WhistlePig was listed under the American Whiskey section.. and I will maintain that it's not an American product... as noted by Rob_flies_ua, it is sourced from Canada.. in fact they just received their permit to construct their distillery in the Summer of 2014.. they have become more forthright about the source of their whiskey... until last year they barely acknowledged it was of Canadian origin..

Some of it has been aged in Vermont.. it is definitely bottled in Vermont... but currently there's not a single drop of whiskey in the bottle that isn't Canadian... there's a lot of distilleries (rather bottlers) that will try to spin a good story; a history of the whiskey in the bottle when in fact (as far as rye goes) most of it comes from either Canada or a plant in Indiana... Templeton Rye was the most recent biggest offender of this...

So, I maintain that WhistlePig is a Canadian Rye... a very good Canadian rye, but a very expensive Canadian rye... Alberta Premium makes a number of expressions that are as good if not better and a whole heck of a lot cheaper....

FDW

Might be sacrilegious, but I like the Kirkland 7-year. Its basically Knob Creek at half the cost. It should be noted that I keep this to myself and don't serve it to my friend from Kentucky when he comes over. ;)
http://www.costco.com/Kirkland-Signa...100041197.html

I'm working on a bottle of Buffalo Trace. Will probably finish it over the weekend.

Not sacrilege.. lets be honest most bourbon in the USA comes out of 5-6 places... Heaven Hill, Beam, Buffalo Trace, Brown Foreman, etc... a lot of people buy it up and bottle it... some people try to make up some sort of BS story about the whiskey and charge a premium for it... while Costco is packaging solid whiskey at a great price.....

Nice! Buffalo Trace is a great summer whiskey....

FDW

Did I say before that I really like Larceny bourbon? I took a bottle a while back and put some used vanilla beans in it... maybe 3 total beans split in half which had been sitting in my sugar bin for a while to infuse the sugar. Very, very tasty in the Larceny bourbon (which is a great bourbon on its own IMHO).


My most-local ABC store claimed (and I take this with a huge grain of salt) that Buffalo Trace is going to start becoming an "allocated" product, meaning that each store will get only a limited amount of it and thus it will be hard to find.

This was in response to someone asking about Pappy (LOL), and the manager said, "Even Buffalo Trace is about to be a lot more rare on our shelves," and went on to explain the allocation bit.

I find it hard to believe that a minimally-aged, large-distillery, entry-level (if very tasty) bourbon will become so limited that VA ABC stores ration it out.

Sounds delicious.. I infuse a bottle every fall with apples and cinnamon which turns out quite nicely...


Ahh the dread allocated word... nearly everything has become allocated...

Sazerac rye, Elmer T Lee, Pogue, Rock Hill Farms, Old Weller Antique.. basically it seems that the demand is so high that they've taken to allocating almost everything... but this is the first I've heard of for Buffalo Trace.... by creating scarcity they are making everything worse....

thank god I probably have enough whiskey to last me till I die....

FDW

I saw lots of bottles of BT at this NYC liquor store yesterday. http://www.crushwineco.com/

However I noticed the pretty bottle of Angel's Envy bourbon and had to buy it. :p

rock hill is being allocated in places?

I haven't seen a bottle of Rock Hill in Baltimore in probably 2 years. Same with Old Pogue. I've never seen a bottle of Weller 12 either. But if you look at Florida and Texas they are swimming in Weller. So some of it must be regional. I've heard Louisiana gets a ton of Sazerac yet my local only managed to pull 6-9 bottles a year. I don't really get how this multi tiered liquor distribution works but I can so this with confidence: the consumer doesn't seem to win at all.

Is this your first Angels Envy experience? I'm not a huge fan of barrel finishes but the Angela Envy seems to be the most enjoyable if the bunch.

Fdw

Yes it will be my first, once I finish this trip and can get home and relax a bit.

check fairgrounds for rock hill. I haven't seen Weller 12 anywhere.

Drinking an Abraham Bowman "rare" tonight, the July release of a nearly-9-year "high rye" bourbon (estimated around 45%). I know Sazerac/Buffalo Trace supplies the distillate, and Bowman merely bottles it in VA, but I do like several of their products and like having a "local" bourbon with some age. (There are some true local bourbon distilleries in VA, but none have much age to them yet.)

This one is not bad, but at $70 a bottle, a bit richer than my everyday budget. I've had several of their other limited editions which also were solid bourbons, though probably better-priced at $50 than $70. I am somewhat annoyed that these days, any bourbon with more than, say, 4 years of age seems to run at least $50. I understand why (and yes, there are still $30-ish bargains with 8-12 years of age to them), but I don't have to like it!


Yeah, I've heard the "allocated" dirty word now from a couple of other sources re: Buffalo Trace. :( One of the guys did say, "Well, Ancient Age is bottom shelf, but it's not bad and comes from Buffalo Trace Distillery, if Buffalo Trace itself dries up."

OK, now I've had a bit of time to try the Angels Envy. It definitely doesn't taste like Jim Beam, I can tell you that. :) Seriously though, their marketing claims it was an experiment by their master distiller to do the Port barrel finish and I salute the experiment. And I think they got it right. It's not at all a pronounced difference in taste, but subtle and interesting. And by distilling to 86.6 proof rather than 80, it's a serious bourbon and not a slick trick club drink.

I do think there's very little effect of the port finishing evident on Angel's Envy. Now, their rye does definitely show off the effects of rum finishing (as I posted above, something I like--though I've subsequently also found I like good rye in general and my negative experiences had been with subpar ryes; even a cheap Rittenhouse BiB rye is very good IMHO).

The scary rumor is always that bourbon producers are considering 35 proof to attract "more ladies" away from the flavored vodka realms (shudder--like we need any more demand for bourbon?!--the real reason perhaps being cutting the limited supplies even further). I suspect very few are the real bourbons which will see a drop below 40; increasingly, "real" bourbons seem to be 90 or higher, bottled at "cask strength" in many cases even if just using marketing buzzwords.

After eluding me for years I finally found a few bottles of the 2014 Single Barrel and Small Batch Limited Editions. Cost me $100/bottle, but can't really complain considering how hard these are to find in the wild. Really looking forward to sampling these.