Elijah Craig Single Barrel Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey Aged 20 Years Barrel No. 8, Barreled on 3-15-91 45% $130 Website What the Distillery Says: It was fall 2011 when Heaven Hill decided to honor the 20th anniversary of the Kentucky Bourbon Festival with a special, one barrel bottling of the Elijah Craig 20-Year-Old Single Barrel. This barrel would soon define award-winning bourbon. Whisky Advocate Magazine named this single barrel “American Whiskey of the Year”. Editor and Publisher John Hansell called the award-winning bourbon, “seamless, richly textured and impeccably balanced.” Only a handful of barrels have been allowed to age this long. Heaven Hill is proud to offer this unique bourbon that was pulled from the same lot as the award-winning barrel in limited quantties. Raise your glass to excellence.
What Richard Says: Nose: Vanilla, tobacco, a little anisette, and old polished wood furniture. Palate: Creme brulee, orange blossom honey, vanilla extract, hazelnut truffles, and maple syrup. Finish: A mix of black and white pepper, pipe tobacco, cinnamon, and a slow oak denouement. Comments: I keep thinking of Lucky Charms breakfast cereal. Not because this tastes anything like that. Rather, “it’s magically delicious”. 🙂 This is really, REALLY good. These have been out a couple of years so you’ll be hard pressed to find one now but grab it if you do. The house of Heaven Hill is kicking Buffalo Trace in the teeth in terms of great old whiskey with this one. A really amazing bourbon. Rating: Must Buy
George T. Stagg Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey 2013 Release 64.1% ABV $70 to $90 Website What the Distillery Says: This extremely hearty whiskey ages in new charred oak barrels for no less than 15 years. Straight out of the barrel, uncut and unfiltered, the taste is powerful, flavorful and intense. Open it up with a few drops of water, sit back and ponder the wonders of the universe.
TASTING NOTES: Lush toffee sweetness and dark chocolate with hints of vanilla, fudge, nougat and molasses. Underlying notes of dates, tobacco, dark berries, spearmint and a hint of coffee round out the palate.
What Richard Says: Nose: Oiled riding leather, roasted dates wrapped in smoked bacon and Boston Cream Pie. Palate: Molasses syrup, heavy vanilla, 5th Avenue candy bars, and finished with a spicy rye/mint kick at the end. Finish: Old leather bound books, a well tended humidor, and well balanced oak. Comments: This is one of those really dangerous bottles of Stagg. It’s a good bit lower in proof from some of the previous releases and that makes it wicked easy to drink. Take it slow, add a little water or at least a water back, and be careful with this sleeping beast. This batch was aged for 15 years and 11 months. No details in this recent release regarding batch size or the warehouse location of the selected barrels. Rating: Must Buy
George T. Stagg Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey 2009 Release 70.7% ABV $65 Website What the Distillery Says: This extremely hearty whiskey ages in new charred oak barrels for no less than 15 years. Straight out of the barrel, uncut and unfiltered, the taste is powerful, flavorful and intense. Open it up with a few drops of water, sit back and ponder the wonders of the universe.
TASTING NOTES: Lush toffee sweetness and dark chocolate with hints of vanilla, fudge, nougat and molasses. Underlying notes of dates, tobacco, dark berries, spearmint and a hint of coffee round out the palate.
What Richard Says: Nose: Molasses, toffee, dried unrolled tobacco, oiled leather, with a mint back note. Palate: Rich, dripping toffee and vanilla, then a large right hook to the palate with cinnamon red hots, black pepper, and oak. Finish: Slightly dry, with cinnamon, tobacco, cocoa powder, coffee grounds, and oak on mid length finish. Comments: This is one of those bourbons like Pappy Van Winkle that has become legendary in it’s limited availability as much as it’s tremendous flavor. As Van Winkle is to wheated bourbons, Stagg is to ryed bourbons. And the flavor is tremendous. This is a dark monstrous bourbon. Alcohol content aside, if you can put 70% ABV aside, the flavor is layered, aggressive, and encompassing. You don’t drink this. It let’s you consume it. A quick word about that proof too. This is a monster in terms of alcohol. Water is required either in liquid or solid forms. Personally, I get it down to about 50% ABV for regular consumption but to each their own. If you can get your hands on a bottle I would grab it and not worry so much about “which” George T Stagg you got. You’ll also notice that this is not a single barrel bourbon. It’s done annually in small batches. As such, the flavor profile is very similar year to year. This batch was 109 barrels aged for 16 years and 7 months. For those interested in the bourbon geek minutiae, it was distilled to 135 Proof, barreled at 125 Proof in barrels with #4 55 second char and the barrels were selected from floors 1 and 3 of Warehouse K. Rating: Must Buy
Germain-Robin Old Havana Alambic Brandy 40% ABV $105 to $115 Website What the Distiller Says: Rich deep fruit, nicely oaked, very very mellow. In 1995, during the cigar craze, we bottled a blend called “For the Lover of Fine Cigars”. When the craze died down, we changed the label to Old Havana, then (2001) decided to use the components for XO production. In 2009, we used the 5 surviving barrels to start a solera. “One of the world’s great spirits”(Mens’ Journal) Armagnac lovers prefer it to the XO. Unfiltered.
What Richard Says: Nose: Rich dark stone fruits, honeysuckle, vanilla, toffee bars, and a rich sweetened cream. Palate: Smooth, refined, not brash at all. This old gentlemen opens to the door to his library and enters with aged grace. Light fruity sweetness, well balanced with the wood and nice spiciness to play well with those cigars you’ve been laying down in your humidor. Finish: Slightly oaked with nice layers of tobacco, and leather. Comments: You’ll notice from the picture above that the label is the old style after they changed to Old Havana but before the 2009 solera re-imagining. If you find this grab it because it is truly delicious. If I get my hands on the new version before this one is gone I’ll do a side by side but I wouldn’t worry too much about which version you pick up. I haven’t had a Germain-Robin brandy that I didn’t like. For the record this is probably one of my top three favorite cigar accompanying beverages (along with the old version of Dalmore Cigar Malt[not the newer Reserve] and the Cognac barrel finished Parker’s Heritage). Rating: Must Buy
Compass Box The General Blended Scotch Whisky Bottle 1625 53.4% ABV $300 to $350 Website What the Blender Says: It’s been a good year for sourcing ridiculously rare parcels of extraordinary whisky.
Two different companies approached us recently with similar stories: they each had several casks of Blended Scotch that had been blended at quite young ages, then not required and put back into cask and left to age. One parcel was 33 years-old and the other was…well, I’m afraid I can’t tell you. (By telling you the age of the other parcel, some might argue we are in violation of the UK’s Scotch Whisky Regulations – citation 2009 No. 2890. But that’s another story.)
We know little of the component whiskies, only that, being Blended Scotch Whisky, they were blends of both single malt and single grain whiskies. We could tell by tasting that some were aged in former American whisky casks and some in sherry casks. But the provenance wasn’t really important, because each parcel had matured into something extraordinary in flavour, and to us, as blenders, they each represented distinct and complementary flavour profiles.
And this is where things got interesting for us. While each parcel was compelling in its own right, we had the feeling that by combining them in the right proportions, we could make something even more interesting. So we experimented for many weeks, blending the two together at different proportions before landing on the recipe in this bottle.
The result is a whisky with the “antique” character lovers of old whiskies seek out.
Availability Limited Release of 1,698 individually-numbered bottles. Bottled in November 2013.
Flavour Descriptors It has extraordinary depth, with aromas and flavours reminiscent of spices, dried fruits and old sherry wine character. The palate is very soft, a virtue of blending malt whisky with grain whisky, and the finish is very, very long.
Recommendations This is a classic late-night-and-into-the-early morning whisky.
Bottling Details Bottled at 53.4% Not chill-filtered Natural colour
What Richard Says: Nose: Oh God, that is amazing. There is just something about old scotch. Light sweet sherry, orange marmalade, apricots, and old furniture polish. Palate: Old book leather, fine aged tobacco, cinnamon, clove, cardamon, oatmeal raisin cookies, and rich old oak furniture. Finish: A little dusty but in a good way. It’s like settling into an old leather arm chair in a gentleman’s study that was closed up for a while. There’s a dry oak and dusting of Dutch processed cocoa powder finish that lingers for what seems like hours. Comments: Oddly, the best thing about this whisky isn’t even the whisky itself. It’s the conversation we (GBS members) had with John Glaser about this while tasting it for the first time. The guy’s knowledge and passion really shine through. This new limited release is the result of two blends that came into the possession of Compass Box. According to Mr. Glaser one is around 33 years old and of unknown province. This one came via a whisky broker. The other is around 40 years and came from Gordon and MacPhail. The uniqueness of this whisky has many layers. It’s very old. It is a blend of blends. And those blends were pre-blended and aged as blends subsequent to blending. The back story is almost as interesting as the whisky. Rating: Must Buy
