Archive for July, 2010
High West Rendezvous Rye Batch #49
We’re in the midst of a rye whiskey renaissance. It was not too long ago that rye whiskies were pretty rare beasts, but during the past five years there’s been a boom in the number of rye whiskies that are available. What’s more, a lot of these are very good whiskies. Consider some of the highlights:
- Van Winkle 13-year
- Rittenhouse 21-, 23-year, and 25-year
- Black Maple Hill 18- and 23-year
- Sazerac 18-year and 6-year Thomas Handy cask-strength
Across the board, these are fabulous whiskies, attaining heights and complexities of flavor often reserved for only fine scotch and the very best bourbons. And following in the wake of these whiskies are a whole family of ryes from a wide variety of distilleries. Small, micro-distillers such as Tuthilltown in New York and Grand Traverse in Michigan are releasing high quality, small-batch ryes. And there are a handful of ryes coming out from independent bottlers that are receiving a lot of praise. In the past couple of months alone, Malt Advocate editor John Hansell has written about 5 different ryes. Significant, considering that rye is essentially just a niche in the broader whisk(e)y market.
High West is a distillery located in Park City who are participating in this rye renaissance in a dual role: as both distiller and bottler. The distillery was founded in 2007 by David Perkins, and shortly thereafter released their first bottles of rye whiskey. Young distilleries such as High West have two options open to them when it comes to releasing their first whiskies. They can either wait until the whiskey that they’ve distilled is ready for release, and perhaps take steps to speed the aging process, as Tuthilltown does with their small casks (3, 5, and 7-gallon). Or they can buy whiskey from other distilleries, and release it under their own label as whiskey “bottled by” them as opposed to “distilled by” them.
With their rye whiskey, High West chose the latter option, purchasing stocks of 6-, 16-, and 21-year old rye whiskey, and releasing three separate bottlings. The Rendezvous Rye is a blend of 6-year and 16-year rye, and was released alongside solo bottlings of the 16-year and 21-year rye. All told, the three are rather unique whiskies. The 6-year was distilled from a mash containing 95% rye, and the 16-year from a mash containing 80% rye, both much higher percentages than you typically encounter. The 21-year is the most typical rye of the three, distilled from a mash containing 53% rye. But it’s still unusual in that it spent all of its time aging in used barrels. The provenance of the three whiskies remains a mystery, despite rumors and guessing by some whiskey writers and bloggers. Most likely, the 6- and 16-year ryes were intended to be used as flavoring whiskies, since no other distillery has ever released such older stocks of high-rye whiskies before (besides Anchor Steam, and these whiskies aren’t from them), and it’s possible, yet doubtful, that one or both of them were distilled in Canada. What it comes down to, is that at this point, we don’t know where they come from.
What we do know is that they’re pretty nice whiskies.
Tasting Notes
This whiskey is bottle #1007 from batch #49, and it’s bottled at 46%.
In the glass, Rendezvous Rye is soft gold with amber highlights. The nose is interesting, intriguing. There’s the spicy nuttiness of tequila, along with chili pepper, black pepper, mint, mustard seed, shallots, and a hint of burnt sugar. The palate has a soft, mellow texture with some youthful heat on the backside. There are flavors of almonds, citrus, and spicy mint, supported by a sweet foundation of honey, caramel, and vanilla. The finish is medium-length with notes of demerera sugar, limes, spicines, and cocoa dust.
This is rye whiskey – vibrant, lively, spicy, and of a fiery temperament. It’s brash and electric in the glass, and is unlike any other American whiskey I’ve tasted, the only nearest point of comparison being Anchor Steam’s 100% rye whiskey. You can really taste the powerful presence of the 6-year old, 95% rye, and definitely come away with the impression of depth brought to the mix by the 16-year, 80% rye. All in all, the mix of the two whiskies is well-done, and blends their features nicely.
I have to admit, this whiskey took some getting used to. The rye component is so hugely pronounced, and I didn’t find the whiskey as a whole to be very well balanced. But, taste is very subjective, and so you should also check out John Hansell’s review of this whiskey, which is very positive. I agree with him when he said, “in the end, the rye is the victor, emerging with a vengeance and giving the whisky a bold, warming spice finish”. Yet, this left me wanting for something I couldn’t put my finger on.
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Glenfarclas 30-Year
Not all older whiskies are created equal. Whatever the reason behind it, there are simply some whiskies that age more gracefully than others, reaching a profoundness in maturity that others cannot quite achieve. Similar to some of the questions that I posed in a recent post about a Guatemalan coffee from Stumptown, I’m sure there are factors that play into the aging equation that some distilleries approach differently than others. Perhaps it’s the type of cask used, where the whisky is aged, or some step in the distillation process. But in the end, the reality is that some whiskies just age significantly better than others.
Glenfarclas is one of those.
What’s more, Glenfarclas is a whisky that expresses deep, enticing flavors throughout it’s lifecycle. From their basic 10-year bottling all the way up to the older, single-barrel bottlings, such as the 1968 single-cask that they released several years ago, Glenfarclas whiskies are singularly unique, and very good. But it’s really in their old(er) age that these whiskies hit their stride. I’ve tasted several that have passed the 30-year mark, and all were superlatively delicious.
Why is this? Why is it that this one distillery manages to so consistently produce and bottle such great whiskies?
Part of it surely has to do with their heritage and ownership history. Glenfarclas is one of only a handful of family-owned, independent distilleries, and has been in the Grant family for several generations (since 1865 to be exact). Instead of being part of a corporate portfolio, this is a whisky expressing the values and vision of a family whose heart lies within the distillery walls. Thus, careful attention to detail and a commitment to producing a consistently wonderful finished product are par for the course.
Another part of the explanation is their barrel program. Glenfarclas uses mostly Oloroso sherry casks, an increasingly rare feat in today’s whisky world. Whereas sherry barrels were more commonly used by Scotch distilleries in the not-too-distant past, due to issues with the quality of the barrels their use is more rare these days. Alongside a distillery such as Aberlour (who uses a high proportion of sherry casks, along with bourbon casks), Glenfarclas is one of the few dedicated to using such a high proportion of sherry casks. Furthermore, for their whiskies that will be released as single malts, Glenfarclas uses only first and second fill casks, and for the whisky that will be sold to blenders they use third fill casks.
Why does their barrel program make such a difference? Sherry casks lend such a different character to aging whisky, and I personally feel that whiskies in sherry casks age more gracefully than those in bourbon casks. Or perhaps it is that sherry cask whiskies just show more beautifully at older age than those in bourbon casks. Too, their dedication to using only first and second fill casks ensures that their oldest whiskies spend their whole lives aging in fresher barrels that will impart more character to the whisky, producing complex, layered whiskies after a decade or three.
But after these two obvious reasons, we really have to begin reaching, drawing conclusions that are little more than hypotheses. Does it have something to do with how they distill their whisky? Or the warehouses they age it in? How about the natural ingredients? The malt they use, their water source?
In the end, we can only really conjecture as to why Glenfarclas whiskies age so wonderfully. What we can do with certainty is enjoy the whiskies themselves!
Interesting tidbit: All of the male members of the Grant family are named either John or George. The current chairman is John L.S. Grant, and the current brand ambassador is his son George S. Grant.
Tasting Notes
The color of this whisky is an alluring deep golden with auburn tints. The nose is rich and sweet, and just goes on and on displaying notes of figs, red fruits, honey, and beeswax. The palate is medium textured, soft and supple without being heavy. There are velvety notes of salted caramel, creme anglaise, marzipan, rum-soaked fruits, and mesquite honey, all underscored by a layer of dry oakiness. On the finish, some citrus makes its way into the picture, accompanied by honey and fruit.
Overall, this is a very sweet, fruity, and fairly full bodied whisky, and an absolute pleasure to sip unhurriedly. It’s very gentle, and (unsurprisingly) I wonder what it would have been like at cask strength. The Scotch Malt Whisky Society occasionally offers older bottles of Glenfarclas, which of course are all single-cask, cask-strength bottles, and while I’ve never tried one, they are invariably one of the whiskies among their offerings that always arrests my attention. One of these days, I’ll have to take the plunge and order one. Hopefully before this bottle is kaput, as a side-by-side tasting is definitely in order.
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Allagash Brewing Co. Curieux
Last month I visited heaven on earth. It was during a recent vacation, part of which was a day-trip up to Portland, Maine. I’d always wanted to stop at Allagash Brewing, and so we made this one of the first stops of the trip.
All things told, Allagash is a fairly small brewery. They’re located in an unassuming building in a small industrial park, and produce ~4,000 barrels per year, 80% of which is their flagship beer, Allagash White. The remaining 20% is made up of a whole host of beers that includes a mix of year-round, seasonal, and one-off brews. They brew only Belgian-style beers, including the year-round Dubbel, Tripel, Four (a quad), and Black (Belgian imperial stout), seasonals such as Victoria Ale, Victor Ale, and Hugh Malone, and such inventive one-offs as Fluxus (a unique recipe each year), Confluence (fermented with Brettanomyces), Interlude (also uses Brettanomyces and is aged in red wine barrels), and Vagabond and Gargamel (beers fermented 100% with wild yeasts and fresh fruit). They’ve even produced a 100% spontaneously fermented beer, produced a dedicated building they built just to ferment this beer.
Curieux is part of their barrel-aged series that also includes Odyssey, although the similarities between the two stop there. Odyssey is a dark, high-alcohol wheat beer, a portion of which is aged in stainless steel and the other portion in medium-toasted American oak barrels. Curieux on the other hand is the result of taking their Tripel and aging it in Jim Beam bourbon barrels for 8 weeks before bottling. The barrel-aging imparts a profound change on the beer, and if you ever have the chance to try the Tripel and Curieux side-by-side, it’d be well worth it – the comparison is pretty exciting.
But these aren’t the only beers that Allagash ages in barrels. Several others are aged in barrels, not to mention a whole collection of barrel-aging experiments that they have going on at any one point in time. Thus how we ended up visiting heaven on earth.
Specifically, this was Allagash’s barrel room. Or rather, their barrel rooms. Since they are barrel-aging beers that use wild yeasts at the same time that they’re barrel-aging beers not brewed with these yeasts (such as Curieux), they have to avoid cross-contamination by separating the different groups of barrels into different rooms.
One room houses all of the non wild-yeast beers aging in bourbon, wine, or toasted barrels. While we were there this included many barrels of Curieux, Odyssey, and others – I honestly don’t remember them all. One I do remember though, were several bourbon barrels filled with Allagash Black*. I nearly fainted when I saw those. I desperately was hoping someone would come by with a wine thief and offer to pull a sample for us. Holy cow, that would have been amazing!
Anyhow, the other room full of barrels was the one housing all of their wild-yeast beers. There were a lot of barrels in this room, a number of which we’d never heard of and of which there were only a couple of barrels at best. Needless to say, these are not beers that will be bottled, but will only show up at special events. Keep your ears peeled!
The coolest part (ok, besides seeing all of those beers aging in bourbon-barrels!) was seeing how they treated the two sets of barrels. Each room was maintained at a different temperature, with the wild-yeast room being about 15-20 degrees cooler than the other room. I’m sure there are myriad reasons for this, among which are the much shorter amount of time that beers spend in the non-wild-yeast room. Several of the beers in the wild-yeast room had just begun their aging, having been there for a year or less, while others had been there long as two years or more.
On to Curieux! This beer uses Allagash’s house Belgian yeast strain, and is brewed to an original gravity of 1.080. This particular bottle was packaged in March 2010 from a batch that resulted in 789 cases. The final ABV is 11% (some of which was imparted by the bourbon barrel).
Tasting Notes
In the glass, Curieux is a slightly hazy, heather-gold with a tightly beaded pillowy white head 2-fingers tall. The nose has notes of sugared lemons, coconut, lavender, a faint whiskey note, and a hint of Belgian phenolics (think clove, cardamom, grains of paradise, and citrus). The palate is very effervescent, with plenty of carbonation blending nicely with the creamy, velvety mouthfeel. It’s here that your really get the full blast of the bourbon barrel-aging, as flavors of almonds, toasted coconut, vanilla, citrus, sweet malt, and just a hint of bourbon flavor float across your palate. The long, lingering finish leaves you wanting for more, with notes of lemon gumdrops, vanilla, caramelized crust of bread dough, and a whiff of wheated bourbon.
The nose on this beer is mesmerizing, and it does a fabulous job of setting you off on the mesmerizing journey that this beer is. I find the Tripel itself to be an okay beer, but it doesn’t wow me. But man, put it into a bourbon barrel and it turns into a heavenly elixir.
I have the bad habit of overlooking Allagash, simply for the (bad reason) that they’re right here in my background. But on the occasions when I get the chance to try some of their more off-the-beaten-path offerings such as this, I’m consistently amazed at how good the beers are.
*By the way, I recently got the chance to try the bourbon-barrel-aged Allagash Black at American Craft, and it was, as I’d hoped (and surmised), awesome!
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Great Divide Brewing Co. Colette Farmhouse Ale
Great Divide introduced Colette this past spring as one of a trio of beers that the company they re-released in new packaging (alongside Hoss and Claymore Scotch Ale). Colette had been previously released as Great Divide Saison in the spring of 2009, available then only in 22-ounce bottles. This time around, along with the renaming would also come new packaging, 6-packs as opposed to single 22-ounce bottles.
Saisons and farmhouse ales are one of the beer styles that has really risen to prominence in the past couple of years, as evidenced by the increasing number of American brewers producing some variation on the style. And herein lies the real beauty of this style, that it lends itself to myriad interpretations. Just take a look at two of the more prominent examples emerging from Belgium. Saison Dupont is generally considered the paragon of the farmhouse ale style, and it’s a fabulous beer. At once spicy, malty, refreshing, with layers of flavor and a notable yet restrained hoppiness. Then there are versions from Brasserie Fantome, perhaps the most iconoclastic of all brewers of this style. Their range of saison-inspired beers are usually inflected with some measure of brettanomyces, lending each beer an earthy character that is more pronounced in some versions than others. The Fantome Saison is very enjoyable, flavorful, and refreshing, while the seasonal saisons (“Ete”, “Hiver”, etc.) tend to have a more noticeable brett character, lending them a range of inspiring and challenging flavors found in few other beers.
American brewers’ versions are no less unique relative to one another. Ommegang’s Hennepin is fairly clean and refreshing, while Smuttynose’s Farmhouse Ale has more spice character. Pretty Things’ Jack d’Or is quite hop-forward, and Jolly Pumpkin produces the masterful, brett-influenced Bam Biere, while Goose Island ages their saison-styled beer Sofie in Chardonnay barrels. The result: you could head down to your local bottle shop, pick up a half-dozen bottles of Belgian and American farmhouse ales, and end up tasting six beers that had a clear familial relationship, but were utterly distinct at the same time.
Great Divide brews Colette using malted barley, wheat, rice and a blend of four different yeast strains. Fermentation takes place at high temperatures (saison yeasts tend to produce the bulk of their unique flavors at temperatures in the high 70’s and mid 80’s, much higher than most brewing yeasts like to operate), and the beer finishes quite dry, resulting in a final ABV of 7.3%.
Tasting Notes
Colette pours a pale, slightly hazy lemon-gold with a huge meringue-like head that drops very slowly, supported by a wealth of effervescent carbonation seething up through the beer. The nose has spicy belgian phenolics of cloves and grains of paradise, alongside lemon peel, leafy hops, wheat and grains. The palate is softly textured with effervescent carbonation. The range of flavors opens up with sweet malt, balanced by citrusy lemon and orange, followed by herbal leafy hops and clove and cardamom spices. Rounded sweet flavors make up a persistent, medium-length finish.
This is a lovely, refreshing beer that is perfect for a summer day spent outside, preferably while grilling. It’s refreshing and bright, good for both sipping slowly or diving right into and enjoying. I’m really falling in love with Belgian beers this summer. They’re proving to be so enjoyable and versatile, working well on both the days of striking heat or cooler rain!
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