Whiskey Fest 2008 - Part 2

[Part 1]

When I first got there I made a dash to the Woodford Reserve table to taste the new sweet mash whiskey. It was pretty good. The nose is quite different than the previous Woodford products. The taste is a little on the heavy/oily side. The big difference is that you don’t taste the nutty notes that are typical of Woodford. This one has more of the fruity leathery taste. Not a home run but a solidly hit double.

Next I hopped over to taste the Repeal Bourbon by Old Forester. I have to say I wasn’t impressed. It didn’t seem that different from the standard Old Forester which may be a compliment I’m not sure. Next was the Four Roses booth. I happen to like both their single barrel and small batch expressions. Light and smooth. But the Marriage just wasn’t that special. Nothing about it stood out. It was a little sharper than I expected compared to the other expressions. Lastly I headed over to the Buffalo Trace booth to taste whatever it was that they were pouring. I had some of the Sazerec Rye. It was good. I need to taste more Ryes and I like the sharp spicy tastes. I did get to taste the Rye1 product. It was good but to be honest it was late in the evening and I wasn’t remembering much by then.

At this point Aron called me and I headed out to give him his ticket. It took a couple of minutes for him to get through the line at which point I took the opportunity to pass the Wild Turkey booth. They weren’t pouring anything new this year and I got a taste of the American Sprit. I tried to ask the master distiller for his opinion on the Scotch naming brouhaha that happened over the summer but he didn’t seem to make any connection to bourbon.

At this point I picked up Aron and we headed into the Heaven Hill session. The session room were BIGGER this year. It was about time. There was plenty of room and we didn’t feel crowded. This was the first time I was at the Heaven Hill session having been at the Woodford session the last three trips. I have to say that marketing presentation was nice and Larry Kass was suitably self deprecating about it. The actual format the choose was absolutely awesome. He opened by asking how old Methuselah was when he died and I was glad the Jewish guys in the front got it correct :) I like that they picked a point that they wanted to make, namely that it is often temperature swings rather than age the impact the whiskey, and had on hand the necessary produce to make the point. Like a science experiment they gave you two samples where everything was controlled and only one variable (the floor) was changed. This allowed them to drive their point home. When we heard the swing difference from the 3rd to th7th floor Aron and I looked at each other and said “Wow”. You could tell that the 7th floor whiskey was bitter and didn’t taste very good.

A couple of random notes. I sat in front of one of their employees, a women who was in charge of marketing or something. This is the second year in a row that I had that good luck as she was able to answer my follow up questions without me having to bother the entire group. The color difference between the whiskeys was pronounced and they only got 4 bottles from the barrel.

Next time meeting Mike Gillespie and the list of whiskeys I tasted