Evan Williams 23 Year Old

In a time when whiskey age statements are dropping like flies, Heaven Hill is one of the few whiskey distilleries anywhere that is adding older age statements to its regular line up.  Within the last two years, the distillery introduced Elijah Criag 20 for the domestic market and Evan Williams 23 for the overseas market.  The Evan Williams 23 is available domestically but only at the Heaven Hill Visitor's Center, and only for $400, which is a pretty wild price for a 23 year old.  I tried the Evan Williams 23 as part of a blind tasting on Twitter (thanks to @Bourbontruth for setting it up).

Evan Williams 23 year old, 53.5% abv ($400)

The nose is hugely oaky with caramel and toffee.  The palate set me back with an acid attack.  It's sharply acidic, then yeasty.  With a bit of air, caramel notes emerge, but it's still really sour.  The finish gets back to some of the candy notes but still has that acidic sharpness.

I really didn't care for this.  The nose is nice, but the palate is way out of balance with the heavy acidic notes.  This was a gift shop bottling, and I've heard that some of the export bottlings are better, but this one is seriously flawed, and for the price, that's a real crime.

Evan Williams Single Barrel 2003

I've never been a huge fan of the Evan Williams Single Barrel series, but I always like to try a new whiskey.  As per usual, this year's release is just shy of ten years old, having been distilled in 2003.

Evan Williams Single Barrel 2003, Barrel 170, 43.3% abv ($25)

The nose is very grainy with light caramel.  On the palate, it's very corny with just a touch of spice.  The finish is peppery and slightly soapy.  This is a well done bourbon which emphasizes the corn in the mash.  The rye notes are so subtle that it almost has some wheater like qualities.

This is definitely one of the better Evan Williams Single Barrels I've had (and I've had most of them), and the good thing about this release is it's always a good deal and easy to find.

 

Whiskey Wednesday: Evan Williams Single Barrel

I recently finished an exhaustive survey of Evan Williams Single Barrel releases which was set up by the Bourbon Dork. As you may know, Evan Williams Single Barrel is an annual Heaven Hill release of single barrel versions of its popular Evan Williams Bourbon. These nine to ten year old bourbons regularly get high marks from reviewers and people scour shelves for older versions.

I tasted a series of twelve versions representing each distillation year from 1988 through 1999. This tasting was as exhausting as it was exhaustive, mostly because the majority of these bourbons were pretty middling. A few were quite bad, a few were above average, none was worth raving about. I was quite surprised that these widely heralded bourbons didn't perform better, and lest you think it was just because I'm quirky, I was pretty much within the consensus of the ten experienced tasters in the group. Indeed, I probably thought they were generally better than the tasting group.

I don't want to burden you with all of my notes (though you can find them all on the LA Whiskey Society site), so I thought I would give a quick summary.

My favorite was the 1995 which was one of the few that had some real wood on it. The runners up were the 1992, which also had a good wood/sweet balance, and the 1996 which had some nice citrus and spice notes.

The worst of these were the 1997, which was bitter, and 1998 which had a sort of dulled flavor. And the rest of them were pretty mediocre.

Now of course, these are single barrel bourbons which means there can be variance from barrel to barrel even within a given year. That being said, I was so unimpressed with this whole lineup that you won't see me dropping any cash for Evan Williams Single Barrel expressions in the future.