Willett C22D - The Legend of the Wheated Willett

April 5, 2016

Willett C22D - The Legend of the Wheated Willett

You're A Wizard, Harry

Things that have proved magical in the past:

1. Really old bourbon 
2. Wheated bourbon 
3. Willett Family Estate bourbon
4. "Angel barrels" (barrels with very low yields)

Planetary Alignment

The last time all eight planets and the sun were in a straight line was in 561 BC.  The next time it's going to happen will be in the year 2,854. Unless we're all downloaded into the matrix by then eating popcorn in cyberspace, I guess I'll have to plan on missing it.

Luckily all our magical bourbon planets did happen to align, and in my own lifetime to boot. Yay! In life you have to take the wins where you can get them. This one comes in the form of a twenty-two year wheated bourbon barrel from Willett Family Estate that only produced ninety-six bottles. 

Bing, bang, boom, whoa. Planetary alignment!

Willett Family Estate Single Barrel Bourbon C22D
22 Years, 137.4 Proof  (Bottle 70/96)

The whole Willett sourcing scheme is still shrouded in mystery, but the general consensus is that these "C-Barrels" are all wheated bourbon. Every one that I've tried definitely tastes like a wheater, but no one knows 100% for sure. If they tell you they do know for sure and their name isn't Drew Kulsveen then they're lying.

These super old wheaters are only available at the Willett gift shop in Bardstown as well as a very very small distribution in retail stores like NYC's Astor Wines. Around the beginning of last year they were priced in the $250-$325 range.  Now the retail prices have climbed up to over $500. Granted that's pretty nuts for a bottle of whiskey (after taxes you're paying $45 a glass!), but in the context of other 20+ year wheated bourbons (Pappy Van Winkle, William Larue Weller) it's not that crazy. But regardless of your feelings on paying $500 for a bottle of liquor, your chances of doing so are pretty low and if you try to pick one up at auction or on the secondary market, expect to pay between $750 and $1k.  (and you said "yikes" before!!)

You can see just how dark and chocolaty looking this bourbon is in the glass. That seems to be the trend both with older bourbons and with angel barrels. There's so much influence from the charred oak that the color is almost like opaque root beer. This tends to coincide with massive flavor, both in sweetness from the sugars that are released by charring oak, and in richness from the "cooking down" of the spirit in the cask. With this cask only yielding ninety-six bottles, you have to figure that the original two hundred and forty bottles that fit in the fifty gallon cask have been reduced by about sixty percent!

Tasting Notes

Nose: Man oh man.  Tying to put this nose into words is a failed attempt at synesthesia. It's very sweet, salty, and punchy. Uber vanilla, tobacco, leather, bbq sauce, wood for hours, huge chocolate and molasses, baking bread, nutmeg, pine needles, mint, fresh pasta. It's starting to sound silly, I know.  I could go on and on.  It's so complex there's just a million things going on here. And it's so STRONG!  Seriously just a nasal conniption. Super amazingly great.

Palate: I'm one of those anti-water people for almost all my favorite whiskies.  For this one, I do recommend a tiny little bit (three eyedropper drops per ounce). Unless you've already been drinking all night and it don't matter! But seriously it's almost one hundred and forty proof, so if this is my first drink of the night I do prefer it with a tiny little bit of agua. The flavor opens up really nicely on the palate with water too. It's so tight and punchy. Wood definitely dominates and I love it, and you get all kinds of caramel, honey, spices, char, cocoa, vanilla, and hot chili peppers.

Finish: Red licorice, brown butter coating your throat, pops of cayenne, chocolate covered pretzels. It's a huge fiery finish, and this is a long finish for a bourbon.

Review

This is definitely no whiskey for beginners, but if you've been drinking cask strength stuff a while it's an absolute dream. You can pour half an ounce and sip on it for half an hour since every little drop packs so much flavor. Should you run out and spend a grand on it? That's your call, but if you see one of these Willett "C"-barrels in a bar you should definitely think about spending a little extra to try it. This one's a real winner and we'll enjoy it to the last drop. After all, who knows if the planets will ever align this perfectly again?

Cheers/SB

Willett 11-Year Gift Shop

March 14, 2016

Willett 11-Year Gift Shop

Going on the assumption that too much Willett can never be enough, here's a quick review of another single barrel bourbon we had sitting around SBHQ.

Yes, sadly you may have noticed this is the last dram of this great bottle.  Cask strength 122.7 proof eleven year bourbons tend to find their way out of the bottle pretty quickly at our place and this one went in the blink of any eye.

Nose: A lot of citrus and roast nuts on this one. Candied orange slices, the bags of honeyed pecan nuts that get sold on the streets in the winter months. A whole bunch of saddle leather.  Ending in a nice wrapper of oak.

Palate: Mmm really sweet on the palate. Tons of honey / molasses. Then a big wave of heat, both big spirit boldness and also hot spicy chile peppers and pink peppercorns.

Finish: Nice long finish for a bourbon. Big chest warmth, very nice balance of sweet and wood. It's hot, but very well balanced at over 120 proof.

Review

So where are we?  Big citrus / leather bomb in the nose, very sweet and spicy palate, and ending up in  warmth, wood, and char. This one pretty much has it all!  A very, very, dangerously drinkable full-flavored bourbon that really hits the spot in the cold weather months.

Cheers/SB

Vegas Baby!

February 4, 2016

Vegas Baby!

Some fun facts: The Venetian hotel contains over 1.8 million square feet of stone and marble.  Classy.  The sheer scale of the place is astounding.  You hike what seems like miles of ersatz piazzas and canal-lined malls complete with accordion players and gondoliers. Each restaurant you enter is the largest indoor space you've ever seen. And of course somehow every destination requires navigation through the hotel's two casinos.

"Should I play a round of blackjack on my way to the bathroom?" you find yourself asking.  Wait what?? Would you ever consider throwing away a hundred bucks on your way to take a leak in New York?  Hell no. There's something about this place that shreds all logic and rational thinking in your brain and replaces it with a Britney Spears / Cirque Du Soleil mashup.

I Need a Drink

There is only one thing you can do in Vegas that is inherently logical: drink. And luckily they seem to have no shortage of top quality whiskey bars. We started Monday night at Emeril Lagasse's Delmonico Steakhouse. Then Tuesday moved on to Wolfgang Puck's Cut. Both claim to have the best whiskey list in Sin City. Neither disappointed.

First up this wax-top Willett 7-year, barrel 4141.  Super rich and wonderful, this one was all molasses and brown butter, baking spices, and pipe tobacco.  I'm guessing it had been open in the bottle for a while since it was completely opened up and tasting amazing for such a young expression.

Delmonico's does half-pours, so we paired one ounce of the 7-year Willett with an ounce of her older sister the blue wax top 10-year barrel 373.  This one was great too, drier than the 7 and crispier. A treat, but not quite as mind-blowing as the 7.

Moving on to Cut, we tried another 1 ounce pair tasting. This time a Willet 10-Year barrel #799, alongside a gold-wax 21 year.

The 10-year was very big.  Sweet, tons of rye goodness, vanilla and spice.

Have to be honest here, I think I still preferred the 7-year to the 21.  Is that possible?  I guess it's true that age is just a state of mind. The 7-year, followed by the 21, followed by the 799 10-year and then the 373 10-year is how I'd have to rank these.  I wouldn't kick any of them out of bed though.

Ok time for a nightcap.

My drinking buddy Jason is giddily gripping my arm and pointing at a bottle on the shelf. "They have it again.  How is that even possible???"  Incredulous, we feel obligated to each order an ounce of the Lagavulin 21 year sherry cask. It's every bit as good as we remember. Without a doubt it holds a place in my top three malts of all time.

So long Vegas. Thanks for the memories.  Cheers/SB

Rye Battle Royale Part II

May 18, 2015

Rye Battle Royale Part II

When we left off last week, we had just participated in an epic tasting battle between Willett Bonili 24-Year 94 Proof (aka Willett 24/94) and Michter's 6J-1 10-Year Rye.  The Michter's eeked out a slim, but noticeable and unanimous victory.  It was so incredibly rich, warm, spicy, and full-flavored that we'd put it in the top 3 ryes we've ever tasted.  (Wish we had some LeNell's Red Hook Rye Barrel #1 to compare it to!!).

Just as we were wrapping up this incredibly enjoyable conclusion, our guest beasts - The Zuckman Brothers, started to break out some serious big guns.  We quickly went from two bad-ass rye legends to an entire table.  Here's how things looked:

Willett 24/94 & Michter's 6J-1

Black Maple Hill 23 Year Single Barrel Rye

Vintage 21 Year Rye

Hirsch 25 Year Rye

There were a couple of others too, a Rittenhouse 23 Year, and a Hirsch 22 Year.  There were pigs-in-blankets with Gulden's Spicy Brown mustard.  Really not a bad lineup all-in-all.  Here's what they all looked like together.

Ok so let's get down to some serious business.

First impressions:  After we got over the sheer ludicrousness of the task in front of us, we started to slowly taste through the table.  Right away we all noticed that there was something wrong with the Hirsch 22.  It must have been left out in the sun or had a bad cork or something, because this is a pretty legendary bottle and tasted straight up bad.  So we're assuming this was not a fair test of Hirsch 22 and we won't comment on it further.

We remember Black Maple Hill 23 as being the first super-aged rye that we ever tried.  We bought one in 2008 for $105.  It was so good we went back and bought another one, this time the price was $125.  Then we went back for a third, but the price had risen to $160.  Too rich for our blood, we thought back then and we didn't make the purchase.  Who would have thought that seven years later these bottles sell for $1,600 each!!  We should have bought a case at $160...

Second impressions:  We strongly suspect that the Michter's, Black Maple Hill, Willett, and Vintage 21 are all from the same source and from similar batches.  They're peas in a pod, very similar, all insanely delicious, and probably difficult to tell apart if you weren't tasting them side-by-side.  The Rittenhouse and the Hirsch, on the other hand, were obviously different recipes / sources.  They had completely different taste profiles.

Third impressions:  Within the four that we're now suspecting to be KBD-sourced juice there were some definite variations and subtleties to the taste.  The Michter's was still the unanimous favorite.  We took turns leaving the room and then blind tasting the Michter's against some of the other bottles, and it was still 100% chosen as the best, even just from the nose.  The Rittenhouse was the sweetest, and had less of the classic rye spice to it.  This pushed it higher for some and lower for others.

Ok, so for the results, here is Jared with his picks:

J-Zuck puts the Ritt up at #2!

And Brett:

B-Money Likes-A-Da-Willettz

The SmokyBeast final scoring went like this:

1. Michter's 6J-1  (even blind this one was just so huge and awesome!)
2. Willett 24/94 (This one is still such a truly awesome bottle)
3. Vintage 21  (Extremely close in nose/palate to the Willett, have to put them together)
4. Black Maple Hill 23 (Tasting this bottle after all these years was awesome, it's really amazing but just a tiny bit flat/waxy next to the others)
5. Rittenhouse 23  (Still one of our all-time favorites, we just had to give the others preference because they're so very RYE!  If you told us the Rittenhouse was a superb bourbon we might fall for it.  Not that that's a bad thing...)
6. Hirsch 25 (Very interesting and complex bottle here, just lacking some of the vitality and vigor of the others.  The spice gets a little lost in the wood here and it's just a bit over-oaked.)

We had two other guest judges who decided to remain anonymous due to the extremely high profile of SmokyBeast and their fear of being constantly plagued by paparazzi and written up in gossip columns.  But the results were very similar, the Michter's, Willett, and Vintage 21 were the statistical favorites in that order, with some mixture of BMH and Ritt in the next spots.  

That's all for now.  Where do you go from here??  Any requests for our next review?  Let us know if any of you have tasted these bottles and share your thoughts / tasting notes in the comments.  

Cheers!  /SB

Rye Battle Royale - Willett 24/94 vs Michter's 6J-1

May 11, 2015

Rye Battle Royale - Willett 24/94 vs Michter's 6J-1

When the Zuckman brothers arrived bearing matching bulletproof briefcases handcuffed to their wrists, we knew there would be trouble.  You see the Zuckmans - Brett the elder and young buck Jared, are notorious in certain circles for their very specific set of skills.  These include sniping estate sales, swooping in on auctions, and adhering themselves to the rear grills of Van Winkle delivery trucks to track down "unicorn" whiskey bottles.  If there's a Hirsch wax top slowly sinking in the Hudson river, you can bet that Jared is twenty feet below in a wetsuit honing in on that sucker with side-scan radar and Brett is rolling up from starboard in one of those crab boats from Deadliest Catch.

The Zuckman Brothers (artistic rendering)

"Holy Shit!"

...was how eloquently hubby put it when he turned the bottle around and looked at the label.  He'd just seen a ghost.  Or as close to a ghost as there is in the whiskey business.

Let's take a step back.  If you're a loyal reader, you're familiar with our penchant for (read: obsession with) Michter's 10-Year Rye.  The ryes released under this label from 2007 to 2011 were incredibly special, rumored to have been bottled for Michter's by Julian Van Winkle.  The barrel numbers like "7B-2" and "8K-1" referred to the year of release (2007) and the batch.  We found that the farther back you go, the more amazing the bottle tastes.  The 7B-2 was some of the best rye we'd ever tasted and held it's weight back to back with some of our absolute favorites like Willett 25 Year.  We'd heard rumors that there were even earlier releases of Michter's 10 Year Rye, from before 2007, but had never seen one in the flesh...  until now.

Ninja Battle

So, in the presence of such a legend, what kind of warrior could we unleash in our corner?  Luckily we'd saved the last inch of our Willett 24/94 (the victor in our recent "big willett tasting").  This beauty, from the epic 1984 distillation, has been at the top of our rye list for some time.

Let The Battle Begin!

Nose to nose:

Willett 24/94:  Just from the first sip it's everything we remember it being.  Rich, vanilla, spice, leather, super alive.  Little explosions of too many things to note but to give it another shot: palm fronds, bananas, saddle leather, brandied cherries, Cohiba cigars (real Cubans of course, not that DR crap), more vanilla, like slicing open fresh vanilla beans.  Like filling a bathtub with Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream and soaking in it.

Michter's 6J-1:  "Holy shit..." is uttered again.  It's not quite as bright as the Willett, but if it's possible it's even richer.  All those things above, minus some of the bananas, plus a big ole dab of molasses bbq sauce.  If the other one made us want to fill up a bathtub with it and soak for hours, this one makes us want to rent a houseboat and live in there, just circumnavigating the basin of the glencairn glass over and over as we drift into old age.

Taste to taste:

Willett: Ok malt whisky was our first love.  Lagavulin, Talisker, those smoky peaty beauties that live in your nostrils for decades after you finish the glass.  But right now, if we're talking desert island decisions, we'd have to put down scotch and bring a case of this stuff.  It's just pulls you in so hard.  The spice, the mouthfeel, it's super warm and mellow, not a trace of burn, but at the same time so completely alive with none of the over-woodedness or sour oak that some super aged American whiskies have.  And the finish: just perfect.  Crisp with spice floating across the nose and throat and a layer of honey and black licorice that slowly recedes back from the tip of the tongue.

Michters:  And again, we barely would have thought it possible, but it's all those things and just a little more.  An oily thickness on the tongue with less honey and more viscosity.  It's a few shades darker and you can taste that color.  Just a drop thicker, warmer, more subtle, maybe a tad more towards bourbon in the way that the richness builds up into a heat.  Not an alcohol heat, but a sensory heat of flavors all coming together right at the top of your throat.  The Michter's is the victor in this battle, if only by a hair, but it was unanimous.  We all agreed there was just something decidedly Kardashian about DAT MICHTER'S that just slaughtered it.  We'd still rob you blind if you were walking down the street with a Willett 24/94, but for the Michter's we'd add some kind of deadly weapon.

Damn

"Damn, Zuckman's, that was a pretty epic throw down.  Guess we'll catch you on the flip side."

"You think we're done?" asks Brett.

"We're just getting warmed up," adds Jared.  And some new bottles come out of those briefcases.

Oh man a Vintage 21!  This is another Willett / Kentucky Bourbon Distillers bottling from the mid-2000's that's now a total collector's item.  And then...

A Hirsch 25 rye!  This one's been on our short list as we've never tried it before.  Getting massively excited.  But wait, is that...  Yes, yes I think it is...

A Black Maple Hill 23!  Another KBD bottle this time for Black Maple Hill, the insanely coveted BMH23 now sells on the black market for upwards of $1,600.

Well now it's an all out Rye Wrestlemania!  (Ryestlemania??)  This is too much to handle right now.  Tune in next week for the results.

Cheers/SB

Beast Masters Club Part Two - Rye Night!

April 21, 2015

Beast Masters Club Part Two - Rye Night!

Twelve men with a continuing mission: To drink our way through the world's best whiskey, four bottles at a time.  I could tell you where and when, but then I'd have to kill you.  But I can let slip a few more of the gory details.

The Beast Masters

Professor Rickhouse, Chief Security Officer

Hometown: Greenwich, CT

Poison of Choice: Bourbon

Favorite open bottle: Michter's 10yr

Jew Done Drank Ma Whiskey, Treasurer
Hometown: New York, NY
Poison of Choice: Bourbon
Favorite open bottle: Pappy Van Winkle 15 Year

Haggis MacTavish
Hometown: New York, NY
Poison of Choice: Malt Whisky
Favorite open bottle: Lagavulin 16

Seamus O'Schwartz
Hometown: Lawrence, NY
Poison of Choice: Bourbon
Favorite open bottle: Black Maple Hill 16 Year

El Diablo

Hometown: Thorpe Bay, UK
Poison of Choice: Malt Whisky
Favorite open bottle: Lagavulin 21 Year

Red Beard
Hometown: Cleveland, OH
Poison of Choice: Bourbon
Favorite open bottle: Black Maple Hill 23 Year

Wayne
Hometown: Washington, D.C.
Poison of Choice: Malt Whisky
Favorite open bottle: Macallan 12 Year

The Highway Man
Hometown: Middlebury, VT
Poison of Choice: Bourbon
Favorite open bottle: Woodford Reserve

Captain Sour Mash
Hometown: Atlantic Beach, NY
Poison of Choice: Bourbon
Favorite open bottle: William Larue Weller

Neaty Peaty
Hometown: New York, NY
Poison of Choice: Malt Whisky
Favorite open bottle: Ardbeg

Mr. S. Beast

Hometown: New York, NY
Poison of Choice: Rye
Favorite open bottle: Shhhh.

Tonight's Action

The first Beast Masters Club was all about super aged smoky Islay single malts.  For the sequel, we went all Americano, straight to the heart of Kentucky for RYE NIGHT!

Pieces of History

As with every Beast Masters night, we wanted to sample some pieces of whiskey history.  So we tracked down bottles that descend from some of the legendary shuttered Kentucky distilleries.

The Bottles!!

Sazerac Rye 18-Year Old
(Buffalo Trace Antique Collection)
2013 Release, 45% 90 proof

Alongside the Van Winkle hysteria, Buffalo Trace’s other annual release, The Buffalo Trace Antique Collection (BTAC) has become extremely sought-after and impossible to find. BTAC includes two cask strength bourbons – George T. Stagg and the wheated recipe William Larue Weller, a standard proof Eagle Rare 17-Year Old bourbon, and two ryes: Thomas H. Handy, a cask-strength 9-year old, and perhaps the most limited production of the entire collection with only 20-30 barrels per release: Sazerac Rye 18-Year Old.

All Sazerac 18-year comes from a single distillation that was completed in 1985 (presumably from the Medley Distillery). In 2003, this whiskey was deemed to be the perfect age and was removed from the barrels and inserted into a steel tank to prevent further aging. So while the 2013 release whiskey is actually 28 years old, it was only aged in wood for 18 years.

Van Winkle Family Reserve Rye
13 Years Old, 47.8%, 95.6 proof

The ultimate peak of bourbon/rye insanity, Van Winkle Family Reserve Rye has been virtually impossible to obtain for some years, sparking backroom dealings and illicit black market communities. Rumored to be a blend of Medley and Old Bernheim ryes, the actual source remains unknown.

The Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery has a four generation history. The Van Winkle family’s involvement in the bourbon industry began in the late 1800’s with Julian P. "Pappy" Van Winkle, Sr. He was a traveling salesman for the W.L. Weller and Sons wholesale house in Louisville, traveling around the state by horse and buggy. In May of 1935 at the age of 61, Pappy opened the Stitzel-Weller Distillery in South Louisville. He had a heavy influence on the operations there until his death at the age of 91. His son, Julian, Jr. took over operations until he was forced by stockholders to sell the distillery in 1972. The rights to all of their brands were either sold with the distillery or to other distilleries.

After selling the distillery, Julian, Jr. resurrected a pre-prohibition label, the only one to which the Van Winkles kept the rights, called Old Rip Van Winkle. Julian junior’s son, Julian, III took over in 1981 when Julian, Jr. passed away.

Rittenhouse 23-Year Rye (50%, 100 proof)

Distilled in October 1984 at the Old Heaven Hill Distillery, and bottled in 2007, Rittenhouse 23-Year was a very limited run of 25 barrels. This was one of the last highly-aged ryes to be directly released by Heaven Hill from the remaining stocks before the fire that consumed Old Heaven Hill Distillery.

“Delightful aromas of old leather, library books, pipe tobacco, pineapple, oak resin and trail mix. Palate entry features deep flavors of brown butter, walnut butter and palm oil; midpalate is luscious and resiny with integrated flavors of black pepper, oak and dried fruits. Finish is long, honeyed and treacle-like. Not for the faint of heart. 95 points.” Wine Enthusiast

That the Rittenhouse Very Rare collection ever came to be was a result of serendipity. The original lot of 95 barrels was intended for a private-label customer of Heaven Hill. The company was aging the whiskey for the customer, which failed to call for it until it was far beyond the intended age. When the rye neared the unusual age of 21 years, Heaven Hill approached the whiskey's owner and offered to buy it back. In 2007, it released the Rittenhouse Very Rare 23-Year-Old Straight Rye Whisky. Parker Beam, the Heaven Hill master distiller, says that the whiskey was able to age so long because of its location on the first floor of Rickhouse 00, where the temperatures are lower than on higher floors.

Willett 25-Year Rye (50%, 100 proof)

Only available for a brief time at the Willett Distillery in Bardstown, KY, the Willett 25-Year Rye is one of a kind. It’s some of the last remaining stock of the Old Bernheim Distillery, historic juice that can never be replicated.

Tasting Notes

The Sazerac 18 was a great opener with incredible smoothness greeting vanilla, mint, leather, and oak.  It went down so easy and opened up the palate for some serious rye drinking.  It was quickly overshadowed by the higher proof bottles, but wow so drinkable and a great way to start the evening.

The Van Winkle really took things up a notch.  The spice goes on for miles, it's very ALIVE and doesn't have any signs of over woodiness or over-age.   It's just bursting with spice and also comes forward with some banana and molasses flavors.  What a winner!  No wonder this stuff is kept in an NSA bunker and only released one bottle at a time!

The Rittenhouse - now we're really getting into some interesting territory.  It's a rock-star no doubt.  Better than the Winkle?  The group was totally divided.  The majority of folks thought that it tasted more bourbon-y and less straight rye.  Could this be reflected in the recipe? Maybe a higher corn content?  Unfortunately we couldn't find mashbills for these bottles.  (Anyone out there have more info??)  The Ritt had more chocolate / nougat, where the Winkle was more spice/mint forward.  Just about an even split on the winner here.  

The Willett - The really incredible thing about the Willett is the mouth feel.  Some of the reactions "It's like drinking melted butter"  "Like oak syrup".  It's definitely got an herbal and bitter note at the end of the finish.  Is that a bad thing?  Some would say past its prime.  Personally I love this bottle.  The Willett was definitely the right way to end the tasting as the huge wood and incredibly thick mouth feel make it hard to go back and taste the lighter stuff afterwards.

And The Winner Is?

There was some consensus and a lot of disagreement.  Most thought that the Saz18, while delicious, couldn't really hang with the other three.  The Willett got third place in most of the votes (though I tied it with the VW as my favorite).  And almost a 50/50 split between the Van Winkle and the Rittenhouse.

It was an interesting night.  Many in the group reflected that the ryes were less different from each other than the Islay malts we'd tasted in the previous session.  And this makes perfect sense.  Some of those malts were sherry cask, some weren't, and they had vastly different proofs and levels of peat. This is a theory we've touched on before.  Scotch can have many different ideals (soft and gentle, sweet and punch, smoky, spicy) whereas rye is all pretty much shooting for the same ideal goal.

Then What?

What do you do after drinking four incredible ryes?  Why eat Dinosaur BBQ and drink Sierra Nevada of course!  What the hell else could you do!  :)  

Cheers/SB

the big Willett tasting part 7 (24-Year Family Estate Rye Bonili Selection)

September 1, 2014

the big Willett tasting part 7 (24-Year Family Estate Rye Bonili Selection)

Well if you're still here, thanks for sticking with us through the past seven days of Willett madness!  It sure has been fun drinking our way through this amazing lineup.  Hopefully you've enjoyed the reviews and have been able to track down some Willett of your own and drink along with us.  

We've been working our way clockwise around the Willett board the whole week.  The bottle on the front left is the 2-year small batch rye, which is the first original whiskey distilled by the Willett/Kulsveen family in Bardstown in forty years.  The greatest thing about this whole exercise is dreaming about what this stuff will taste like as it matures through the ages of the sourced products.  Hopefully we'll all be around to taste it at twenty-four years old!  

The green wax bottle next in line is the 5-year rye, perhaps the least exciting in the lineup but still a great everyday drinker.  (By "everyday" we don't mean you should necessarily be drinking every day, just that this is something that price-wise doesn't have to be saved for a special occasion.)  On the far left corner is our first bourbon: the blue wax Liquor Barn 9-year.  This was unexpectedly good.  Just released this year it was a very sweet candy-bar bourbon.  That bottle will go quickly!  Second from the left in the maroon top is "The Mohawk" - Shorewood Liquor's 10-year bourbon barrel 828.  What a beast that was!  Just a huge ripper of a bourbon showing off the high-test (almost 130 proof!) George T Stagg qualities you'll find in some Willetts.  In the middle the dark purple wax is the 21-year bourbon which was quite a treat, sort of bringing together the freshness of the 2-year rye, the sweetness of the 9-year, and some of the richness of the 10-year, integrating all these elements together magically.  Moving back to rye, second from the right is the copper wax 25-year gift shop bottle, which upon its opening was one of our favorite whiskies to date.  

And finally we make it all the way to the right to the white wax Bonili 24-year rye.

The first thing you should notice is the barrel number, #446.  This is the earliest Willett bottling in the bunch.  (Some of the newer barrels have lower numbers, but among the older vintages they're pretty much in chronological order).  There's actually a great new resource about all the Willett releases here.  You'll also notice that this is a different bottle shape.  They used a slightly shorter, squatter bottle back then.

Bonili is a Japanese liquor distributor that has done several private barrels of Willett including the above 24-year rye, another version of the 24-year rye at 110 proof, and two 17-year bourbons.  The fact that these bottles were sent all the way to Japan may be the reason that they were slightly more available at this late date than some of the other private barrel ryes like Rathskeller, LeNell's, or Doug's Green Ink.  It took a long time but through some connections deep in the whiskey biz, we finally found a bottle of our very own.  Check out the date on that back label: Distilled April 10, 1984.  What a score!

Tasting Notes

Nose:  The big richness is there in spades, but the spice is way more alive - like a big birch fire with fresh mint and tarragon, vanilla, nutmeg, fresh spring ramps and green garlic, sea salt, saddle leather, pipe tobacco, and then the sweets come last with nougat, chocolate, molasses, and honey.

Palate:  Wow just a kick of spice that will wake you up in the morning.  Ok now we get all the "past its prime" comments on the 25 year.  There's a liveliness here, a big bright rye spice explosion, that's missing from the other bottle.  It's huge and brings all the taste ingredients together for some of the best juice we've ever had the pleasure of drinking.

Finish:  And there's none of the funky bitter digestif quality from the 25 year in the finish this time.  It's long and lively and full of spirit warmth with zero burn, smoldering char and spice, and a big sweet kiss at the end.  Perfectly balanced and just... DAMN.  It's perfect.

Sometimes you get so wrapped up in trying to use all these words to describe a whiskey.  Then you just have to sit back and say God Damn This Is Good Shit.  And on that note we'll end.  Have a great holiday weekend and thanks for reading!

Cheers/SB