Archive for March, 2010
Four Roses Mariage Collection 2009 Edition
As time passes and my taste in bourbon evolves, I find myself increasingly attracted to wheated bourbons. The Weller Antique Collection and Pappy Van Winkle 15, are two of my favorites, possessing such smooth grace and beguiling personality in the glass. All the same, each time I taste Four Roses bourbon I’m surprised at the complexity this whiskey has. Not because I don’t expect it, I know this is top-shelf whiskey. But because I forget just how articulate and curious it is, how each sip reveals a new flavor or a different nuance.
Four Roses employs two different mashbills and five different yeasts to achieve this complexity. Their mashbills both have unusually high percentages of rye in them, one with 20% rye (code OE), the other 35% (code OB). The yeasts, identified by codes, all impart unique flavors to the whisky:
- V – Delicate fruity flavor
- K – Slight spicy character
- O – Robust fruitiness
- Q – Floral essence
- F – Light herbal essence
In turn, they age all of their whiskey in single-story warehouses, in order to ensure that all of the barrels develop evenly. Because they have up to 10 different recipes to call on when blending their whiskeys, they don’t need to use multi-story warehouses as other distilleries do.
Best of all, the range of bottlings that they release explicitly highlights the uniqueness of their production methods. The Small Batch includes four different recipes, the Single Barrel contains one (the OBSV), and then they have occasional special releases. The past couple of years they’ve released a unique, cask-strength single barrel bottling that uses a different recipe than the regular Single Barrel. The Mariage Collection is always a blend of two or three different recipes, and was first released in 2008. Both that year’s and this one’s are a blend of different recipes.
The 2009 Mariage Collection is a blend of 3 casks:
- 10-year OBSK (high-rye, “slightly spicy character” yeast)
- 19-year OBSK
- 10-year OESO (low-rye, “robust fruitiness” yeast).
It’s bottled at cask strength, 54.8% in this case. I’m tasting bottle 709 of 3432.
Tasting Notes
The whiskey is bronze-to-light copper in color. The nose has notes of vanilla wafers, honey, resin, and citrus. The palate is rich and spicy, with layers of caramel, nougat, candied orange peels, and ripe fruit. The texture is smooth, velvety, and lively owing to the higher percentage. A dash of water mellows things out nicely, lending a fuller mouthfeel to the whisky. The finish is warming, sweet, and lingering, with flavors of oak, honey, and orange.
This is a wonderful bourbon. The spices and citrus provide some real zest to what is an otherwise lush, layered, and mellow whisky, highly drinkable. In contrast to their single barrel, this has more sweet, mellow notes, and less of an emphasis on the oak and citrus that is such a hallmark of the single barrel. Easily my favorite Four Roses so far! Be sure to grab a bottle of this if you see it. And if you see the 2008 version, grab a bottle and send it to me! I’m aching to compare the two against one another!!
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Upcoming Tasting: Old Whiskies, March 27th @ Amherst Coffee
This Saturday I’ll be leading a stellar whisky tasting at Amherst Coffee that’s sure to be one of the most exciting we’ve done there. The topic will be “old whiskies”, and we’ll be featuring 6 Scotches ranging from 24 to 36 years old.
The lineup is cracking, and includes some closed distilleries:
- Brora 24-year
- Strathisla 25-year
- Millburn 27-year
- Laphroaig 30-year
- Longmorn 30-year
- Linkwood 36-year
Not bad, eh? Can you name the closed distilleries in that bunch?
This is going to be a great tasting. So if you’re interested, don’t hesitate to ring Amherst Coffee (413-256-8987) and reserve a seat. As usual, there will be two seatings, at 5pm and 7pm.
Hope to see you there!
Troegs Brewing Co. Nugget Nectar
It happens every spring. As the weather turns towards warmer temperatures and more sun, my enjoyment of hoppy IPAs is renewed. I find myself browsing store shelves looking for my favorite hoppy beers – Green Flash West Coast IPA, Bear Republic Hop Rod Rye and Racer 5, Founders Double Trouble, Victory Hop Wallop, Smuttynose IPA, and others. Instead of imperial stouts enjoyed while sitting in front of a warm fire, I find myself looking forward to savoring an IPA while sitting on the porch, basking in a late-evening sun.
And so a couple of weeks ago I finally noticed those bottles of Troegs’ Nugget Nectar sitting on the shelf. It comes out in February, but it wasn’t until the start of March that my eyes opened up enough to see it. Having heard about what a great, hoppy beer it was, I decided that it was time to give it a try.
Nugget Nectar is brewed by Troegs every February. The original gravity is right around 1.076, based on the ABV of 7.5%, and the beer weighs in with “93ish” IBUs. The malt bill includes Pilsner, Vienna, and Munich, and the hops used include Nugget, Warrior, Tomahawk, Simcoe, and Palisade. More varieties of hops than you typically find in a beer, even for a double IPA. And those are just the hops used in the boil. After cooling, the wort is run through a hopback that contains whole leaf Nugget hops, and then the beer is dry-hopped with Nugget and Warrior hops. So exciting, a total showcase for hops!
The result? An impressive, delicious, very refreshing beer.
Tasting Notes
Nugget Nectar pours crystal clear, light amber in color, with a fluffy white head that forms and drops slowly, leaving loads of lacing on the glass. The nose is a veritable citrus bomb! Grapefruit, lemon, lime, and pine hop aromas explode out of the glass. A hint of malt peeks in, but this is a hop show. On the palate, the beer is crisp and light, with citrusy hop flavors and a notable if not overwhelming degree of leafy hop bitterness. A welcome yet soft malt backbone supports the hops. The finish is a bracing clash of bitter hops and sweet malt. The bitterness really leaps in with both feet, followed by a wave of sweet malt.
In sum: wow! This beer is great. Supremely hoppy in a very refreshing way, and ably hiding the 7.5% alcohol. Not thick and syrupy the way some high-IBU beers are, instead this one really showcased beautiful hop aromas and flavors, providing just enough malt to keep it almost (but thankfully not entirely) balanced.
Go get some before it’s all gone!
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Van Winkle 12-Year Lot “B” Bourbon
As much as I enjoy rye whiskey, when it comes to bourbon my allegiances lie squarely with the “wheated” camp.
“Wheated” you say? Remember that bourbon is defined as having at least 51% corn in its mash bill. Most distilleries end up using 70-75% corn, filling in the rest with 11-13% rye and 10-12% malted barley. But there are a few whiskies that use wheat instead of rye to fill out that 11-13%. The result is a much different whiskey.
Rye lends a spicy, minty, resinous quality to bourbon that gives the whiskey a vibrancy in the glass that can be really alluring, and also enables bourbon (and rye whiskey as well) to go great in cocktails. Wheat on the other hand lends a softer, gentler, and more rounded quality to bourbon, bringing out the sweetness and giving it body and depth. Picture making caramel sauce and at the last moment having to choose between adding salt to make a salted caramel sauce, or adding another couple tablespoons of butter to add more richness. This is similar to choosing between a rye bourbon or a wheated bourbon.
And when I say that there are just a few wheated bourbons out there, I mean it. The readily available ones are Van Winkle bourbons, W.L. Weller bourbons, Maker’s Mark, and Old Fitzgerald. Maker’s Mark is certainly the most ubiquitous of these, and is a decent whiskey, just a bit young (~6 years typically). But it’s the Van Winkle and Weller bourbons that are the real showcases for wheated bourbons.
First, a little bit of history about the two labels. For several decades, both were made at the fabled Stitzel-Weller distillery, run by Pappy Van Winkle himself. The distillery closed in 1992, after which Buffalo Trace purchased the W.L. Weller label and began producing it at their Frankfort distillery. At the same time, production of Van Winkle bourbons moved to the Bernheim distillery, before Julian Van Winkle reached an agreement with Buffalo Trace to also produce the Van Winkle bourbons at their facility. So now both are produced at Buffalo Trace in Frankfort, KY.
Whiskies from the Stitzel-Weller distillery are an increasingly rare and sought after species. Just look at the prices for a bottle of Van Winkle 20 or 23 year-old! But while some folks may argue that the whiskey distilled under these names at later distilleries isn’t quite as good as the Stitzel-Weller distilled whiskey, the fact is that these are two excellent bourbons, no matter their age or where they were distilled.
As for which is a “better” bourbon, this entirely comes down to personal taste. I love wheated bourbons for how voluptuous and full-bodied they are, and how much depth of flavor they have. There are some great rye bourbons out there, but in my book wheated bourbons really take the cake. We even keep a bottle of Maker’s Mark around since it’s such a good, accessible wheater.
The Van Winkle bourbons in particular have a deservedly legendary reputation, and I’ve written about this here before. Suffice to say that the more you learn about Pappy Van Winkle and the history of this distillery, the more you appreciate the whiskies themselves!
This is the Van Winkle 12-year Lot “B”. Despite the name, there never was a Lot “A”, and there’s much open debate about what the Lot “B” means. This batch of the Lot “B” was distilled at the Bernheim distillery, sometime after 1993 and before distilling at Buffalo Trace began.
Tasting Notes
The color of this bourbon is coppery gold with nice, thick legs running down the sides. The nose has mellow notes of dark honey, marzipan, caramel, and caramelized onions. The palate is smooth and soft while still being light and lively. The alcohol is a bit hot and sharp, lending a vibrant, striking tone to the flavors that encompass classic wheated bourbon tones of vanilla, caramel, honey, and toasted almonds. On the finish, a note of citrus winds its way into the mix, alongside similar flavors as the palate, with honey and almonds being the most prominent.
A classic wheated bourbon. Surprisingly it feels a bit young on the palate, largely on account of the heat of the alcohol (despite it’s being just 45.2%). But the spectrum of wheated bourbon flavors are all there, and the result is a great sipping whiskey that won’t break the bank.
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Starbucks Mexican Chiapas
Occasionally I get caught up in the grasp of coffee-buying apathy. Invariably when this happens we end up running out of coffee, necessitating an urgent run to somewhere, anywhere to get coffee.
As result, two of the more recent coffees I’ve been drinking were Trader Joe’s Costa Rica Tarrazu (accessible and satisfactory, if not wholly enjoyable) and this bag of Starbucks’ Mexican Chiapas. While getting coffee at work one day, and knowing that I was buying a cup of Starbucks because we didn’t have any coffee at home for me to bring into the office, I saw this bag of one of their specialty coffees and decided to give it a roll. It was a double-bonus that it was from the same region as a Barrington coffee that I’d just finished.
This coffee is from the Chiapas region of Mexico, and was sourced from two specific farms, Santa Teresa and Guadalupe. The beans were grown at an elevation of 1000-1300 meters, and include the Catuai, Caturra, and Bourbon varietals. According to a post on their website, all of the coffee was grown under shade trees, though it doesn’t say this on the bag itself.
The most remarkable thing is the roast level of this coffee. Starbucks says that it’s their medium roast, and yet the beans are very dark and oily. To me, this looks like much more of a French roast, a level that carbonizes the bean to some extent, and releases more of the oils, creating a darker, sweeter cup of coffee. Dark roasts are, of course, typical of Starbucks approach to roasting, and is a style that really originated on the west coast with companies such as them and Peet’s. So I suppose that their’s is a subjective idea of a medium roast.
Contrast this to the approach that Barrington took with their Chiapas coffee. They used a City roast, and labeled it a “light roast” on the packaging. The beans are a light, milk-chocolate brown, with no oils coming through on any of them.
This is really a clash of two opposing coffee ideologies, the leveling approach as embodied in Starbucks’ dark roasts versus the embracing difference approach as captured in Barrington’s light roasts. But how does the difference play out in the cup?
Tasting Notes
The aromas in this coffee are very dark and roasty, with notes of molasses, toast, and vanilla bean. The palate is voluptuously smooth and soft with little acidity. There are flavors of hazelnuts, milk chocolate, vanilla wafers, toast, and a distant hint of black cherries. The finish is very dry and dark, with the flavors melding into a seamless, rather indistinct mash of molasses, nuts, and chocolate.
All in all, the flavors are okay, but lack much in the way of nuance. The overall impression was a melange of rich, dark, sweet flavors, and very smooth. It’s hard not to wonder what it would have been like at a lesser roast.
And here’s where the differences in Barrington’s approach play out relative to Starbucks. With Barrington’s lighter roast you get a much brighter cup of coffee, one that enables the nuances and layers in the coffee to shine. Starbucks’ approach leads to a more indistinctly, darkly flavored cup.
Is one better than the other? It’s really a question of preference, but if you like a coffee that is expressive of where it came from and what makes coffee from that place unique, then you should pick up the Barrington Coffee Chiapas. On the other hand, if you like heavily roasted coffees, then this one isn’t really much different than Starbucks’ other coffees, expect perhaps with less of a dark char flavor, and so I’d say give this one a roll.
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