Category: Bourbon

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Four Roses Single Barrel Barrel Strength KSBW

Age: NAS, ca. 9 y/o

Proof: 112.8 (56.4% ABV)

Recipe: OBSO (For a breakdown of the 10 recipes, click here)

Barrel: GE 553C (bottle 1/172)

This whiskey is not available at your friendly neighborhood grab & go.  This is what is called a “private bottling”.  Where the law permits, certain liquor stores, clubs or even individuals will buy an entire barrel of whiskey (or brandy, rum, tequila, etc) and have it bottled for them by the producer.  The producer will usually pour samples of the contents of a few different barrels, then the purchasers will try them and decide which barrel(s) to purchase.  Binny’s Beverage Depot in Chicago is well known for its private bottlings of bourbon, rye and Scotch, for instance.  The Bourbon Society of Louisville, KY is also known for its private bottlings for members.  Two friends of mine even got together and bought a barrel of Four Roses single barrel that is very well regarded and very tasty.  I know because I’ve had some.

Not all distilleries do private bottlings though.  Four Roses, Willet (not really a distiller, but a producer of excellent whiskeys nevertheless) and Buffalo Trace are well known for their private offerings, but Heaven Hill has started doing them with their single barrel whiskeys too, and one will even find a private bottling of Wild Turkey’s Kentucky Spirit on occasion.

At any rate, in 2009, Four Roses decided to release some of their 10 recipes at barrel strengthas private bottlings to select liquor stores across the country.  Binny’s, as usual, got some of the best barrels.  This one, OBSO, is one of the constituent whiskeys in Four Roses Small Batch.

When sipped at barrel strength, it does that magical thing that high proof spirits do.  The moment a drop hits your tongue, it vaporizes.  This trick is amusing the first few times it happens.  After that, you decide you would like to actually taste it, and you decide you don’t want to have heartburn all night.  So you add a splash or two of water.

The whiskey itself is a dark amber, the proverbial copper penny color.  The nose has a lot of caramel, but a sharp edge to it, too, as the barrel char punches through.  Even with a splash of water, it’s still a hot whiskey.  But it’s a mature heat, more Kim Cattrall than Megan Fox.  The caramel is still there and even stronger on the palate.  The char has retreated a bit, but adds depth to the sweetness and keeps this whiskey from becoming one dimensional.  Not the best one of these Binny’s Four Roses bottlings I’ve had, but still worth the price of admission.

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Old Forester Birthday Bourbon 2009 Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey (KSBW)

Age: 12 y/o

Proof: 97 (48.5% ABV)

Distillery: Early Times, Shively, KY

Maker: Brown-Forman, Louisville, KY

Glass: Old Forester 75th anniversary of Repeal Glencairn Glass

On September 2, 1846 baby George Garvin Brown was born in Mumfordville, KY near Mammoth Cave, just over 70  miles down the Dixie Highway from  Louisville.  That bouncing baby boy grew up to found the Brown-Forman company, which is still doing brisk business in whiskey.  Brown-Forman’s flagship bourbon whiskey (for well over a century) has been Old Forester.  It holds the distiction of being the only pre-prohibition brand of bourbon that is still being made by the same company.  It is also one of the few brands to be made before, during (as a medicinal whiskey available by prescription) and after.  Besides Old Forester, Brown-Forman makes Early Times (soon to be a bourbon in the U.S. again).  In 1952 they purchased a little brand you may have heard of called Jack Daniel’s.

Old Forester Birthday Bourbon is a limited edition annual release.  Other distilleries do this too, most notably Buffalo Trace and Four Roses.  Like them, the folks at B-F go for a different profile every year.  Some years are certainly better than others, but they’re always interesting.

The 2009 edition is nothing if not interesting.  Some long-time members of Straightbourbon.com notoriously said this whiskey smelled and tasted of plastic baby diapers when they first opened it.  My response was “how do they know what baby diapers taste like?”  At any rate, when I opened it, I did notice an unusual odor.  I could see how it could have been interpreted as the smell of plastic.  It wasn’t really unpleasant, just odd.  That smell lessened the longer the bottle sat.

Now, the nose has moved closer to the conventional Old Forester nose.  It’s like a mincemeat pie.  Dried figs, raisans and dates seasoned with clove, nutmeg, and allspice.  It is fuller-bodied than the standard issue Old Forester.  When swirled (glencairns are especially good for this) it leaves big, sluggish “legs” in the glass.  Legs are those rivulets of whiskey, wine or whatever that are left after the liquid is given a good swirl.  Thick legs are a sign of a good body.

When it enters the mouth, though, things get weird.  The richness of the 2008 edition is there in the 2009, but it is soon overwhelmed by something.  What is it?  I’m not sure I know.  Maybe it’s smoke, or acrid wood, but a taste like you get when you hold a pill in your mouth for too long emerges.  The finish is bitter too.  Bitter chocolate, maybe, but whatever it is, it’s clearly coming from the char inside the barrel in which it was aged.

What do I make of this whiskey?  I don’t know.  Do I like it?  Yes, I think so.  Would I buy it again?  Probably not.  Will I buy the 2010 edition?  Oh yeah.

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Four Roses Single Barrel Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey (KSBW)

Age: No age statement (NAS), ca. 10 y/o

Proof: 100 (50% ABV)

Maker: Four Roses, Lawrenceburg, KY (Kirin)

Barrel: CS 36-2C

OK, I was actually drinking this last night.

When most whiskeys are made, a number of barrels from various locations and of various ages are mingled together to produce the desired taste profile.  Single Barrel whiskeys only contain whiskey from one barrel.  Barrels in different warehouses or different areas of the same warehouse will age differently and as a result will differently.  So most every barrel, even if made from the same recipe by the same distiller will taste differently.

Four Roses takes it a step further, though.  Partly as a holdover from when the distillery was making blended whiskey and partly as just pure brilliance, Four Roses actually makes 10 different bourbons.  They use two different recipes with five different yeast strains to accomplish this.  OBSV is the code for the recipe used for the Four Roses Single Barrel.  The standard yellow label version uses all ten recipes, at various ages.

The nose is intense, it is 100 proof after all, but it smells like the blossoms on my dwarf lemon tree.  It’s not a citrus smell, it’s somewhere between lilac and Bazooka Joe bubble gum.  The taste is definately sweet, but it quickly fades into a dry spiciness.  Not a lot of wood is to be found in spite of the whiskey being around ten years old.  But it does seem to be playing a backround role that can be hard to disentangle from the rest of the whiskey, sort of like the violas in an orchestra.  If they weren’t there, you’d notice, but they’re hard to pick out on their own.  Just when you think you have, you realize it was actually the second violins afterall.

Four Roses Single Barrel is, aside from any annual releases or special offerings, my favorite bourbon on the planet.  To me it’s like a Mozart symphony.  It is at once beautiful and elegant, even a little whimsical, but still powerful.  You come away wanting more, but not always sure that you want to do it all over again, because you wouldn’t want to cheapen the experience.

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Old Charter Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey

Age: 10 yrs.

Proof: 86 (43% ABV)

Maker: Buffalo Trace, Frankfort, KY (Sazerac, Inc.)

Glass: Small Buffalo Trace glass.

Old Charter is a pretty old brand.  A Mr. Chapeze founded the brand in the 19th century.  His house in Bardstown, KY is available for your next party or corporate event.  Anyway, the whiskey’s previous home was in Louisville at the old Belmont and current Bernheim distilleries (Bernheim replaced Belmont).  It was a sister of sorts to I.W. Harper, which is now only sold overseas, I believe.  They were both dumped when UDV (now known as Diageo) shut down both of their bourbon distilleries in Louisville back in the 1990s.  The brand was sold to whoever owned Buffalo Trace at the time.  While they didn’t keep the same mashbill (recipe), they did use a similar high-corn formula for it.

Old Charter 10 was one of the first bourbons I sought out when I first stated to explore the world of bourbon.  It was an early favorite of mine, but frankly it hasn’t faired as well as some of my other early favorites like Very Old Baron or Old Forester which I still love.  It’s affordable, which is a plus, and is 86 proof, which gives it some ooumph that other bourbons in its price range lacks.  But it just seems a bit dull to me now.

The nose has a bit of heat, that nose-clearing sensation one gets from liquor.  There’s a bit of sweetness, too, but like a stray cat it scampers off into the shrubbery almost as soon as you approach.  A corny sweetness like a praise chorus, but more pleasant,  greats the tongue as it enters the mouth, less elusive than the nose, but it eventually does scamper sooner than it should.  A bit of butterscotch is detectable as it fades into a middling, slightly woody finish.  A tiny tingle on the tongue is all that remains after a minute or so.  Could it be better?  Certainly.  Is it a bad pour for a lazy summer afternoon?  No.  It’s unassuming, even unengaging, but a pleasant, relaxing sip.

Three expressions are currently produced, an 8 y/o, this 10 y/o and something called Charter 101.  The 10 y/o is by far the best of the three.  At one time there was also a 12 y/o, 90 proof black label version called “The Classic”, and an upper shelf 13 y/o called Old Charter Proprietor’s Reserve (OCPR).  They can both still be found loitering on store shelves many places.  The Louisville version of the OCPR with the sharply sloped shoulders is highly sought after, but the Frankfort version is very good too.  As is “The Classic”.  A 7 y/o old was also made in the Louisville era.  Those years of Old Charter had a strong butterscotch smell that has its cult following but frankly makes me nauseous.