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I think, for the most part, they roll out consecutive barrels from a certain whse. or a good part of the whse. Picking individual barrels from back in the rick is a hell of a lot of work and I do not think they do it all that often. If you roll out 10 consecutive barrels the chance to find a good one is fairly high.
Joe :usflag:
Quote:
Originally Posted by SFS
The townsfolk get their pitchforks and torches and go after a perceived threat a few times a year. After they get it out of their system, straightbourbon goes back to tranquil "what did you purchase today" threads.
Here is my 2 cents worth. Do the big distilleries send out what I call cherry picked bottles? No, I do not.
Do micro distilleries send out cherry picked bottles? I would not say all of time, but a lot of them have.
I just had this discussion with a reviewer in the last couple of weeks. I saw a review for a micro product I had bought some of to try. I could not drink the stuff. I think it was a bottle of feints. I saw the same whiskey got a high rating and I respect the reviewer, so I asked him if he though he had gotten a cherry picked bottle. I told him what the bottle I had tasted like and he was pissed, as it was for sure not the same whiskey a customer would have bought of the shelf. It puts the reviewer in a bad position, how can he review it for the consumer honestly when he does not what it will taste like a few weeks down the road.
This is another dishonest practice among micros, as I have bought several microdistilled products, because the tasting notes said it was good. Then when I got my bottle, it was crap. Never had that problem with the big distillers stuff. We do not send a lot of samples out to be reviewed. But if we do, the bottle comes off of the shelf any customer would have been able to buy.
Yes. This.Quote:
Originally Posted by Special Reserve
filler filler filler
I have no idea why folks are upset. I have a lot of respect for Chuck Cowdery, and certainly am not criticizing him or John Hansell or any reviewer. Also providing reviewers a honey barrel is not unethical. Magazine shots of food never looks like it does in the restaurant. The majority of folks dress better and act better in job interviews than they ever do in real life. First impressions are everything.
If I did offend Chuck or anyone else, I apologize.
Oh, I'm not upset, that would require effort and I'm retired.
This is the way to think about this issue. Sure they send the best whiskey to reviewers but the likelihood that many other barrels taste very similar to that one is higher than many seem to think. I would think that quality from one Barrel, even one on the other side of the whse would be pretty consistent. For instance, heaven hill has a pretty serious house character (minty, dry corn doughy, and a dry estery finish to my palate) you can taste it all the way from vsof down to the 6yr BIB and they are really different styles of bourbon. If that can be the same across the board why wouldn't the quality of a single barrel. They don't pick bad whiskey for single barrels. I would think that a good review would mean you are going to get something close to what a reviewer had depending on your preferences and not that you are bring hoodwinked by the distillery. I mean would it really be possible to rank 700 barrels of whiskey and say that one barrel is clearly better than the rest? No. I would think they gauge it in sets and that there might be a slight variance for sure but not a drastic one. Just my 2cents.Quote:
Originally Posted by BourbonJoe
I think there is a better question to ask on this. Since there are known variations in single barrel bottlings, are the samples sent to reviewers representative of the label as a whole or are they outliers?
This post should be stickied so that all can see it and read it multiple times.Quote:
Originally Posted by fussychicken
I think this is the implied question and probably the one we ought to be more interested in. Chuck already answered this question. I'd be curious about Hansell's take on it, especially the idea of comparing an off-the-shelf bottle to the other one he reviewed. I don't really care much about scores, but I appreciate Hansell's descriptions as they typically line up with my own experience.Quote:
Originally Posted by callmeox
Another, semi-related question: do producers pick "honey" stock for their minis? I suspect yes, because in many cases, I've had minis that were head-and-shoulders better than their 750 mL brethren (Beam Black and Devil's cut, for example).