Spirit Reviews, Tasting Events and Consulting
Searching for the world's best drinks and what makes them extraordinary. EZdrinking is a drinks blog by Eric Zandona that focuses on distilled spirits, wine, craft beer and specialty coffee. Here you can find reviews of drinks, drink books, articles about current & historical trends, as well as how to make liqueurs, bitters, and other spirit based drinks at home.
Happy New Year! 2017 was a banner year for me. I was commissioned to write a book about bourbon called The Bourbon Bible which will be published in May 2018, and because of the book and my other spirit reviews, I tasted well over 120 whiskies in 2017. With all of these under my belt I felt like a top 10 list was in order. Now not all of these were newly released in 2017 but for many, it was my first time drinking them.
J&B Rare Blended Scotch Whisky is a great value blend that is a little too sharp to drink neat but works great on the rocks, or in a highball. Check this out of you are looking for a good blended Scotch with a bit more smoke and malt character then Johnnie Walker Red Label.
George Dickel Classic No.8 Sour Mash Tennessee Whiskey has nice notes of apple cider and pear with a light aroma of caramel and oak lingering in the background. The finish is soft sweet and lingers with long notes of caramel, cinnamon, oak and pear. This is a very nice light flavor Whiskey that is slightly sweet and fruity. Excellent neat and works great in a tall refreshing cocktails.
Wyoming Whiskey Small Batch Bourbon Whiskey has rich notes of caramel, oak, and cinnamon followed by flavors of plums, and peaches. After swallowing, the whiskey is sightly warm in the mouth with a lingering note of stone fruit and vanilla. This is a very fine example of a craft bourbon that should be drunk neat or used in a cocktail.
Nelson's First 108 Tennessee Whiskey is a special release from the first 108, 30-gallon barrels of their self-distilled and aged spirit. The whiskey is incredibly complex with notes of caramel, vanilla, raisin, prunes, nutmeg, cocoa, tobacco, and rich black earth. This is a complex and interesting Tennessee Whisky that shows incredibly promise for the whiskeys that are likely to come from Nelson's Green Brier.
Waitsburg Cask Strength Bourbon Whiskey is an aromatic and flavorful bourbon with notes of cinnamon, nutmeg, creme brulee, and rum raisin followed by a touch of oak for balance. Overall this is a big sweet bourbon that is completely drinkable at 58% ABV and definitely a whiskey for those who like sweeter bourbons.
Joseph Magnus Straight Bourbon Whiskey envelops you with deep and complex notes of fruit cake, dried fruit, baking spice, candied orange peel, dark cherries and raisin balanced by tobacco, leather and oak. This is a really fantastic and well balanced bourbon.
Johnnie Walker Wine Cask is a really fruity and approachable expression of Johnnie Walker and is a really nice addition to the traditional lineup. This whisky also demonstrates how much character can come through the cask selection. For less than $30 this is a deal.
Garrison Brothers Single Barrel Texas Straight Bourbon Whiskey has rich notes with dark aromas of vanilla, dried fruit, and tobacco, balanced with nice wood notes of cedar and oak accompanies by hints of smoke and dark chocolate. This is an excellent bourbon especially at only 3 years old. It is rich in flavor, incredibly smooth at 94 proof and well worth the investment if you are looking to splurge a little.
Elijah Craig Single Barrel Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey Aged 23 Years is incredibly rich and concentrated with notes of dried fruit, rum raisin, cherries, plum, baking spice, vanilla and caramel, followed by a light bright note of alcohol. This is a rich and decadent bourbon that is both very sweet and well balanced with dryness from the oak. Definitely drink this neat and savory the rich complexity that comes from 23 years of developing and concentrating flavor in a an oak barrel.
Kings County Bottled in Bond Straight Bourbon Whiskey is rich and decadent with notes of fig, dried fruit, caramel, vanilla and baking spice. the whiskey very smooth with a medium body and slightly sweet on the palate. The finish is long and dry though there is a sense of sweetness from the lingering flavor of vanilla that is intermixed with oak and tobacco. This is a very complex bourbon that is packed full of flavor. Kings County had come into their own and are no longer dominated by small barrel flavors. Drink neat to experience all it's flavor and intensity, or add a little water to soften the alcohol slightly.
Image from Cedar Ridge Distillery
In 2005, Jeff Quint opened Iowa’s first grain-to-glass distillery with a 35-gallon Christian Carl still. “It was all the still I could afford at the time,” said Quint. “I remember our TTB field agent coming in to do an audit, letting me know I could never make any money with that one little still. He may have been right.” However, over the past 12 years Quint has been able to successfully diversify his business, increase his production capacity and aging stock, hire more employees and take steps to mitigate the environmental impact of his production without taking on outside investors.
Quint grew up on a farm about 45 minutes north of the distillery in Winthrop, Iowa, and his wife Laurie lived on a farm only a couple miles away. Laurie’s family has been working the 800-acre Aljumekaal Farm for three generations. Together they have four children, and their two oldest sons, Murphy and Nolan, work in the family business; Laurie is the office manager. Murphy is their wholesale business director, and Nolan is a warehouseman. The family farm grows 400 acres of corn, and the distillery consumes only a small fraction of the approximately 70,000 bushels produced annually. Cedar Ridge trucks in the corn 900 bushels at a time.
“The corn used in our bourbon is 100% from our farm,” said Quint. Cedar Ridge procures the other grains needed for their whiskeys — malt, rye and wheat — from North Dakota via Cargill.
Not long after opening, Quint ran into the problem of having so much local demand he could sell every drop he made. However, selling every drop does not leave room for long-term growth or ability to lay down stock to age. “It took me a while to realize that, in the whiskey business, you must plan out your production and sales many years in advance and then commit to never selling more than your plan,” said Quint. After reaching a minimum level of profitability, Quint began using a small surplus to focus on production and putting barrels aside to age.
“Our production team is, right now, fulfilling our projected sales needs three to five years out, while our sales team is selling our production from three years ago,” said Quint. “There’s really no other way to do this over the long term, if you wish to grow.”
By adding a 200-gallon Carl stripping still and a 100-gallon Carl finishing still, Cedar Ridge is now able to produce four barrels of whiskey a day running two shifts, six days a week. The distillery produced the equivalent of 50,000 nine-liter cases of whiskey while selling only 15,000 in 2016. For 2017, Quint plans to increase his production to 60,000 cases and sales to 20,000 cases. Cedar Ridge has ordered an 800-gallon Carl still, which Quint plans to bring online in 2018. To handle the increased production they plan to build two additional rickhouses to store 6,000 total barrels. This additional capacity will give them the storage necessary to support expansion into more states and select export markets. “We’re growing about as fast as we can afford to grow, without involving outside equity,” said Quint.
Producing 50,000 to 60,000 nine-liter cases of whiskey a year produces a significant amount of waste. Coming from families with deep roots in Iowa farming, Jeff and Laurie are also concerned about how their distilling impacts the land around them. Quint uses a lautering system for all of their grain spirits so their stillage is very low in total suspended solids, but the liquid stillage has a high biochemical oxygen demand. To reduce the environmental impact from their effluent, Cedar Ridge created the Sustainable Stillage Reclamation Project, which consists of thousands of plants and a series of bioswales (channels) and weirs (gates) that allows the water to re-oxygenate as it passes along the stream. The plants are able to draw on the available nutrients, and the stream stabilizes the oxygen demand so there isn’t a bloom in bacteria and microorganisms. Spent grain from the distillery feeds 160 pigs on a nearby farm.
At the time of starting the distillery, Quint also built a winery, which expanded to include a restaurant and event space. Winemaking is in Quint’s blood, as his great-grandfather Johann Quint emigrated from the Mosel wine region in Germany to Iowa in 1881. A prominent winery in Wintrich, Germany, Weingut Quint, still bears the family name.
The Cedar Ridge Winery & Distillery is situated on 17 scenic acres of land about midway along the corridor between Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. From atop a small rise, the distillery overlooks 10 acres of terraced grapes, which supply juice for about 25% of their annual wine production of 8,000 cases. A little more than half of the wine is sold at the distillery, while the rest goes to Iowa state stores. The winery adds about $1 million in revenue, while the restaurant and event center add another cool million, funding a lot of the expansion and barrels laid down. Diversifying their revenue streams and creating a destination has helped Cedar Ridge bring in approximately 60,000 visitors a year off the nearby interstate and increased its overall profitability. The events calendar includes live music on Friday nights, and a Blues and Bourbon Festival in July.
Cedar Ridge currently employs 45 people with 30 full-time equivalents, with seasonal fluctuations. And while Quint has high expectations for his employees, he is also willing to reward them. Three of his longest-serving employees—General Manager Jamie Siefken, Head Distiller and Production Manager Kolin Brighton and Wholesale Business Director Murphy Quint—have been given stock appreciation rights. Quint says this aligns their goals with his own: creating value in the company. If Cedar Ridge is ever sold, or continues to grow, these stock appreciation rights will allow them to share in the company’s financial success.
Thankfully, the State of Iowa recently allowed craft distillers to create additional revenue streams. This April, Governor Terry Branstad signed HF 607 that allows licensed craft distilleries to serve cocktails with the alcohol they make and increase their maximum annual sales to 100,000 proof gallons a year. Prior to this, Cedar Ridge could only give free on-site tastings of their distilled spirits and sell two bottles per customer for off-premise consumption. The bottle limit has now been raised to nine per customer per visit.
Despite these benefits for craft distillers, state and federal excise taxes are still the single largest operating expense, costing $11 per bottle. Since Iowa is a control state, all the spirits Cedar Ridge sells must go through the state Alcohol Beverage Division, including those sold out of their gift shop. The spirits are trucked to a warehouse in Cedar Rapids and dropped off, selling it to the state for $18 a bottle, payment for which they will receive in a month. The driver then walks around to the front to pay $27 a bottle, plus a one-dollar per case handling fee, before pulling the truck up to the dock again to pick up the spirits. Cedar Ridge then sells this bottle in their gift shop for $35.
Jeff and Laurie Quint have created a model company for the industry. Cedar Ridge is a growing craft distillery that is systematic about their long-term planning, makes use of local agriculture, is thoughtful about the environmental impact of their company, has created multiple revenue streams and created dozens of new jobs. These are some of the reasons ADI has chosen Cedar Ridge Winery & Distillery to win the 2017 Bubble Cap Award for Distillery of the Year. Congratulations!
This article first appeared as Zandona, Eric, and Andrew Faulkner. "2017 Distillery of the Year: Cedar Ridge Distillery Receives the Bubble Cap Award." Distiller. (Summer 2017): 30-33.
Bottle purchased by EZdrinking.
Distilled by Ransom Spirits, Henry DuYore's Straight Bourbon Whiskey is bottled at 45.65% ABV
Price: $30-44
Ransom Spirits was founded by Tad Seestedt in 1997 and in 2008, the distillery moved to its current home on a forty-acre farm in Sheridan, Oregon. While Seestedt distills a variety of spirits, his Old Tom Gin is probably his most successful and widely distributed product. Henry DuYore's was first released in 2012 and has a mash bill of 56% Corn, 31% Rye and 13% malted barley. The whiskey was made using a hand-hammered, direct-fired French alembic pot still. Henry DuYore was aged a minimum of four years in new American oak bourbon barrels, with some percentage finished in French oak barrels. I am using the past tense here because Seestedt recently told me that he doesn't plan to keep making this bourbon. However, he told me that he still has a few barrels of it quietly maturing which he will eventually release as a special extra-aged edition.
When I organized a blind tasting of bourbons under $50 Henry DuYore was the only craft spirit in the group and the only bourbon not from Kentucky. Despite being the odd man out Henry DuYore got a lot of positive marks and it was was the second highest ranked bourbon among all of the tasters.
So why didn't it catch on? While I don't know for certain, I suspect there are a couple of reasons. First, it ain't your pappy's Kentucky bourbon. In the last few years the conversation about bourbon has largely been dominated by those coming out of Kentucky. This makes some sense since 96% of all bourbon is made in the Bluegrass State. And, even though not all Kentucky bourbon's taste alike their version of a high rye mash bill is something around 20% +/- not 31%. Nor are any of the Kentucky bourbons made using a direct fire alembic still. All this to say, Henry DuYore is a bourbon, and it doesn't taste like anything coming out of Kentucky. While this isn't a bad thing, I suspect that those who bought and drank Seestedt's bourbon, didn't exactly get what they were expecting even thought he bourbon in the bottle is very good.
The second reason I think Henry DuYore might not have caught on with drinkers is its label. One of the strongest marketing tools whiskey makers use to sell their products are stories and often those stories or some portion of them are on the label. The Henry DuYore label is an odd mixture. The central image is of a faceless man, presumably from Virginia, the label says the spirit is distilled by Joad Spirits not Ransom and the side text starts off by telling the reader that the person who made the whiskey isn't named Henry DuYore. The story this label weaves is of a faceless man with a fake name is selling you bourbon by a distillery you've never heard of before. This combined with a non traditional tasting bourbon profile might partially explain why Henry DuYore failed to find an audience.
Nose: The nose is very pleasant with strong notes of vanilla, leather and oak undergirded by aromas of malt and caramel.
Palate: On the palate the flavors are complex and well balanced. The bourbon is both sweet and earthy with a subtle spice kick on the back of the tongue from the rye. The oak character has a slightly resinous quality to it which evokes an image of being in a slightly damp coastal forest.
Finish: After swallowing the whiskey, the spice slowly tapers into a long and light finish of caramel, vanilla and tobacco.
Conclusion: Henry DuYore's Straight Bourbon Whiskey is a a very lovely spirit whose flavor falls outside the mold of Kentucky Bourbon. This bourbon is well balanced, nuanced and slowly evolves both in the glass and on the palate. It's a shame that this bourbon isn't being made any more however, those lucky enough to find a bottle can drink a glass of America history that is a mighty fine bourbon.
A while ago I organized a blind tasting of bourbons that cost less than $50. I was inspired to put this together after a small group of friends and I did a blind tasting of whiskeys under $20. That tasting was both a lot of fun and introduced me to a couple of bourbons that I really love. Wanting to repeat this process I put together a game plan. First, I wanted to focus the tasting only on bourbons between $20 and $50. I picked this price point for two reasons: one, my expectation was the overall quality would be a little higher than the under $20 bracket; and two, because it falls in the range that I and many of my friends would feel comfortable spending on a bottle to drink at home from time to time without feeling like its so expensive or exceptional we'd have to save it for some sort of special occasion. Second, I only wanted bourbons that I knew were sold by the distillery i.e. no Non-Distiller Producer bourbons like Bulleit or Black Maple Hill. Third, I didn't want any single barrel products because by nature their flavor profile can change from barrel to barrel and I wanted to help people find a bourbon that they would like and be able to return to and have it taste the same as it was at the party. With these criteria in mind I went about finding bourbons that fit.
I found over dozen bourbons that matched my criteria however, 12 samples of bourbons even at 1/4 oz each starts to add up. I wanted to be sure that people could get home safely so I limited the field to nine. As I spread the word among my friends I was able to find about 25 people who committed to coming and who were willing to chip in to cover the costs of the whiskey.
Now, because I also wanted to participate in the tasting, the trick was figuring out how to set things up so the tasting was blind for me as well. The solution I settled on was I would mark nine brown paper lunch bags with the planetary symbols, Mars ♂, Venus ♀ etc. and then my wife bagged the bottles. For a couple of the bottles that were more easy to identify we decanted the bourbon into clean wine bottles.
The tasting was hosted at a friend's house and I placed three bottles of bourbon in the kitchen, the living room and a spare bedroom. The reason for this was that it forced people to move around and not just all congregate in one room of the house. I wasn't concerned about the order in which people tasted the bourbons so it worked fine. In a more formal tasting, flight order is important but for our purposes it was an easy sacrifice.
After a few hours or tasting and eating snacks, I collected the score sheets that I handed out the to tasters. They rated each bourbon from 1-10 based on what they liked. When I tallied the results, one of the first things that stood out was there were no bad bourbons in the batch. While people liked some bourbons more than others there were no clear winners or losers. In the tasting under $20 it was very obvious that there were a couple of whiskeys that everyone liked and a couple that everyone didn't like, but not this time. This was an encouraging result because what it said to me was if you are going to buy a bourbon in the $20-$50 price range, you can be sure that it is a quality product though you can't guarantee the it will be your favorite.
After tallying the scores here were the results from our group of tasters:
Russel's Reserve 10 Year Old 90 Proof (45% ABV) Distilled by the Wild Turkey Distillery in Lawrenceburg, KY.
Henry DuYore's Straight Bourbon 91.3 Proof (45.65% ABV) Distilled by Ransom Spirits in Sheridan, OR. (This was the only craft bourbon and the only bourbon not from Kentucky in the tasting.)
John E. Fitzgerald Larceny 92 Proof (46% ABV) Distilled at the Bernheim distillery in Louisville, KY and owned by Heaven Hill.
Colonel E.H. Taylor Small Batch Bottled in Bond 100 Proof (50% ABV) Distilled at the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, KY.
Woodford Reserve Distiller's Select, 90.4 Proof (45.2% ABV) Distilled at the Woodford Reserve Distillery in Versailles, KY and owned by Brown-Forman.
Elijah Craig 12 Year Old 94 Proof (47% ABV) Distilled at the Bernheim distillery in Louisville, KY and owned by Heaven Hill.
Four Roses Small Batch 90 Proof (45% ABV) Distilled at Four Roses in Lawrenceburg, KY.
Basil Hayden 80 Proof (40% ABV) Distilled at Jim Beam's Clermont and Frankfort distilleries in KY.
Maker's 46 94 Proof (47% ABV) Distilled at the Maker's Mark Distillery in Loretto, KY.
From my personal score sheet my highest rating went to Colonel Taylor which was something I had never tried before and I was happy to find a new bourbon that I really enjoyed. The other interesting thing was I gave my lowest rating to Maker's 46 which didn't surprise me since I'm not a huge fan of Makers Mark. It was reassuring to see that my taste buds are pretty reliable both when I know what I'm drinking and when I tasting things blind. In the end, this was a really fun event to organize and it was a blast getting a house full of people drinking and discovering some really good bourbon.