Overproof Day: Larceny Barrel Proof and Stagg Jr. Batch 13

Two barrel proof, cask strength, overproof whiskeys to taste today as I struggle to clear the tasting table (because Cathy wants it clear). I got the Larceny a while back, but the Stagg Jr. was just last month, so hey, practically immediate, that one. (And before I forget...thank you to both Heaven Hill and Buffalo Trace for not putting any damned wax on these bottles!)

Why barrel proof? I think Booker Noe said it best: so you can taste it the way he tasted it, the way a master distiller or blender tastes it -- full-bore, uncut, unfiltered, untouched. The only thing they do to this stuff is screen out the chunks of char and pick which barrels to pour in the dump trough.

No sense wasting any more time. Let's rip these open.

Larceny Barrel Proof Batch A120, 123.2° proof: No backstory, only this: wheated bourbon. No mash bill is given; guesses are that it's around 20% wheat, but take that with a grain of salt. The label says these are whiskeys between 6 and 8 years old. The batch number is pretty simple: A120, with “A” representing the first batch of that year, “1” representing January, and “20” representing the year 2020.

It's poured and waiting, and I can smell it from a foot away; sweet, smokey, vanilla, evocative of the deep hollers of the mountains. Get the nose in there, and you'd swear you were in the warehouse, it's that rich. This one isn't shy, unlike some other wheaters I've had. I can almost pick out some of that brawling character of the old Heaven Hill Bonded 6. There's a lot of caramel, an edge of burnt sugar, crème brûlée, all those hot, browned sugar things. But there is also a brightness -- a berry acidity -- and unsalted peanuts, with a nip of oak bark following on behind. Intense, but, hey, that's what you get from these heavyweights. Let's pull the trigger.

Heat, for sure, but not killing, and there sure is a lot else there. All that browned sugar, leaning more heavily toward the darker sides, and hot vanilla; that crème brûlée is really coming on strong. But there is some corn now, Indian pudding, the concentrated sweetness of parched corn. There's a big smacky paddle of oak behind it, too, and that pretty much lifts you into the finish, where it dominates that sweet caramel/corn.

Boys and girls, we're looking at a different Larceny here. Even at the standard 92° proof, Larceny is soft-spoken. This wheater is laying it down, and, maybe, is ready to go toe-to-toe with The Wheated Warrior: Mr. William Larue Weller (who, you'll note, delivers that same kind of crème brûlée and corn pudding richness...with less oak). If you've been looking for a wheater with the backbone of a big rye bourbon, this here bottle does it.

Stagg Jr., 13th batch, 128.4° proof: Did someone say "big rye bourbon"? Well, hello there, little fella! And I do like this bottle style: fireplug short, broad-shouldered, solid heft of whiskey in your paw. This one's a bit older overall than the Larceny ("eight years old" by the press release), and darker in color.

Pop it open, and you know it's a different whiskey. Every bit as bold as the Larceny, but without the cushioning sugar-caramel sweetness. Stagg just steps right up and sucker-punches you, BOOM, with a honker full of oak, a touch of wax polish, and bitter rye notes, like a rye bread without the butter or jam. It's lean, it's rippling, it's ready.

Me too. And there's a shock: there's a ton of sweetness lurking behind the austere aromas. Sure, it spreads on your tongue like a wave of blue flame, but now you taste the corn sweetness, the caramel, and the buoyancy of it all makes the heat bearable. The rye notes are like an iron core everything's anchored to, like the supports in an old brick building. Rye shoots through the sweetness, contrasts with it, works with it, and by the time we get to the finish, it's freakin' well waltzing with it.

And you know, after half an ounce of each of these, I'm feeling like dancing too. Two really good whiskeys here, each at a not unreasonable list price -- MSRP is $49.99, for each whiskey -- for a bottle of barrel proof bourbon. I can't tell you what you'll see on the shelf, of course, which is half the fight anymore.

Good luck!

I Can't Wait: Maker's Mark RC6

I have a table full of whiskey samples waiting to be tasted. I'm working through them. But every now and then...something shows up that I find exciting, and I just have to try it ASAP. That's what happened when I brought home a box that turned out to contain the new Maker's Mark RC6.

RC6 is the 'code-name' of the type of stave used for extra-aging the whisky. Maker's Mark has been working with Independent Stave Co. on a series of staves that can be hung (on special structures of food-grade plastic and stainless steel) in barrels of aged whisky. The staves have been heat-treated in a number of different ways: toasted, charred, infra-red, slow broils. RC6 is a selection by Maker's wood master, Jane Bowie: ten virgin toasted American oak staves.

But what interested me (in the context of having just written Whiskey Master Class) was a note from my Maker's Mark contact that "Jane Bowie spent years perfecting the finishing proof, and it's really special." Proofing, the act of deciding what proof the whiskey should be cut to before entering the bottle and then executing that decision. Here's what I said in the upcoming book:

Adding water changes the alcohol level, which changes the aromas that come forward. More alcohol will carry oak tones; lower the alcohol and the oak backs down, allowing the richer vanilla notes to come out. Distillers will proof whiskeys to different levels to find the optimum aroma profile or to find the level that brings out the particular flavor they’re looking for.
Adding water doesn’t change what flavor components are in a whiskey, nor does it take them away or add them. Adding water changes how whiskey presents itself to your senses, shifts what you sense first or more intensely.
It’s like a person changing her wardrobe. The person is the same, but your perception of them is different.

Jane decided that this whisky, finished with 9 weeks of cold-conditioned RC6 character, was best-dressed at 108.2° proof. Let's find out.

The heat's there, packed full of Juicy-Fruit gum, nutmeg, light clove, and dry cocoa. I drew in a big snoot-full, and got stung by the fire; beware. Light and frisky on the tongue: more spice, sweet pastry dough, and brighter fruits. The alcohol fire is there too, and I wonder...let's add some water. Call me a philistine, but that's lush with the water, more spready on the tongue. To me, it is...yummy, to use Bill Samuels's target phrase.

These limited offerings will be coming out once a year. Should be an interesting class in oak innovation.

Heaven Hill's Larceny

Time for honesty: usually when I get samples, even whiskey samples, they generally sit on my kitchen table for at least a couple days. The boxes are annoyingly wrapped, I've a tendency to procrastinate (I hear a whisper of chuckles from my editors), and, well, they'll still be there tomorrow.

But today, when I got this box from Heaven Hill...I was pretty sure what it was, so I opened it as soon as I got home. Sure enough, it's the new Larceny. Here's the description: "Larceny is a true small batch Bourbon produced from dumps of 100 or fewer barrels that have been selected from the 4^th, 5^th and 6^th floors of Heaven Hill’s open rick warehouses in Nelson County, Kentucky. Larceny is drawn from barrels that have aged from 6 to 12 years at this high storage, and is bottled at a full-bodied 92 proof, or 46% alcohol by volume."

But the key -- heh, heh -- point is that Larceny comes from the wheated bourbon that Craig and Parker have been making since Heaven Hill bought the Old Fitzgerald brand back in 1999, and Larceny references the story of John Fitzgerald. Or at least, one of the stories. It's the story that Fitzgerald was a treasury agent who had the keys to distilleries' bonded warehouses...and used them to pilfer whiskey -- the best whiskey, as he apparently had plenty of time to taste them. 

Enough talk. Let's drink! Well, it smells like Heaven Hill: hot sweet corn, light cinnamon notes, an edgy oak note. Mmmm, tasty. This is what I love about Parker's booze: it's always stuffed full of flavor, from the cheapest bottle of Heaven Hill white label all the way up through Evan Williams, Elijah Craig 12 Year Old, all the way on up to the Parker's Heritage bottlings. This is no exception, and it's sharp and lively with it. Imagine a hot sheet of whiskey glass snapping in your mouth and flashing to liquid; it's that quick and light. It's not sweet, it's spicy, oaky, shot with cornbread and a drying heat. The finish is encouraging, a warm tingle through the whole mouth.

I could see drinking this all night -- with a small application of water and a certain amount of pretzels or nuts -- with a group of friends, talking till it's gone. And at $25 suggested price, it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a spare.

Parker's Heritage Collection #4: 10 Year Old Wheated Bourbon

Ten years ago, Parker Beam started mashing wheated bourbon at Heaven Hill (well, okay, at Bernheim, the distillery Heaven Hill bought after theirs burned in 1996). The distillery had bought the Old Fitzgerald brand, and that is a wheated mashbill, so...Parker made wheated bourbon for the first time.

The Parker's Heritage Collection -- fine whiskeys from Heaven Hill's warehouses, selected by Mister Beam himself -- has put forth some real beauties lately, like this one. But this year, the Collection backs down from the extreme -- amazing -- age of the the last two (and backs down in price quite a bit, too), bringing us a 10 year old bottling of those first runs of wheated bourbon. This sample is non-chill filtered, and bottled at 127.8° of barrel proof, and it's just drinkable at full strength, which is pretty impressive. I know, I know...you guys can all drink uncut Stagg, whatever. I'm talking about a seriously overproof whiskey that you can actually drink without wincing.

So what do I get when I do? Sweet youthful corn, King syrup, sweet grass, and just a touch of mint make up the nose. The whiskey is overproof hot, but yields oak spice, cornbread, vanilla, and more mint on the end. Let's be smart and add some water. Much the same, without the heat; more enjoyable, good balance. You know...I screwed up and added too much water, and this whiskey didn't fall apart. Good sign.

I'm tasting it with some other wheated bourbons, like Very Special Old Fitzgerald (which I reviewed ten years ago here), Maker's Mark, Weller Antique, and a 19 year old W.L. Weller from Sazerac's Antique Collection. Let's make some comparisons. The VSOF (12 years old and 90° proof; made at Bernheim, but not by Parker) is richer, but simpler at the same time: the sweetness is more pronounced. Maker's Mark is the sweetest of the lot, though it still holds up well at around 6 years of age. Weller Antique has more of the overproof bite at 107° proof and about 7 years of age; the wood is a bit more forward on the higher proof, but I still love this one. The 19 year old Weller, though, doesn't hold up well in this relatively young company, tasting decidedly old and woody.

Back to the Parker's...decided difference here. I'm recalling that Parker likes them "high and dry," from the hotter floors, not sappy, with a firm wood note. It's here, and I think they caught it before it got too big. That's really pretty nice right at full-bore.

There's a similarity (not to say 'sameness'!) among these whiskeys, and it's not a lack of rye spice, but rather a firm sweetness; not sugary, but like that King syrup, or light molasses, a more mature sweetness. I should have maybe trotted out the bottle of Bernheim...maybe another night. I do think you'll like this one. I do.