Review: Booker's 25th Anniversary Bourbon - A Sentimental Beast

February 24, 2014

Review: Booker's 25th Anniversary Bourbon - A Sentimental Beast

Oh Booker's...  You were there when bourbon was something we ordered with Coke or ginger ale. You stood proudly on the shelf and declared "I'm not a mixer!"  We remember being confused at first. Why does that bourbon cost as much as the top shelf liquors, we wondered?  And then we realized. Bourbon is an art just like scotch.  It should be treated with respect.  And that was the beginning of our real appreciation of American whiskey.  

In 1989  Jim Beam's grandson Booker Noe, Master Distiller at the Beam distillery, came up with the perfect Christmas gift for his close friends and business associates: bottles of a single barrel, cask strength bourbon hand-chosen from the best racks in the warehouse. The immense popularity of these presents led him to launch a whole line of premium small batch bourbons at Beam. By the early 90's, these releases became widely available in bars: Booker's, Knob Creek, Basil Hayden's, and Baker's. Knob Creek was probably the most prevalent, but Booker's came along next and pretty soon could be found in most decent watering holes. Given Booker's trail blazing status in the world of whiskey, we were super-psyched to find out that, 25 years after those first private bottles were given out, Beam would be putting out a special 25th Anniversary Booker's Bourbon.  

To add to the awesome mystique and anticipation, there are some further details about this special release. While the standard release Booker's is aged six or seven years, this batch is ten years and three months old. Sadly, Booker Noe passed away in 2004, and his son Fred Noe wanted to make a special product for the anniversary consisting of some of the last batches of whiskey overseen by his old man. These are those barrels, the last product of Booker himself, still hand-picked and aged in the choicest spots and treated with the reverence they deserve. There were rumored to be only about a thousand cases of this one-time release, the first batch of the year, labelled 2014-01. True to the Booker's legacy, it's coming in at a whopping 65.4%, 130.8 proof, and straight from the barrel without any charcoal or chill-filtration. A nice old Booker's, rare and raw, with a great story behind it.  What could be better?

Tasting Notes

Nose:  Firstly, this is a big bad boy.  It needs a couple of weeks to open in the bottle, a good thirty minutes to air out in the glass, and benefits tremendously from a healthy dollop of water.  Once you get there, the nose is a lot of red delicious apples (candy apples?) and toffee with some farm elements like wet grass and hay, a lot of oak, and some fire poppers like mesquite bbq sauce and hot chiles.  It's not a deep sweet molasses type nose like Pappy, definitely not a wheater, it's a fierce and bold grainy punch packing a ton of flavor and spiciness.

Palate:  It's big and it's hot. We took this one down to about one third water and it starts to open up a bit. The palate is high in treble - again, not a deep rich one, but a high-pitched chorus of firecrackers and grains.

Finish:  A long finish, somewhat throaty, and staying in the smoky, bbq and cayenne area.

On-The-Rocks:  Well, since Booker's on the rocks was a go-to order for some years when we discovered bourbon, we tried it with the 25th. This bourbon really does take ice well, maintaining its flavor and heat but cooling and diluting nicely.



Review

Ok sentimentality aside, we have to be honest and say that this doesn't really taste like a hundred dollar bourbon. At $50, with it's pioneering spirit, the standard Booker's is a good on-the-rocks bourbon. And the 25th takes ice well. But you really shouldn't have to drink ultra premium whiskey on the rocks. We still love Booker's for defining a new role for bourbon and American whiskey in general. But we also have to give a fair review, and there are just a lot of really good whiskies on the market right now at this price point. Putting this next to Four Roses 125th Anniversary or the Buffalo Trace Antique bottles, it really does leave a lot lacking in the sweetness and smoothness category. We gave this bottle a couple of weeks to open up in the bottle, but we're going to give it another month and then come back for a second taste. For now we're very glad to have been able to score a bottle and celebrate a great tradition and a true legend in bourbon-making. 

Here's to Booker!

  

Cheers/SB

Update 3/14: Ok, back for a second taste.  This bad boy has been open in the bottle 3/4 full now for about 5 weeks.  There's an immediate difference on the nose: a LOT of the heat is gone, and a lot of new flavors have come out: orange marmalade, saddle leather, little hints of coconut, and something like palm leaves or aloe.  On the palate, wow!, we're drinking this neat and really enjoying it.  There's still a big warmth, but it's just that - most of the fire is gone and the big throaty hurt is almost completely missing.  The finish is now pretty enjoyable as well.  This one really turned around over the course of a few weeks.  We'll come back again in a couple of weeks and have a feeling it might be even better.  The first taste was a C-, this is now a B+.

Review: Elijah Craig 21-Year Single Barrel Bourbon - An Old, and Expensive Beast

February 20, 2014

Review: Elijah Craig 21-Year Single Barrel Bourbon - An Old, and Expensive Beast

As Heaven Hill's flagship standard offering, Elijah Craig is a bourbon drinker's staple.  The standard 12-year is a very solid juice and has a lot going for it.  Firstly it may be the only remaining 12-year bourbon that you can find on the shelf, let alone at $25.  Moving up a step, Elijah Craig Barrel Proof was perhaps the most stunning new release of 2013.  No, it didn't win our fantasy bourbon tourney, but just to make that list, and beat out George T. Stagg in the first round is extraordinary.  Doubly so considering it hit the shelves at $40-50.  According to marketing hype, the Baptist preacher Elijah Craig invented the charred oak barrel.  Whether or not you believe that story, take one look the wildly dark color of ECBP and take a sip of the deeply caramelized woody goodness and you get the picture.  Sadly you'd be hard pressed to find ECBP on the shelves any more.  It pretty much jumped into the shopping baskets of your faithful hubby and wifey and all us other bourbon hunter/picker obsessive types.

Elijah Craig 21 Year Single Barrel

Then there's the ultra-premium top shelf Elijah Craig Single Barrel.  They've been releasing older and older lines of single barrels year after year, starting at 18-years, then 20, and now 21 year.  When the 18 came out, it was pretty spectacular.  It was priced around $45-$60, was by far the most available highly aged bourbon on the market, and rocked a lot of people's worlds.  A lot of sad faces could be found at local liquor stores a couple of years ago when EC18 was discontinued.

Well, fans of late great EC18 were pretty pumped some months later to find Elijah Craig 20-Year on the shelves.  But then many of us did a double take (bourbon spit take??) to see a price tag of $129.99 or higher.  Sure, it's not uncommon for a couple extra years of age to come at a serious markup - see Pappy 15-Year at $80 vs the 20-Year at $150.  But still, to go from the very good and highly affordable 18-year straight to this as the only option was a bit of a pickle.  Fast forward another year and the 21-Year is hitting shelves at anywhere from $149.99 to $189.99!

So, not that price should be the #1 factor in choosing a whiskey, but we're hitting up this bottle with pretty high expectations.  ECBP at $40 sets the bar really high, and the all-to-recent availability of EC18 at under $80 makes us hope that the new release is a really special one of a kind bottle.

Tasting Notes

Nose:  Getting a lot of corn on the cob here.  Some nice farmy, buttery, freshness.  A nice mellow oak comes next.  Then some little pops of heat - maybe yellow mustard or wasabi.

Palate:  The corn moves into grain and spice.  Definitely tasting a high rye content here with a spicy somewhat thin to medium body with a big grainy kick.

Finish:  Nice finish.  The grain and sweetness come together.  There's a moderate spirit warmth with a little pinch of somewhat pleasant alcohol burn.  (note here: this is one of those bottles that opens up really hot and then mellows out considerably over a couple of weeks - if you open it and drink most of the bottle in the same night you will be disappointed - buy it, cork it, and let it sit for some time before you drink it!).


Review

Well, it's hard to find anything wrong with this whiskey, but at the same time it's not blowing our minds.  And for the money, we sort of expect to have our minds blown.  Two mild criticisms here: 1) a 21 year old bourbon that's down-proofed to forty-five percent should be smooth as crap or 2) if it's not the smoothest thing we've ever tasted, it should have huge flavor profile.  This isn't really falling into either category.

Would we buy this again?  Short answer, yes.  Assuming it's the only 21 year bourbon you're going to be able to find (which is likely) it's worthy of picking up for a special occasion.  There are a lot of younger whiskeys that we prefer, but are more difficult to find - like Four Roses 125th Anniversary, any of the Pappy or Buffalo Trace Antique bottles, Angel's Envy Cask Strength, etc.  If you can find it, we'd recommend going for the Parker's Heritage Collection Promise of Hope, which at $90 - and interestingly only around 10-years old - we find has a fuller and more interesting flavor.

Anyway you're not hurting too much sitting back with a bottle of EC21.  You have to give Heaven Hill points for putting out a solid supply of top-end bourbon across the country.  So, given the current bourbon drought, on the right special occasion, go for it.  But with a little hunting and picking you can definitely find more interesting choices out there.

/SB

Review: Smooth Ambler Old Scout Rye - A Sweet Beast & A Sweet Deal

February 10, 2014

Review: Smooth Ambler Old Scout Rye - A Sweet Beast & A Sweet Deal

Smooth Ambler

We like Smooth Ambler.  We like them because they're upfront about where they are in the business, their goals, and their products.  And that's unusual.  Like many craft distillers, they are simultaneously selling two different lines of products:  Their Artisan Merchant Bottling line - an 'NDP' (non-distillery producer) range of bourbon and rye, and their Craft Distilling line - home grown grain-to-bottle spirits including vodka, gin, and bourbon.  The whiskey in their craft line is aptly named Yearling, a young new product that has emerged from their own production which began in 2010.  Their NDP products are labelled "Old Scout" and "Very Old Scout" and include 7 and 10 year (recently discontinued 14 and 19 year) bourbon, and a 7 year rye.  It's all too common to see craft distilleries blurring the lines between their home grown products and the whiskey that they source in order to launch the brand and generate revenue while they ramp up production.  It's refreshing to see a more consumer-oriented company treat us with respect and let us know exactly what we're drinking.

Today we're reviewing the Old Scout 7 Year Rye.

Old Scout Rye

Old Scout is currently available at AstorWines for $39.99.  It's bottled at 49.5%, 99 proof.  There isn't a ton of seven year rye on the market.  We're huge fans of Willett, who produce a 4-Year rye at the same price (granted it's a cask strength single barrel), and not such huge fans (to put it mildly) of Redemption's 6-Year Barrel Proof Rye that comes in at $25 more.  Granted that all three of these ryes are produced in Indiana at LDI, so who knows why there is such a vast difference in taste, but there is.  There's WhistlePig & Masterson, coming to market with a 10, 11, and 12-year Canadian ryes.  We haven't been as impressed with any of these Canadian ryes to date.  Apart from that, there is a shortage of properly age-stated ryes on the market right now - let alone at this price point.


Tasting Notes

Nose:  A lot of sweets in the nose, like those old Root Beer Barrel candies, some butterscotch, those gummy orange sections grandma used to keep on the coffee table when guests were coming over.  Not a lot of barrel wood, but maybe some fresh woodsy/forest stuff going on like pine or birch leaves.  Also something like cherries and Silly Putty.  Pleasant and very manageable.

Palate:  Staying with the sweets, but some definite spices coming out.  Pepper flakes and lemon zest, some mint and a hint of licorice or fennel seed.

Finish:  Very short and smooth (lives up to it's name).  Well balanced, no alcohol burn.  Extremely drinkable.


Review

They've done something nice here, preserving a distinct rye character while keeping a very mellow drinkable result.  That would be pretty easy if they proofed it way down to the low forties, but at near a hundred proof, that's no small job.  It's a very clean and nice drink that's extremely approachable with a nice well-rounded flavor that doesn't shy away but doesn't overwhelm.  This may not be the favorite pour for serious rye aficionados looking for a ballsy 'in your face' flavor blaster (see the Willett cask strength for that).  But it's a perfect drink for those nights when you want something on the lighter side, and would be an excellent introduction to rye for someone coming off of bourbon, malt, or blends. It's a steal at under $40, and earns a well deserved SmokyBeast "B+" and a spot on our everyday drinking shelf.  Enjoy this one, but be careful.  It's pretty easy to amble your way through a bottle before you even realize it!

Cheers/SB