Category: Spirits
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Whiskey Wednesday: The Open Story of Uncle Nearest
Today is not about depleting old bottles but celebrating something relatively new that honors something very old. A story that was an open secret yet like all open secrets unacknowledged. And being unacknowledged also means it’s a story not told. This is the story of Uncle Nearest. Nathan “Nearest” Green was a slave in Tennessee […]
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Quarantine Bottle Kill #6: Tanqueray #10 and the 5:00 Martini
It’s not all about whiskey over here. Just like this weekly bottle talk isn’t just about drinking. It’s a mental check in with myself and an attempt to connect with my community as we shelter and wonder what our industry will look like once we start hosting happy hours outside of digital boxes again. When […]
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Quarantine Bottle Kill #4: Single Oak Project #156
I’m trying to cut down on the quarantine drinking so today’s bottle is a single 375 of Buffalo Trace Single Oak Project. The Single Oak Project was a massive Bourbon experiment that was begun by Buffalo Trace in 2011. The goal was to break down the very DNA of Bourbon and be able to catalogue […]
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Whiskey Wednesday: Take Off of Taketsuru
Continuing this month’s conversation about Nikka comes the news that Nikka will be discontinuing the Taketsuru 17, 21, and 25 Year old expressions as of March of 2020. The Taketsuru line represents NIkka’s history. It pays homage to its founding father as well as combining the art of both of the company’s distinct distilleries. The loss of the Taketsuru line is the loss of a piece of history but it does open a future. Whisky, and in particular Japanese Whisky, is having an incredibly large moment. Bit even if whisky distilled 25 years ago is being depleted left and right the world, and the flavor, that whisky represents is gone. The challenge now is to find the way to create the spirit that fills the barrel to be bottled in 25 years while still keeping the lights on in the years between.
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Whiskey Wednesday: Nikka Days of Our Lives
I love a good story and Nikka Whisky certainly has a good story. A story of both an excellently crafted whiskey but also a phenomenal story in the life of the company’s founder, Masataka Taketsuru. The month of January is especially important to the story of Taketsuru and his redheaded Scottish wife, Rita. So, I thought I’d take some time and look at a few of Nikka’s offerings for the rest of January.
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Drinking Poetic: Cascading Lines
This is the story of a drink that got away from me. As I’ve said before I tend to turn every drink into a brown, bitter, and stirred variation on a theme. It should therefore come as no surprise that I’ve been trying to play around with some version of a hopped Old Fashioned style drink for […]
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Drinking Poetic: The Old Fashioned
“I prefer things the Old Fashioned Way!” said every generation ever as things changed around them. The Old Fashioned is my favorite cocktail. It appeals to me on such a deeply intellectual level that it rivals the psychic imprint that Lord of the Rings had on me in the third grade. And the imprint this […]
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Open Bottle: Yamazaki 18 Year Single Malt Mizunara Cask
In today’s edition of things you’ll never get to taste: Yamazaki 50 Year Old! On Friday August 17th 2018 a bottle of 1st edition Yamazaki 50 Year Old, one of only 50 bottles to exist, sold at auction for $312, 519.87. This is now the most expensive bottle of Japanese whisky ever sold at auction, beating the […]
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Whiskey Wednesday: Early Times Proof of Concept
I’ve talked about it before but I’m really into traveling. Travel opens our eyes to new things, it also shines a new light on the familiar and common place. While most people filter this experience through art or culture being a bartender and a boozehound I end up seeing it through the glass at the […]
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Whiskey Wednesday: Nikka From The Barrel and to the US
One of the best things about traveling is seeing what is out there in the world that can’t be seen from home. When it comes to spirits traveling abroad often means encountering ex-pat style spirits; bottlings like Blanton’s Straight From The Barrel, an Early Times bottled at 37.1 Proof, or the Wild Turkey 13 Year. […]
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