#250 Moody Whiskies

First a celebration
I've tried by #250th whisky!  Honors go to Pike Creek 10 Yr finished in a rum cask, a bottle my step-dad brought me from Canada for Christmas.  Good stuff.  It is very smooth and drinkable.  The website says the nose has a complexity of sweet, dried, fruits and more dried fruits on the palate.  I can go with that, but I smell maple syrup.  I took a good whiff right out of our maple syrup jug because I wanted to be sure I wasn't just projecting a stereotype on Canada (my step-dad also brings back some of that good Grade B stuff... but he keeps that).  Yep, that was it, maple, not fruits for me.  The sweetness stood out on the nose, through on the tongue, and lingered on afterwards.  The rum cask comes through on the finish, especially while I breathe out through my nose.  The only other whisky I've had finished in a Rum Cask is the Balvenie and I have to admit I don't remember where the rum shone through.  The only thing I really remember about that whisky is that it is gosh dang tasty.

Moodiness
Ok.  I just have to come to terms that sometimes I’m just in the mood for certain whiskies, and other times I’m not.  I’m not talking about sometimes I want a heavily peated scotch rather than a bourbon, or a rye over a highland.  I mean sometimes I like whole genres of whisky and sometimes I just don’t.  The three types that have this dubious honor in my book are Canadian Whisky, Irish Whiskey, and Young whiskies.

Canadian Whisky – Sometimes I’m fine with the mapley sweetness, and it seems like the whisky is sweetened with real maple syrup or sugar.  But other times I really hate it and the sweetness reminds me of an artificial sweetener, bleh.  In fact, when I took a smell of maple syrup out of the jug I really didn't like it, but it was great on my pancakes a few minutes later!  My step-dad also brought me back a bottle of Canadian Club 12 Year Old Small Batch and I’ve had a similar experience.  On a recent trip, I had the opportunity to try the Small Batch again and really appreciated the sweetness this time.

Irish Whisky – One of my earliest ideas for a blog post was break up letter to Irish whisky.  I remember I used to really like it but recently I just haven’t been able to enjoy it straight.  But I think I’ve figured it out – on the nose and on the tongue I detect a sharp yeasty flavor reminiscent of white beers.  I hate white beers!  Currently I’ve got a bottle of Tullamore DEW at home.  I get a strong nose and taste of green apple candy (woohoo!) but sometimes I’m more sensitive to the white beer flavors than other times (booo).

Young Bourbons – As you may have read in a previous post, the oak and alcohol dominated the flavors of my bottle of Wheat State Distillery Bella Bahre bourbon.  Sometimes I like it, most of the time I’m like meh, and sometimes it’s a real turn off.  This is a similar experience I had with my a bottle of Wasmund’s which is aged 18 months.  That one was also a roller-coaster for me.

I’m going to bail out now because to dig further would involve a discussion of why people have particular tastes which may either be permanent or vary over time.  Maybe someday when I retire I’ll have the time to write a blog post about the how the plethora of different molecules in a whisky may or may not trigger a response for a given individual.  Until then, if you want to really geek out on whisky, go check out Teemu Stengell’s blog WhiskyScience.blogspot.com!  Or continue geeking out on my analysis of the recent rankings of the whiskies in this post below.

Rank	Name	R	SOS Rank	Change
198	Wasmund's Single Malt	0.2925	229	3
221	Canadian Club Small Batch 12	0.1976	42	13
238	Pike's Creek 10 Yr Rum Cask	0.1073	232	NR
243	Wheat State Bella Bahre Bourbon	0.0762	226	-46
252	Tullamore Dew	0.0140	216	-11

I haven't had Wasmund's in over four years but looking back and my tasting lists, it falls somewhere between Contarf (#133) and Buffalo Trace (#229).  I wonder what I'd taste now if I tried those three again?  Canadian Club Small Batch 12 moved up in the rankings primarily because I enjoyed it more that Dewar's White Label (#228) and I tried it on the same night as some other stellar whiskies there by increasing it's SOS (see future blog post). As you can see from the changes since the last rankings, I really have not enjoyed the Bella Bahre or the Tullamore DEW.  With the exception of one time where I enjoyed Wheat State more than Highland Earl, these two were always at the bottoms of my list.  When I first compiled my list, the Tullamore DEW was actually ranked below Jim Beam's Red Stag.  Now, I remember really hating the Red Stag, so I did something that I rarely do and artificially made an adjustment by creating a list with Tullamore DEW over Red Stag over Most Wanted.  This bumped it up over Military Special as well, which is probably true, but I'm not eager to hash out the bottom of the table.