The Best Damn Rye - Willett Family Estate Single Barrel Rye, Rare Release

 

WIllet Family Estate Bottled Single Barrel Rye is simply the best rye whiskey I have tasted. All my whiskey-loving friends who like rye rave about it. Even those who don't like rye admit that it's the best rye they've ever had.

If you manage to find this, buy a bottle. It's not too pricey (around $35 a bottle in the US as I write this) and even if you don't like rye, it's a fantastic addition to your bar for your friends who do. It also makes an excellent gift to a rye whiskey drinker - I gave myself a bottle for my birthday, in fact. :-)

This is the whiskey that redeemed rye whiskey for me. My first taste of rye was horrid: astringent and unpleasant and completely off-putting. I was planning to give rye a complete miss, until a friend convinced me to try the Willet Family Estate Bottled Single Barrel Rye (hereafter referred to as Willett SBR).

That designation, detailed at length on the label, as a single barrel whiskey, makes this a rare bird in the marketplace. Most whiskies of all types (bourbon, scotch and so on) that are bottled are produced by mixing the contents of many, many barrels to produce the desired flavor and amount of product. This is necessary because different barrels of whiskey age differently, depending upon a host of factors, such as temperature, place in the warehouse, the wood of the barrel, variations in the quality of the grains in the mash and so on.

So, each individual barrel can have its own unique taste. However, successful branding requires a consistent product, and successful business minimizes waste.  So barrels are mixed to smooth out the variations and maximize utilization of the distilled spirit.

Willett SBR is one of a handful of whiskies on the market where the contents of the bottle came from a single barrel of whiskey: no mixing. Flavor consistency is maintained by the taste buds of the Master Distiller, which leads to an interesting phenomenon - WIllet SBR bottles don't carry a consistent age statement. I have bottles that were aged for 4 years, and bottles who had to spend another year in the cask to become "right".

This is also a cask-strength whiskey. The strength varies a little from cask-to-cask, but the bottles I've seen or drank have ranged from 109 proof to 116 proof ( 54.5% to 58% ABV).

In the glass, this has a rich reddish gold color. The aroma is of oak and alcohol and spice.

I occasionally sip this straight, which is frankly amazing for such a strong spirit, but I generally prefer it with a little water. That cuts the hefty alcohol content down and lets some of the other flavors come through.

WIllett SBR has a nice rich mouthfeel. I taste notes of mint and spice, maybe some oak, and a lovely sweetness that's not quite honey.

I think it's delightful. But rye, because of it's spicy notes, tends to divide folks more than a sweeter grain, such as barley, does when it is the primary ingredient in the mash. As an American Rye, WIllett SBR is legally required to have at least 51% of the mash grains be rye. I have found several places online claiming that the mash bill is actually 95% rye and 5% barley, but I haven't found what I consider to be an authoritative source for that information.

As I said at the beginning - if you can find it, buy it. If you don't like rye, buy it for your bar anyway. Trust me, you will find folks who do and will love you for introducing them to the Willet SBR.

Woodford Reserve Distiller's Select - Superb Bourbon

 

If you like bourbon, you owe it to yourself to give this one a try. It's both an excellent whiskey and and good value.

In fact, I'll cut to the chase. This is part of my top-flight bourbon quartet: 4 bourbons that stand above the rest . If you wish to give a bottle of bourbon as a gift to an aficionado, or want to stock your bar with a single top shelf bourbon, Woodford Reserve Distiller's Select is a can't miss choice.

Woodford Reserve Distiller's Select comes in old-fashion looking, flat-sided, almost rectangular bottles. The 375 ml bottle, as result, hits quite nicely in backpack pockets, jacket pockets, or even in the deep snap pockets of some cargo pants. The 750 ml bottle contrasts nicely with all the round bottles on my bar. The 1.75 L, on the other hand, looks a bit ridiculous.

The bottles carry no age statement, but do carry a bottle number and a batch number. Each batch consists of a number of different barrels blended together to achieve the Distiller's Select taste. If you're really, really, really, obsessively into taste consistency, you could try tracking down only bottles from the same batch. Given that the of the blending of the barrels will effectively smooth over the barrel-to-barrel differences, I doubt it's worth the effort.

The whiskey inside is a deep amber. It's 90.4 proof, which means it's been lowered from cask strength. The aroma is sweet and spicy, and the flavor, straight, is refreshing blend of the same. It sips smoothly straight, the alcohol fire tempered by the sweet and spicy down to a pleasant heat. It's got a nice medium body - not too thin on the tongue, not too heavy. The finish is pleasant, but not overly long.

Add a splash of water, (really, it only takes a little) and the aroma loses a little spice and gains more sweet and caramel notes. Likewise, more caramel and vanilla come out in the flavor, along with stronger hints of pepper. The oakiness recedes somewhat in the initial tasting, only to assert itself a little more strongly in the finish. The heat also turns down a notch to nicely warm.

This truly a smooth sipping whiskey. It's triple distilled, which is much more common for Irish whisky than bourbon, using scottish stills, another rarity in the bourbon industry. The extra bit of spice comes from the increased propoportion of rye in the grain bill (72% corn, 10% malt, and 18% rye, according to the Woodford Reserve website).

A 750 ml of this retails for about $30 - $35. Since the flavor matches well against other bourbons and scotches that sell for $40-$60 a bottle, I consider this to be a solid value.

It has a permanent home on my bar - as soon a bottle is finished, it's replaced.

For comparison, I like Woodford Reserve Distiller's Select more than the Old Weller Antique and Willett bourbon's I have already reviewed. It's just a bit smoother, a bit more complex flavor wise, a bit more polished, a bit more everything good to me.

Ardbeg Uigeadail - Pure Awesome

 

I'll cut to the chase. If you find a bottle of Ardbeg Uigeadail at a liquor store, buy it, and put it in your liquor cabinet. Or buy it, and send it to me. But buy it.

If you need to know more than that, read on ...

If I had to choose to only drink one whisky for the rest of my life, I'd go with Ardbeg Uigeadail (pronounced Oog-A-Dal). It's got an astonishingly rich, complex set of flavors that one can sip and savor for hours.

Despite being technically a single malt scotch- in other words, the product of a single scottish distillery where the grain bill consists of 100% barely malt, aged for at least 3 years in Scotland - Uigeadail is a testament to the art of vatting (marrying) different expressions to achieve something new and wonderful. It's also named after the lock (lake) that provides water to the Ardbeg distillery.

A brief aside, for context, is in order at this point. Ardbeg is an Islay scotch  - it hails from the Isle of Islay, off the southwestern coast of Scotland. Islay scotches are known for their peatiness, and Ardbeg is part of the monster peat triumvirate along the southeastern coast of Islay: Laphroig and Lagavulin are the other two. Other Islay scotches are peaty, but these three define the outer edge of peatiness.

Of further interest, is the modern history of Ardbeg. Once upon a time, the signature distillery bottling (at least in the US) was Ardbeg 17-year-old. However, the distillery was closed from 1981-1989, and open only 2 months a year for distilling from 1989-1996, and then closed again in 1996. It was bought by Glenmorangie in 1997 and slowly put back into full production.

The upshot of the production interruptions is that the standard Ardbeg expression available, at least in the US, became Ardbeg 10-year-old, and 17-year-old disappeared from the shelves. On a more speculative note, that production interruption and the resulting lack of stock may be part of the reason why the reborn Ardbeg has been so experimental, and why many of it's special expressions don't carry age statements.

Which wraps us back to Uigeadail. Ardbeg is traditionally aged in used bourbon barrels. Uigeadail is a mix of Ardbeg whisky aged in used sherry casks and Ardbeg whisky aged in used bourbon barrels. It's bottled pretty much at cask strength - 54.2% alcohol, 108.4 proof- and comes with no age statement.

And this is where the magic happens, The standard Ardbeg 10-year is a big, raw, brawling whisky that takes your tongue out to the woodshed and beats it into submission. And that's after being watered down to 92 proof for bottling, and likely more in you glass. It's a love it or hate it dram.

Uigeadail is a different beast. People who hate the standard Ardbeg find Uigeadail to be enchanting (based on actual experience serving the same set of folks both Ardbegs on consecutive nights).

The peat, the iodine, and the sea are still there, but the addition of the sherry-cask-aged spirit rounds them off with sweet notes and rich counterpoints. This is still an imposing dram, but instead of delivering a back-yard beat down to your taste buds, it simply sweeps them away into a another world of savory flavors dancing with sweet, smoke intertwining with sherry, and leaves them satiated, a little breathless, and yet still wanting another sip and another dance.

In the glass, Uigeadail is a dark red, amber. It promises depth, which it will deliver in spades.

Straight up - well I don't drink this straight up. I always add water, and a bit more than a splash, but never more than 25% of the whisky in the initial pour. Because when you add water, Uigeadail truly reveals its wonders.

For me. the nose (bouquet, aroma) is wonderful mix of peat and ocean water, blended with sherry notes.

In my mouth, Uigeadail feels rich and full and a touch oily (but not unpleasantly so). It has weight and presence - a hefty spirit, as opposed to a light one. To me, the flavors are tantalizing and stunningly balanced mix of peat, iodine, seawater, smoke, sweet sherry, and a hint of thick honey.

Uigeadail has a long, smokey, finish that lingers and lingers and lingers. You can easily savor it 15 minutes or more after finishing your dram.

Uigeadail runs $70 - $80 in the US, and is worth every penny. This has a permanent place of honor in my liquor cabinet.