More Angelic: Angel's Envy Cask Strength 2015

The marketing firm for Louisville Distilling Company was kind enough to send me a sample of the new edition of Angel's Envy Cask Strength.  As with the regular Angel's Envy, this is bourbon finished in port casks. This year, they are releasing 7,500 bottles of the Cask Strength. It is the first new release since Bacardi purchased the company.

Angel's Envy Cask Strength, 2015 Release, 63.95% ($170)

The nose has honey and some nutty notes. The palate opens with rich butterscotch. It develops some spice and then turns a bit medicinal. The finish is where you get some port notes which blend well with the caramel. Water brings out some soapy notes.  I prefer it neat - while it's high proof, it doesn't feel hot or alcohol heavy.

This one has improved a lot since it first came out. An earlier batch I tasted was dreadful, but this one is quite good with a nice richness and complexity to it.

Thanks to Aaron at Ro-Bro Marketing for the sample. 

Angel's Envy Cask Strength: The Angels Can Have It

Angel's Envy Cask Strength was one of the most popular releases of last fall's bourbon season, at least on Facebook bourbon pages.  It is a casks strength version of the Angel's Envy port finished bourbon.  As with the regular 86 proof version, it has no age statement and is made by an undisclosed distillery.


Angel's Envy Cask Strength, Batch 20, bottled 2013, 61.5% abv ($150)

The nose is very similar to the regular Angel's Envy with sweet corn notes and some chemical notes.  The palate starts out with nice caramel but it quickly develops a burning plastic note, sort of similar to sulfur that you'd get in a sherried malt (maybe the port barrels were sulfur treated?).  It's quite hot and needs a dash of water, but even then, that burning chemical note is quite strong and off-putting.  After taking notes, I looked at Tim Read's review on Scotch & Ice Cream (and thanks to Tim for this sample), and he describes the off note as a hair salon smell which is a perfect description; it's like burning hair.

While this starts decently enough, it quickly goes down hill, and fast.  There are different batches of this bourbon so there may be some batch variation, but I certainly wouldn't recommend this one regardless of what you read on Facebook.

Sku Awards: Worst Whiskey Company

'Tis the season for whiskey awards, and like every blogger, I want to make sure I get mine in.  This year, there was stiff competition for our Worst Whiskey Company award with lots of cynical marketing ploys, ridiculous pricing and other shenanigans, but there can only be one winner!

First, the runners up:

• Jim Beam.  Year after year, Beam is contender for this award. This year, they put in a solid effort with their attempt to charge their loyal customers more for less by cutting the proof of Maker's Mark.  Only in the face of a huge public backlash did they relent, but hey, it's not their fault that there isn't enough whiskey around; they've got to meet the insatiable demand for Red Stag.
• Diageo.  Another major heavyweight in this category, Diageo was clearly playing to win this year.  I won't go into detail here; just read Whisky Advocate's recent post naming them Distiller of the Year.  That post pretty much summarizes all of the reasons why they should get the Worst Whiskey Company award (and thanks to Whisky Advocate for saving me the effort!)
• Dewar's (Bacardi Inc.).  A good rule of thumb for companies is not to alienate half the planet, but Dewar's managed to do just that with an ill advised commercial about their character "the Baron."  Aside from being a boring imitation of the advertising personalities for Captain Morgan and Dos Equis' Most Interesting Man in the World, the Baron's heroics involved rescuing a friend from being approached by an overweight woman in a bar (apparently, Dewar's commercials operate in a bizarro-opposite world in which men in bars are in constant danger of getting approached by women they find undesirable).  The blogosphere immediately pounced, and Dewar's ended up withdrawing the ad.  They may have even used the same form apology that Maker's Mark used.

Congratulations to all the runners up, but there is only room in the world for one Worst Whiskey Company, and this year the award goes to:

Michter's (Chatam Imports).  Michter's has long been a Worst Whiskey Company contender both for their mediocre whiskeys and constant stomping on the grave of the true Michter's Distillery in Pennsylvania, which they have nothing to do with.  This year, though, they were not satisfied to rest on their laurels.  No, this year they rose from the ranks of whiskey mediocrity to pure evil with the release of Michter's Celebration.

Before Celebration, no one thought it would be possible to charge $4,000 for a bottle of American Whiskey.  Just doing that would have put Michter's in the running for this award, but they didn't stop there.  They went above and beyond in their effort to insult the intelligence of consumers.  This $4k marvel isn't a bourbon or a rye; it's a "sour mash whiskey," a classification which means...nothing.  It has no age statement, and it's not even labeled straight.  In short, this crap could be anything.  Though media reports mention that it contains whiskey up to 30 years old, it could contain whiskey that is much younger. It could be any type of whiskey.  It could even have added coloring.  And as with all Michter's whiskey, we have no idea what distillery or distilleries made the whiskey. We don't know anything. 

Of course, as the old saw goes, none of that matters if it tastes great, except that no one is going to taste it.  They only produced 273 bottles of this whiskey.  Based on my own observations, I would estimate that only 99.9% appear to remain on the shelf.  Given that and the fact that there appear to be no reviews on-line, perhaps we can take heart in the fact that whiskey consumers aren't as gullible as Michter's may think (they should have put a picture of Pappy on the bottle - then it would have been gold!).

So for shameless cynicism and chutzpah which knows no bounds, I'm honored to declare Michter's the Worst Whiskey Company of 2013!  (Note to Michter's, feel free to list this honor on your website in place of your current headline "Wine Enthusiast Distiller of the Year" since, you know, you're not actually a distiller).

Congratulations to Michter's and better luck next year to all of our other competitors.  Oh, and if I left anyone out who deserves a mention, just let me know in the comments.

Angel's Envy Rye

It feels like almost every day brings with it a new rye from Midwest Grain Products (formerly LDI, formerly Seagram's) in Indiana.  Today I try Angel's Envy Rye from the Louisville Distilling Company, the bottler of finished bourbon founded by the late Lincoln Henderson, formerly of Brown Forman.  Angel's Envy is an MGP rye finished in Caribbean rum casks. 

Angel's Envy Rye, Batch 1F, 50% abv ($72)

The nose is pure LDI, mostly mint with that slight whiff of pickel juice and some juniper notes, like a dirty martini made with pickle juice instead of olive juice.  On the palate, I expected the typical burst of rye similar to the nose and readily found in other LDI ryes, but no, something different.  It starts with vanilla, then a touch of mint, and then the rum sets in with fresh cane sugar juice.  The finish is a perfect balance of sweet rum and the briny rye.

This was a really surprising and fun one.  It had all of that LDI brininess but the rum cask influence tempered it and added a sweet counterbalance.  If anything, the rum is maybe a bit too influential, making it a tad too sweet, but all in all, it's a successful and interesting whiskey.

Devil or Angel: Angel's Envy

Released earlier this year, Angel's Envy has been on of the most touted new bourbons of the year. The brainchild of Lincoln Henderson, formerly of Brown-Forman's Woodford Reserve, Angel's Envy is a Kentucky Bourbon from an unnamed distillery finished in port casks.

Wine finishing is huge in Scotch but still relatively rare in bourbon. Jim Beam tried it about ten years ago with a few, very expensive special releases, Woodford Reserve finished one of their Master's Collection bourbons in chardonnay casks, a few of the Buffalo Trace Experimental Collections have included wine finishes, and the upcoming annual release of Heaven Hill's Parker's Heritage Collection will be a Cognac finished bourbon. As far as I know, though, Angel's Envy is the first bourbon to be finished in port pipes since the Beam releases a decade ago (independent bottler Big Bottom now also appears to have a port finished bourbon). How does port interact with bourbon? Let's see.

Angel's Envy, 43% abv ($42)

The nose is full of sweet, floral notes. It's like a rose garden. The palate is also very floral and perfumy. There's a very light character to it. The port is most evident in the late palate and into the finish, which is where it really shows, so much so that the finish recalls port finished Scotch.

This is a decent enough bourbon, but I don't think it lives up to the hype. I should admit that light and floral are not my favorite notes, so in part, this just isn't my style of bourbon. Beyond that though, it's not particularly complex. If you like light, floral and sweet, give it a try.