottom line: Texas bourbon is good stuff.

I had a work road trip to Detroit this week and did a bit of bourbon hunting. First stop was Total Wine near Chesterfield where I scored a bottle of the Garrison Brothers Balmorhea double-oaked that I sampled a few weeks ago at their distillery. It's every bit as good as I remembered.

My co-pilot did a fantastic job of checking the Ohio Liquor website to look for retailers offering allocated bourbons. We hit four places on the drive back to Cincy and I scored three bottles of Weller Antique 107. Funny... I've struck out every time I've tried to buy it for the past two years and found three bottles within three hours.

Heading to Bardstown Bourbon Company tomorrow for a tour and tasting. They finally have bourbon distilled and aged on-site - their Origin Series. Good stuff. You can see the difference in color from the Texas heat double barrel and the Kentucky bottled-in-bond.

Mrs. Tortoise and I headed down to Lexington KY today for the Maker's Mark Mile horse race. And since Buffalo Trace was only 20 miles west, we decided to make a bourbon-shopping stop beforehand.

In a word, the place was nuts! We had to wait to get into the parking lot, wait in line for an hour to get wristbands for the gift shop, and then wait in line for another 30 minutes to check out. But I was able to get my hands on two bottles of Precious (Eagle Rare).

It's been a while since I came across an interesting new offering. I had read that Jefferson's was coming out with Tropics, but I missed the initial offering at my favorite Kentucky retailer. Then I found bottles at a Total Wine store in Indianapolis.



Here's the background. Jefferson's Ocean is blended from barrels that are aged at sea in a specially-designed shipping container. The constant sloshing of the bourbon in the barrels increases the interaction between oak and bourbon, resulting in an exceptionally smooth offering. Jefferson's takes some of those same barrels and stores them in a Singapore warehouse for 18 months before they are shipped back to the USA for bottling. The high heat and humidity leads to even more interaction between the barrels and bourbon. You can see the deeper color above.

This is my third bottle of Ocean and I consider it to be the smoothest bourbon in my collection. It clocks in at 90 proof. The Tropics is blended to 104 proof so I was expecting a little more burn. Nope. It was as smooth as Ocean with unique and pleasant flavors that lingered in my mouth. Very happy that I was able to find it relatively close to home.

I am out of Rye and low on bourbon so I made a run to the liquor store. After looking around a bit, the manager asked what I was looking for. I said I wanted rye, and liked Sazerac, but I hadn't seen it in a store in years and wondered what might be similar in that price range. He said he had just gotten his seasonal allotment of three bottles and keeps it in the back for people who bother to ask.

Always worth asking to see what is behind the counter.

Whenever I have bourbon-drinking guests over, I'll offer a pour of Blanton's with the caveat that it's a very good $66 (retail) bourbon. Then I offer something that is truly special so they have a frame of reference.

So what's "really special"?

My son-in-law, who is a bourbon fanatic recommends Weller. I've never seen it in the liquor stores so I'm guessing they hide it from us "ordinary people".

Pours I like better than Blanton's (I call it Blathers to a buddy who thinks it's the best and I'm a moron for thinking otherwise). Eagle Rare. EH Taylor Small Batch. The regular Buffalo Trace. Smoke Wagon Uncut Unfiltered (I mail order it). Benchmark, Bonded (easy to find around Texas and taste like ER and other Higher End BT products). I found that all the Benchmarks seem to be good tasting to me and are easy to find, no games at the stores to purchase.
I'm sure there are others. Taste is subjective. And these are one's I've tried and like better. Caveat that I don't do comparison type pours (blind pour 4 drinks and take notes on what you like).

Any of the Bardstown Bourbon Company Discovery Series offerings are special IMHO. Several toasted barrel bourbons (Penelope, Bluegrass Distillers) are also special. I have a few small-production bourbons that surprise me with every pour. Even Woodford Reserve Double Oaked makes me smile and that's in the $50-$55 range.

I have learned that to fully appreciate some of the higher end bourbons, I need to warm-up with a more generic offering. Take a few sips of 1792 or Elijah Craig then surprise the taste buds with something more complex.

I'm a Weller fan. I have many bottles of the Special Reserve in my inventory, three bottles of the Antique, and a bottle of the Single Barrel that I was able to purchase through a lottery. I've tasted the Full Proof and 12-Year offerings but am not willing to pay secondary prices (>$150) for either. Even the Special Reserve is allocated, although I can find it a few times per month without too much effort. But I would put the Weller family in the same group as Blanton's. They're good, but not worth fawning over or paying secondary prices. Good thing that Buffalo Trace has finished a massive capacity expansion project. Now we just have to wait 6 - 10 years for all those new barrels to mature into additional saleable product.

I added a bottle of Booker's and a bottle of Stagg to my collection in the past 6 months. Both are high-proof offerings that almost require a few drops of water or a large ice cube to make them enjoyable. But they're both special as well. I did pay in excess of retail for both of those but it was the first time I had seen either on a shelf.

I started drinking BT few years ago before it got hip and trendy. There was a whole pile of it by the check out line. It was in my price range so I tried it. Right after that it became hard to find. I did find a bottle recently, along with a bottle of Sazarac.