— No. 143 —

Bargain Bourbons

If you’re like me, you’ve prob­a­bly won­dered what is the best bar­gain when select­ing a bour­bon that won’t break the bank. Well, we decid­ed to put that query to the test. We select­ed sev­en bour­bons that were all pur­chased for under $25 and blind taste test­ed them. The results were quite infor­ma­tive. Some results were pre­dictable. Some were eye opening.

— No. 142 —

Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve

Well, we were lucky enough to get our hands on a bot­tle of Pap­py Van Win­kle’s Fam­i­ly Reserve 15 year, which some say is the best of the prod­uct line. It was­n’t an easy task secur­ing a bot­tle that’s for sure. This line of wheat­ed bour­bon has a cult-like fol­low­ing. The craze got its start in 1998 when Van Win­kle 20 year was sub­mit­ted to the pres­ti­gious Bev­er­age Tast­ing Insti­tute. It received an unheard of rat­ing of 99 out of 100.

— No. 141 —

Willett Exploratory Cask Finish (XCF) Version 1.0

XCF) Version 1.0">

I love that the Wil­lett team is get­ting cre­ative with this new Explorato­ry Cask Fin­ish (XCF) prod­uct line. Ver­sion 1.0 is a sev­en-year-old rye fin­ished in Cura­cao casks. The rye was dis­tilled by MGP of Indi­ana (I know, I know…) and then aged in Wil­let­t’s ware­hous­es for sev­en years in Amer­i­can white oak bar­rels with a #4 char.