I’m pleased I managed to get a pedestrian-free window long enough to get this shot. Along a major corridor. During the evening commute. And that I could get the shot, standing directly across from it, with the sun behind me and somehow still not be in the shot. How creepylovely is that? Really?
| |||||
Temperance Trader Straight Bourbon Whiskey
Lovely. Smells sweeter than it tastes—like maple sweet or prailine sweet, would’ve been too sweet for me if it had tasted like it smelled—but really nice.
Breckenridge Bourbon Whiskey
Handcrafted, made at 9600 feet with snowmelt from the rockies. Huh. It was apparently voted one of the top bourbons recently by… I don’t think the bartender said. More to my drinking companion’s taste than mine and I don’t know if I’d go comparing it to my favorites but it’s still really very nice.
Redemption Barrel Proof Straight Rye Whiskey
Hoooooooboy that has a whole lot of fire in it. Not at all like the rest of the Redemption line. But. But. Addition of ice mellows it almost completely, making it incredibly smooth and drinkable instead of a challenge to be withstood.
Crater Lake Rye Whiskey
Light and smooth with a floral quality to it (not perfume-y but floral). Also, I’m a sucker for anything at least partially made possible because of a volcano.
Corner Creek Reserve Bourbon Whiskey
Been a while since I had a “meh” but I think this one might’ve been a “meh” for me. My drinking companion had most of it but the bit that I tried didn’t knock my socks off. Or even slouch them a little.
 |  |
Old Forester Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whisky
The Old Forester 86 is my watering hole’s well bourbon and, somehow, I hadn’t had it except in cocktails. Finally remedied that. It is everything I want in a bourbon. Sweet, smooth, caramel, vanilla, and candycorn. Very nice.
It tastes very, very much like their rye (which I love!) but not in a “this is a bourbon made by the same distiller who made that rye” sort of way. More like they took their rye-recipe and put juuuuust enough corn in the mash to make it technically a bourbon. I mean, I still like it but it’s definitely a rye-drinker’s bourbon.
Also, I am an enormous sucker for little touches like the handwriting on the matte paper label.
I would say spring has sprung but it keeps doing that and then changing its mind. There’s another tree 20 feet away that is completely bare, having flowered then lost all of its blooms after a cold snap.
| ||||
 |
Aberlour a’bunadh Single Speyside Malt Whisky, Batch 29
A friend I recently stayed with had this in her liquor cabinet and I jumped at the chance to try what little was left of it. Aberlour’s a’bunadhs don’t say how old they are. They’re blends of scotches from 5 to 25 years old and batch 29 is so, so good. I’ll definitely be on the lookout for other batches.
Roughstock Handcrafted Pure Malt Montana Whiskey
Malty! Which means I’ll (probably) love it. And I did. This wasn’t as overwhelmingly malty as, say the Husdon or the Chatoe Rogue, but instead subtler, somehow. I really enjoyed it and would love ot have it again.
Roughstock Black Label Montana Whiskey
A quick admin note: You may’ve noticed that I will occasionally mention specific bars but remain vague about “my barkeep,” “my bartender,” and my favorite local bars. I am completely comfortable giving shout-outs to bars I visit when I travel but when it comes to where I live I am intentionally more reserved.
By the time I was on to my second whiskey at Seven Grand in LA, the bar was dark and packed so we’ll have to make do with their lovely neon stag and their whiskey wall.
The Black Label Roughstock is a thing of beauty. It’s like the Pure Malt but all grown up, with a respectable job that it threw away in pursuit of its mid-life crisis. It’s stone-fruit fruity with other notes I didn’t manage or couldn’t be bothered to suss out. Fiery neat, blissful on the rocks. I want a bottle of this. |  |
Woodford Reserve Double Oaked Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey
Oh, that’s niiiiiiice. This is so lovely and so smooth and not very sweet but just sweet enough. It is deeper, darker, and mellower than Woodford Reserve.
 |
|
Yes, I know, not a whiskey. But it’s a gin with malted barley and corn in it. It was even barrel aged. And it was exactly what I expected based on the description. It is a malty, herby, floral gin and it was fantastic on a warm day with a little water and a little ice.
 |  |  |
Bainbridge Battle Point Organic Whiskey
Good. Nice for sipping, especially for something so young.
Redemption High-Rye Straight Bourbon Whiskey
Super carmel-corn sweet and quite spicy with the rye content. NIce.
Redemption Straight Rye WhiskeyIf I were to take the Temptation and Redemption High-rye Bourbons and try to predict what a rye by the same company would taste like, this’d be exactly it.
How many Lucy casts have I seen now? Three? Four? Here I am with the one in the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles.
For me, very prominent cranberry on the nose and light in the taste. Warm and spicy neat. Mellows considerably with water or ice. Very… bourbon-ey. I liked this better of the two.
Amrut Single Malt Fusion Whisky
More scotch-like. Smokey, peaty, but also sweet and carmel-ly. Seemed unbalanced to me.
Overall, both: definitely worth the trouble I went through to find them.
Interesting variation. I expected to love these universally since they were all sherry-finished. Imagine my surprise when that was not the case.
Tomintoul Oloroso Sherry, 12-year - Excellent. The sweetest of the five but also the least complex of the ones I enjoyed. It’s fruity and honeyed and a little sour (so, um, sherry-like)
Penderyn Sherrywood - Not for me. It has that sulfurous aftertaste that apparently only I can taste which makes it undrinkable for me.
Clynelish 1993 Oloroso Sherry Distillers Edition - Smokey—smokiest sherry-finish I’ve tried—but it’s a different kind of smoke than I’ve ever had. It’s more like burning cinnamon sticks, smouldering spice and not overwhelming at all. Very interesting. Very tasty. My favorite of the five.
Glengoyne 21 Year Old - Not for me. Ugh. You know what? I have to admit that I feel robbed when it’s, ooooh, a 21-year old whisky that I find undrinkable. I’m sure it’s just lovely if you’re not me though.
Oban 1995 Montilla Fino Distillers Edition - I saved this for last, expecting to enjoy it the most but I liked the Clynelish a touch more. It’s different layers of sweet intermingled with peppery and nutty-smooth.
 |  |  |
 |  |  |
Blanton’s Original Single Barrel Bourbon Whiskey
Sweet, practically cloying on the nose but is very Willet-like in its flavor profile. It’s sweet and spicy with a flat, malty finish. I liked it quite a bit.Jefferson Reserve Very Old Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, Very Small Batch
It smells and tastes—and I promise, I swear this isn’t necessarily a bad thing—like candied ashtray. It’s cigar or cigarette ash, not even smoke, but it’s faint and is complemented by fruity, vanilla-y sweetness. Definitely one of the more interesting bourbons I’ve tried. My drinking companion for the evening and I kept trading the glass back and forth and squinting at each other over it.Peach Street Colorado Straight Bourbon Whiskey
Pre-ice it’s very… flat. Like old cinnamon gum flat with some charcoal in there. Post-ice it opens way, WAY up. It’s incredibly spicy. More cinnamon than pepper. Still a bit flat on the back end but it was almost a relief after the punch of spice up front.Leopold Brothers New York Apple Flavored Whiskey
Sweet. Super sweet. Painfully sweet. And very, very apple-y. More like dessert wine than whiskey. Needs to be cut with… anything. Or sipped daintily out of a tiny dessert wine glass. But if you’re cutting it: Water works. Soda water works. Ginger beer works. Ginger ale works but ginger beer complements better than ginger ale.Big Bottom Small Batch Straight Bourbon Whiskey Finished in Zinfandel Casks and
Big Bottom Small Batch Straight Bourbon Whiskey Finished in Port Casks
Love! These were both very good. The zin-finished was a knock out. The zin is prominent all the way through, from nose to finish and is has caramel and chocolate notes in it making it like dessert and it’s complementary wine all in one glass. The port finish is more subtle than the zin but still has a multi-layered, dessert-in-one-glass experience.
High West Whiskey Rendezvous RyeThis may well be my favorite rye.
My room hasn’t been a place that I spent time in for a long time. It’s been a place that I slept in, a place that I shambled out of in the morning and didn’t stumble back into until I was ready to go to bed in the evening. I wanted to change that but I just kept not. There were other things that were more important.
Then, last weekend, I moved my bed. Once that was done, I reorganized my closet. Everything changed. I moved another bookcase into my room. Then a desk. With those gone, that meant the living room was unbalanced and everything in there was rearranged. I have a liquor cabinet now. The coffee table and couch were moved just inches but they align with the sliding glass door and the bookshelf in front of it and that line carries all the way through the living room. We took all the art down to give the walls and our eyes a chance to reset before we put it back up. It’s still stacked against each other, leaning against a wall.
It’s changed the whole apartment, that one small action of moving my bed, ninety degrees clock-wise.
My room isn’t quite the refuge I’d like it to be. I’d still like an arm chair, something to flop into and throw my legs over the side, something to read in for hours with a whiskey or a water, but that may be a little while. Still, there’s a desk in my room and somewhere to sit that isn’t the bed. I haven’t had either of those since I lived in a studio and, it turns out, I missed that.
 |  |
That is just dangerously drinkable. The front end it almost overwhelmingly honeyed with a little spice. Upon adding ice there’s a little, just the tiniest bit of smoke and then the honey takes back over. This is so amazingly good. Thank you, Monkey Shoulder, for leading me to this.
Leviathan II American Peated Single Malt
Peated, yes, but doesn’t seem to commit to it like a Caol Ila or a Lagovulin or a Laphroig. And smokey but… ashtray smoke not campfire smoke. To tell the truth, I have no idea how I feel about this or how I’ll feel about it next time I try it but I’m thrilled I only had the taste I did rather than a full dram.
Shhhh, she says, I’m a lamp.
We need this rain so very badly. The last time it really poured was over two months ago. (I was out in it.) It’s been misting off and on—I haven’t used an umbrella yet—for the last week or so but it’s barely a teacup’s worth of relief in an ocean of drought.
I am seriously going to have to reconsider what I think of when I think of Irish whiskey. This was bright and citrussy and the tiniest bit tart. No unpleasant aftertaste at all. More like Powers than Jameson. Very nice.
| |||
| |||
|
Glenrothes 1995 Speyside Single Malt Scotch Whisky
Sweet and smooth and so, so good. Even better with ice for me. It rounded it out. Incredibly smooth for something so (relatively) young. I’d drink that again. A lot.
Tobermory Single Malt Scotch Whisky, 10-year
Smells terrible but tastes amazing. Spicy, like gingerbread spice, not like pepper spice. There’s this odd flat finish where all of the elements just… STOP all at once. Took a bit to get used to.
Widow Jane Straight Bourbon Whiskey
Holy crap. This bourbon out of Brooklyn* is bright and full and lovely and OH. More on the citrus-sweet than the sugar sweet side. There’s really a lot going on in there but it all works well together. It’s so good. It’s also incredibly viscous in the glass without being syrupy in the sip. One of the more visually interesting whiskies I’ve ever had. I looked for a bottle before I left New York and I’m still looking.
*Currently it’s a Kentucky bourbon, cut to proof and bottled in Brooklyn but word has it they’re working on a way to grow their own corn.
**Historical fiction about a NYC-based bank robber. Between the book, the bar and the Museum of the American Gangster earlier that day, my day had a theme. An accidental theme but a theme.
Balblair 2001 Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky
Incredibly light, crisp, and citrussy plus quite a punch of spice. Somehow, with ice the spice gets even more intense before mellowing out just a touch. Quite good.
Linkwood Speyside Single Malt Scotch Whisky, 15-year
Oh now that’s a kick in the tonsils. So spicy I could feel it in my ears but that’s not a criticism. It’s a little salty (it smells super salty, it only tastes a little salty) There’s some nutty praline at the end but only enough to be nutty and interesting, not enough to drive me away with its negative association.
anCnoc Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky, 12-year
This smells like freshly baked bread and has a nice, unassuming, warm finish to it. In between is sharp spice with a candy coating. I found myself drinking it slower and slower, not wanting it to end. This is one Hell of a ride.
Laphroig Islay Single Malt Scotch Whisky, Quarter Cask
I saved this for last the night that I had it since I didn’t want to blow out my palate too early and that was a wise move. By the end of this one it was properly demolished. But…
WOW. It was peaty (very), smokey (some, but not a house fire) but also nutty and oddly… sweet. From my tipsy notes from that evening, “Nose full of peat, mouth full of sweet.” The addition of ice made it smell like plastic but really brought the peat out in all its glory. And it. is. glorious. I surprised myself by relishing every single sip. It’s incredible.
And THIS? This is why I keep trying things that I’m sure I’ll hate. I went into this one done for the night and ready to write up something negative so I went for something I knew was peaty and smokey and completely contrary to everything I know I love and somehow I LOVED it. I can’t explain it but hooboy am I glad that I keep butting my head against that particular wall. If I didn’t I never would’ve found this.
 |  |
 |  |
Hudson New York Corn Whiskey
Whipper Snapper Oregon Spirit Whiskey
Bit malty. Not as strongly so as the Chatoe Rogue or the Balcones but still quite a bit. Unfortunately, it has hints of an aftertaste that make it unsuitable for me in large amounts.
Oban Single Malt Scotch Whisky, 14-year
My grandboss loves this stuff. I liked it alright but it didn’t really grab me. There’s quite a bit going on in there. Smokey and briney but citrussy and oaky. A lot of (to me) dischordant flavors all clamoring for attention. Nowhere near the silky, drop-dead amazingness of the 18y. It mellowed out some with ice and I liked it but I don’t think it’s something I’ll ever own a bottle of. At least not on purpose.
Monkey Shoulder Blended Scotch Whisky
How, HOW did I wait so long to try this. It’s rich and mellow and vanilla and smooth and can be had for a reasonable price at Trader Joes. A little looking and I learn that it’s a blend of Glenfiddich, Balvenie, and Kininvie which tells me that, while I was probably bound to adore it with the Balvenie component, I need to get on the trying of some Glenfiddich and Kininvie scotches.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
