Whiskey, er Brandy, er Rum of the Year

I discussed some of my favorite whiskeys of 2016 in my review of the Year in Whiskey, but I realized I didn't do much of a wrap up of all of the other spirits I tried, so here it is, better late than never.

For the last two years, the best spirits I've tasted have been brandies. In 2016, I had some good whiskeys and some great brandies, but the very best stuff I tasted was rum.

Rum

The best current release spirit I had all year was, unfortunately, a European only release of 24 year old, cask strength Hampden rum under the Douglas Laing Kill Devil label. It was probably the best rum I ever tasted, and maybe one of the best spirits I ever tasted period. It has this marvelous funk that you get in those Jamiacan rums. While it wasn't quite in that league, the similar, 24 year old Hampden that K&L brought in under the Golden Devil label was also excellent with a lot of those same notes.

I also loved the 2004 Foursquare and the cask strength Clement that K&L brought in (which is still available).  My rum rule of thumb lately is buy anything from Hampden or Foursquare.

Brandy

While my favorite 2016 spirits were rums, I drank plenty of good brandy, especially apple brandy. Highlights were the Pacory Reserve and Pacory 15 year old Calvados and the pricey but tasty Domaine Du Tertre Calvados. And I absolutely loved the Double Zero apple eau de vie from Cyril Zangs, one of the best unaged spirits ever.

Armagnac-wise, my favorite new release was a Europe only release, the fantastic Lous Pibous from L'Encantada, though I'm told we may see some of this in the US this year.  If you do, buy it! And K&L brought in two great Baraillons, the 1986 and the 1988 Folle Blanche.

All in all, it was another great year for brandy and a phenomenal year for rum.  Hopefully, more of that great rum will come to the US.

The Year in Whiskey: A New Hope

While much of the whiskey news of 2016 was the same parade of idiocy we've grown accustomed to, there were, for the first time in a number of years, some signs of hope.

The year started inauspiciously when Heaven Hill removed the 12 year age statement that had been hiding on the back label of Elijah Craig. Would be another year of crappy moves by big whiskey?

Most of the new releases followed the now half-decade pattern of rising prices and falling quality.  It was the year of stupid expensive whiskeys like Booker's Rye, the new Longmorn range and a new NAS expression of Michter's Celebration for $5,000.

Even the more affordable whiskeys saw unprecedented inflation with Beam Suntory announcing last week that they would raise the price of Booker's from $60 to $100. Yes, you read that right, a 66% increase. Of course, after their ridiculously priced (and in my opinion highly overrated) Booker's Rye became the darling of everyone from Jim Murray to Whisky Advocate, you can hardly be surprised - clearly they were testing the waters on premiumizing the Booker's name in the hopes that everyone would pay more for their bourbon in the future. I'm surprised they didn't change the name to Pappy Van Booker's.

And we probably can look forward to more such antics. It was a year of continued corporate consolidation with Brown Forman buying BenRiach (including Glendronach), Constellation Brands swallowing up High West, Remy Cointreau gobbling up the Westland Distillery, and just last week, Pernod Ricard buying a majority share in Smooth Ambler. Over the last month, hardly a week seemed to go buy without a proudly independent distiller cashing in.

But despite all of that crap, for the first time in a while, there were some signs of hope in the whiskey world. Ardbeg finally dug into its vaults to produce a whiskey with some age on it, Heaven Hill released a decent bourbon for this year's Parker's Heritage Collection and Barton gave us the deal of the year with its 1792 Full Proof. Even Highland Park's ridiculously packaged Ice was pretty tasty.

On the craft scene, more and more craft distilleries are releasing aged product, and quite a number of them are now releasing bonded whiskey, a move which has the potential to revitalize that languishing category, known for high quality at affordable prices.

If things keep going in this direction, maybe I'll start drinking whiskey again, but for now, enjoy a bunch of brandy and rum reviews from now until Christmas.

2014: The Year in Whiskey

The year in whiskey 2014 was a tumultuous one.  It started with buy outs and consolidation, shortages and the continuation of what seemed like a boom market that would go on for years, but there was trouble ahead.  By the middle of the year, some unsavory aspects of the American "craft" industry garnered a lot of mainstream press, and the year ended with diminished sales and expectations in the world of Scotch. 

Major business news came early this year.  In January, Japanese beverage giant Suntory purchased the iconic Jim Beam company for $16 billion.  Then, in March, Campari purchased Canadian craft distillery Forty Creek.  Meanwhile, the Bladnoch Distillery, a lowland Scotch distillery with a cult following, went into receivership.

While the American craft revolution continued, there were some bumps in the road.  The issue of whiskey sourcing, well known among the whiskey crowd for years, went mainstream due to a Daily Beast article that went viral.  This led to further publicity and lawsuits targeting well known producers such as Templeton Rye and Tito's Vodka and curiously, a suit against Maker's Mark, which has never misled about its product.  All of this tumult led to some results with  Templeton and Bulleit changing their labels to more clearly state the source of the whiskey.  Meanwhile, other sourcing companies went further in the direction of distilling their own with Willett releasing its first in-house whiskey and Michter's building a real distillery in Kentucky.

Then there was a melt down at Balcones Distillery in Waco, Texas, one of the most successful American craft distilleries.  The Balcones Board sued founder Chip Tate, and the suit exposed some of the tensions that can arise among investors in small distilleries.  The battle appeared to end earlier this month with the Board buying out Tate's share of the business.

Demand for aged whiskey continued to outstrip supply in the US, leading Sazerac to drop age statements from Very Old Barton and Old Charter, but there were signs of a slowing market as well.  A crackdown on bribery in China led to diminished sales of Scotch in a market that many had seen as limitless, and this fall, Diageo announced that it would halt some expansion plans after their quarterly report showed a drop off in sales.

 My guess is that the whiskey frenzy, on an international level, is going to start to wane in the next few years.  American whiskey joined the frenzy later than Scotch, so it probably has a few years of insanity left to go, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a continued slow down next year that extends to the American market as well, though the companies will probably be able to make up any difference with sales of flavored whiskey, which remains wildly popular.

All in all, a rocky year for whiskey, but let's see what the next year holds.  Any predictions?

The Crazy Year in Whiskey

It's time for my review of the year in whiskey, and what a crazy year it was.

The year in American Whiskey got off to an inauspicious start with Beam's bungled attempt to lower the proof of Maker's Mark.  Pappy mania reached new heights with a crazy new secondary market opening up (and closing down) on Facebook and a heist of Pappy bottles right from the source.  And Tennessee finally answered the question of what a Tennessee Whiskey is.  But what really made this year crazy were the new releases.

There was a stunning number of new American whiskey releases this year and not just from the craft distilleries and independent bottlers.  Nearly every major distiller had new labels, including Buffalo Trace (Stagg Jr.), Heaven Hill (Elijah Craig Barrel Proof and 21 year old), Wild Turkey (Forgiven and Russell's Reserve Single Barrel) and Jim Beam (Jim Beam Signature and White Label Single Barrel).  Even the staid George Dickel Distillery got into the action with a new retailer offering of 9 and 14 year old whiskeys.  Add all of that to the regular annual releases from Four Roses, Buffalo Trace, Brown Forman and Heaven Hill and the growing craft and indie movement and this was a wacky, frenetic year.

Unfortunately, it was also a sad year for American Whiskey.  We lost some giants this year, including Buffalo Trace's Elmer T. Lee, Heaven Hill's Harry Shapira, Angel's Envy's Lincoln Henderson, and A. Smith Bowman's tragically young Truman Cox. Our whiskey world, and the world in general, is a sadder place without them.

This was also the year that Japanese Whiskey finally broke through in the U.S.   We've had Yamazaki for years and a trickling of Nikka whiskies more recently, but this year the floodgates opened.  Now we have Miyagikyo, Nikka Pure Malts and Coffey Grain, Suntory Hakushu and even a Karuizawa from K&L with more Japanese Whiskies to come.

For years, Canada never sent us the best of their whisky, leaving it to American bottlers to try to get their own barrels, but this year we got the new Lot 40 Rye.  Hopefully, Canada will send us more of their good stuff in the future.

The one market that seemed a bit boring this year was Scotch.  There were the predictable regular releases, PC 10, Ardbog, Laphroaig Cairdeas, Highland Park Loki and four figure Diageo releases of Brora and Port Ellen, but nothing that was particularly new and exciting. Critics seemed to acknowledge that this year with Jim Murray saying he'd rather drink bourbon and the Malt Maniacs giving their top award to a Japanese malt. In fact, the only Scotch news anyone seemed to get excited about was Diageo wrangling with Whyte & Mackay.

Have a great holiday season, and here's to an exciting new year in the whiskey world.

The Year in Whiskey 2012

This was a frustrating year in whiskey. Back in July, I declared the end of the Golden Age of Whiskey, and I think the year bore that prediction out.


New but not noteworthy

The year saw a massive cache of new releases. Nearly everyone had something new, but much of it didn't seem very special. It seems that the the whiskey companies have caught on to the fact that people like new things so we see continual brand extensions. This year alone brought us two new Ardbegs (Galileo and Day), Highland Park Thor (in the big wooden boat box), Woodford Reserve Double Oaked, Heaven Hill's Larceny and Elijah Craig 20, Knob Creek Rye, George Dickel Rye, Jefferson's Ocean Aged Bourbon and no fewer than four new E.H. Taylor bourbons from Buffalo Trace. Jack Daniel's and Jim Beam jumped on the invisible whiskey trend, releasing unaged white whiskeys to compete with, or perhaps overwhelm, the craft distillers.

The dropping of age and proof continued with Macallan eliminating some of its age statements and Wild Turkey dropping the proof of its rye.


Distillery happenings

It was a bad year for independence. Jim Beam, which purchased the Cooley Distillery in December 2011, announced that it would no longer be selling Cooley whiskey to independent bottlers, and the once fiercely independent Bruichladdich sold out to Remy Martin.

In the US, the explosion of craft distilleries continued with some notable names, including Old Pogue, Willett and The Party Source starting their own distilleries.

In Ireland, William Grant announced it would build a new Tullamore Dew distillery.

Meanwhile, sourced whiskey continued to grow in the US. It seemed like everyone had an LDI whiskey to release this year, and speaking of sourcing, bourbon geeks will remember this as the year of the Great Pappy Controversy.


Going once...

It was a tough year on the secondary market as well. The beginning of the year saw ridiculous mark ups at Bonhams and ebay, with Bonham's courting controversy with some of its bottle descriptions. Meanwhile, K&L sold a $90 bottle of Jefferson's Ocean Aged for over $1,000.

The tide seemed to turn when ebay shut down all alcohol sales, and Bowmore couldn't unload their latest six figure whiskey, which led some to wonder if the whiskey bubble was finally bursting.


And the silver lining

All of this isn't to say there wasn't a bright side to the year. Balvenie distinguished itself with the Tun 1401 series, showing that some distilleries are still willing to do the serious work of putting out great whiskey without gimmicks. GlenDronach's vintage series and Glenfarclas' family casks continued to impress without jewel encrusted bottles.

Four Roses continued to distinguish itself with its Limited Edition Small Batch. High West continued to innovate with Campfire (a blend of bourbon, rye and peated Scotch) and Son of Bourye, and Bulleit offered a bold and spicy rye that wouldn't break the bank (or even bruise it).


So while investing and speculation may have reached new levels of stupidity, there is still good whiskey to be had. Let's hope for good whiskey at affordable prices for the new year.