Sazerac Rye 18 y/o retrospective, stainless steel storage, and all that...

[JohnHansell]

As some of you might know, Sazerac Rye 18 y/o has been aged in stainless steel tanks since the 2006 vintage. Three different SS tanks now.

The whiskey keeps changing from year to year. I lined up the past five vintages (including the new 2009 release) and tasted them side-by-side on three separate occassions. I have more details on my blog posting today here (http://blog.maltadvocate.com/2009/10/08/review-sazerac-rye-18-year-old-2009-release/)if you would like more details.

Interestingly, my least favorite of the five is the 2008 vintage, Jim Murray's "Whiskey of the Year". I still like all five vintages, though.

Have any of you compared any of the recent vintages? Your thoughts?

[nor02lei]

We had the 2008 Antic collection on a tasting event in our local bourbon club BBB in August. As you can see on this thread John http://www.straightbourbon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5792&page=2 it got the second lowest score. Personally I recall that it wasn’t good at all first but changed to the better after a wile in the glass.
In an earlier event http://www.straightbourbon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5792 we had both the 2002 and the 2005. As this was real high quality in general these 2 came in amongst the lowest score. I did like the 2002 much better than the 2005 myself and I would say that I like the earlier versions better in general.

Leif

[OscarV]

I got one Saz 18 bunkered and I just looked at the date, Fall 2003.
Didn't know I had one of the better ones.:grin:

[nor02lei]

I got all vintages from 2000-2005 bunkered. I have not tasted 2006, 2007 and 2009 but I still think/hope I got the best of the lot.

Leif

[JohnHansell]

Yeah, I have several of the earlier vintages bunkered, knowing how good they were at the time, and I look forward to opening them up and enjoying them over the next several years.