Laphroaig 10-Year Cask Strength
For me, Laphroaig will always represent the most elemental aspects of whisky that first blew my mind several years back when I was just getting to know scotch. It was the first crazily smoky, peaty whisky that I drank, and the first cask strength too. On both accounts, my palate was altered for good, and to this day I’m still not sure if it was for the better!
It’s with good reason that each bottle of Laphroaig carries the seal of the Prince of Wales himself, as this is no ordinary whisky:
By appointment to HRH [His Royal Highness] the Prince of Wales, distiller and supplier of single malt Scotch whisky, D. Johnston & Co., (Laphroaig) Isle of Islay.
I still remember giving my mother a taste of Laphroaig 10, and hearing her horrified remark that it tasted like someone had filled her mouth with charcoal. Definitely not everyone’s cup of tea, or whisky for that matter. Laphroaig is one that you have (read more)
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People’s Pint Imperial Stout 2009
I have a soft spot in my heart for the People’s Pint, the little brewpub located in Greenfield, Mass. that I first discovered many (many) years ago when I was an undergrad out in the Pioneer Valley. The local beer scene was really just taking shape then, and I loved the People’s Pint’s combination of good food, relaxing atmosphere, and reliably good beer.
I moved out of the area a while back, and my last couple of visits haven’t been as fulfilling as my previous ones, even owing to the vagaries of memory. I still thought the food was good, and the atmosphere nice, but the beer was a bit of a let-down. On each occasion I’ve been there in the last couple of years, the beer was really just ok. Some pints seemed a bit low on carbonation, even for English styles, and others just lacked a real zip of flavor and personality. But hey, I’m happy to give them (read more)
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Founders Brewing Co. Old Curmudgeon
Lately, I’ve been been mulling over the phenomena that Founders Brewing Company’s beers have become. Myself, I only really discovered their wares last year, in the fall of 2008. That was when I first tried their Breakfast Stout, and I never really looked back. Since then I’ve tried most any beer from them that I’ve found, worked hard to get my hands on a 4-pack of the Kentucky Breakfast Stout, and am already looking forward to trying some of their newer beers at the upcoming Extreme Beer Fest.
But what’s really caught my attention has been the overwhelming response to their newest beer, Nemesis, a wheat wine aged in bourbon barrels for 9 months. I first saw this announced a couple of weeks ago, although rumors about it have been bouncing about for a while now. Since the announcement of its imminent release, the hype-driven beer culture has gone into full-swing, and more forum posts, news items, etc. have been posted (read more)
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Wathen’s Single Barrel Bourbon, Barrel #818
The story of Wathen’s bourbon is a bit of a puzzle that I put together after scouring far too many websites and whiskey forums. Here’s how it goes:
The Wathen and Medley families are intertwined in the production of Wathen’s Single Barrel, and both have long histories of distilling in Kentucky, generations in fact. They’ve intermarried several times, and thus their distilling histories and paths began to overlap at some point. I’ve even read that a Medley has been a master distiller somewhere in Kentucky from 1812 until 1991, not a bad stretch of time. The Medleys at one point owned three distilleries in Owensboro, and the current Charles Medley Distillery site is one of these.
Charles Medley, the owner and master distiller of Wathen’s Single Barrel, is the former master distiller at the Glenmore, the former distillery located in Owensboro that was closed after its purchase by United Distillers in 1991. After the purchase, United sold the property and brands to (read more)
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George T. Stagg Bourbon 2009 Edition
George T. Stagg Bourbon is one of those rare spirits that leaves you in a state of awe after you’ve tried it. This is due as much to the staggeringly high percentage (70.7%) as to the incredible quality of the whiskey itself. I still remember the first time I had the chance to try Stagg. It was the 2007 release, and I remember being immediately taken with its deft combination of finesse and power, like a velvet glove cast in iron. It rolled across your palate, teetering on the edge between delivering powerful waves of flavor and obliterating your taste buds completely. Absolutely spellbinding.
The Stagg bottling is part of Buffalo Trace’s annual Antique Collection that also features the Eagle Rare 17-Year, W.L. Weller Cask-Strength, Sazerac 18-Year Rye, and Thomas Handy Sazerac 6-Year Cask-Strength Rye. There’s good reason that these bottles are in high demand upon release, and very hard to find. Each offering in the Collection is a reliably excellent (read more)
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Hair Of The Dog Brewing Co. Blue Dot Double IPA
Hair Of The Dog, my favorite little brewing company in the brewing nirvana that is Portland, Oregon, is one of the couple of breweries whose beers I always have on my radar. Whether it’s during a trip to New York where you can occasionally find some of their offerings, or a rare trip out west, I always look to come back with a couple of their beers to try, and maybe to hold onto to for a while and see how they develop. This past trip out to Portland I was on the lookout for their Blue Dot IPA, a beer I’d tried on draft during our previous trip.
I still remember the evening that I first tried it during that previous trip. It was also my first visit to the Horse Brass pub. We were with some friends, and after dinner, knowing that we were interested in beer, they took us to the Horse Brass. I still remember being floored (read more)
Barrington Coffee Roasting Co. Holiday Reserve Sulawesi Toraja
For the past few months I haven’t drunk much coffee. I haven’t ordered any in a while, in part because we decided to delve into some tea a bit. I know next-to-nothing about tea and so it’s been fun exploring some of the Chinese teas imported by Silk Road Teas. I sometimes think the nuances and delicacy are lost on me, as most often I feel like I have a pretty rudimentary palate. Whether or not this is true, and however much I was enjoying tea, I was pretty darned happy when a friend recently gave me a half-pound of Barrington coffee. It felt like coming home.
In fact, the extent of my excitement at trying this new coffee from Barrington was really an indication to me of how much I had been missing coffee. No offense to the tea enthusiasts out there. I like tea, but at heart I’m really more of a coffee person. It suits my personality more. Drinking (read more)
New Belgium Brewing Co. La Folie
Belgian lambics have fascinated me ever since I first got interested in beer. It was Belgian Trappist beers that really drew me to beer in the first place, but lambics captured my imagination in a way that no style of beer had until that point. And so when I decided to begin homebrewing, one of the first homebrew books I bought was Jeff Sparrow’s Wild Brews. After reading this through, and trying nearly all of the lambics that I could get my hands on, I found myself reaching further afield for beers in this style. Needless to say, I quickly became interested in beers from breweries such as Russian River and New Belgium.
I’ve written before about Russian River’s “wild” beers, Temptation and Supplication in particular. Early on those were beers that I went out of my way to find. But New Belgium’s La Folie was actually the first American beer in this style that I was fascinated by, curious about, and (read more)
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Ardbeg 10-Year
It’s hard to believe that just over a decade ago Ardbeg nearly closed for good. The whisky is so remarkable and so unique, and so emblematic of the image of an Islay whisky, it’s unbelievable that it came so close to disappearing for good in 1997. Yet, I suppose this is just another way in which it is emblematic of Islay whiskies – the island’s distilleries have historically struggled to keep their doors open, with several of the remaining distilleries suffering near-permanent closures, and one giant – Port Ellen – having permanently closed in 1983.
There are interesting parallels in telling the stories of two of Islay’s recent success stories, Ardbeg and Bruichladdich:
- Both weathered very serious downturns and closings in the 1990’s before being bought by new owners around the turn of the century. In the case of Bruichladdich they were purchased in 2001 by a group of partners spearheaded by Mark Reynier of Murray McDavid, and Ardbeg was purchased in (read more)
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Alaskan Brewing Co. Alaskan Smoked Porter 2008
One of the few beers that I was really hot to try during our not-so-long-ago excursion out West, was the Alaskan Brewing Company’s Smoked Porter. I distinctly remember a few years ago when I began homebrewing and bought an issue of Zymurgy, there was an article in the back featuring a tasting of several vintages of the Alaskan Smoked Porter. I was relatively new to beer and brewing, and the concept of vintage beers was totally foreign to me.
Accelerate a few years forward, and while I’ve had the good fortune to sample a number of tasty beers, the Alaskan Smoked Porter has always stuck in the back of my head as one of those I’d like to try someday. Not an easy thing to do, since it isn’t distributed anywhere near our state, and we rarely travel out West. Thus it being one of the handful of beers that I was really looking for during our trip.
Alaskan Brewing Company first brewed (read more)
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