liquor, cont'd.
On to bourbon. I should start out this post with an admission of how inexperienced I am when it comes to whiskeys. There are just so many varieties of whiskey compared to any other hard liquor...

Our subject liquors tonight are two bourbons - Evan Williams Single Barrel 10-year (1996), and Eagle Rare Single Barrel (also a 10-year).

Whiskeys, unlike vodkas, are not distilled for purity. Whiskeys' distinctive flavors are exactly the opposite of what you'd want in a vodka, thus the distillation process is very different. Better whiskeys generally use pot stills, which are rather inefficient compared to column/continuous distillation, and are usually distilled 2-3 times (also one of the things that differentiates scotches and irish whiskeys, but I'll get to that when I actually have scotches to taste side by side. that stuff's expensive though). Neither of the bourbons I'm tasting actually list the number of distillations, or the type of still used, but the end result should speak for itself here - on to the tasting.

Evan Williams, bought at Surdyk's, $20 on sale. Has a really nice nose to it, on the sweeter side, with (at the risk of sounding like a liquor reviewing douchebag) a bit of bitter walnut to it. Tasting starts out with the malt, sweet but not unbalanced - with plenty of oak/charred barrel flavor complexity, then finishing with that "green wood" sort of flavor that's the classic characterization of bourbon. Definitely very smooth as far as bourbon is concerned; while all bourbons should be significantly harsher than, say, Jameson, there's still a matter of preference about how much burn there should be. I think this one's gotten the balance about perfect though.

On to Eagle Rare, also from Surdyk's, $25 on sale. I tasted this one after the Evan Williams, so I was kind of judging it from my impression of that... There's a lot less nose here, comparatively; after I get past the usual charred oak, I think I'm getting something that I can only describe as... glue. Of course that doesn't sound good, but I had to really breathe in deeply to pull that out of it, so it's not something that's actually distracting during the tasting. And on to that - this is definitely less malty/sweet than the Evan Williams. There's more burn/harshness here, which I think is actually obscuring some of the initial flavors as it hits the tongue. Charred wood is dimished as well. Significantly more of the signature bourbon finish that stays around in the nasal cavities. I might call this as a touch astringent.

That's straight, though. I did note that adding a single ice cube - so as not to chill the whiskey too much (alternatively a little bit of water) did change the way this tastes. Not by a lot, but the nose had way more to it after adding water, and some of the harshness/burn was reduced which restored some balance I felt was lacking. Still a little too much there for my preference. (I should probably try this with the Evan Williams too, but my roommate polished off the bottle without asking. Love it when that happens.)

Summary? I think I'll be buying more of the Evan Williams. It's just more...drinkable; smoother and slightly sweeter. The Eagle Rare is still good - and may be a better representation of what a bourbon should be - but I personally don't like the drier, slightly astringent thing so much.

One disclaimer though. Since both of these are single barrel whiskeys, there can be a lot of variation between barrels, and my comments here may not be entirely accurate for other bottles. If I try either of these elsewhere, and find them to be significantly different, I'll post it here...
- posted by vcmc @  6/11/2006 11:45:00 PM