New Recent Disappointments

[smokinjoe]

I thought I'd follow-up on Oscars recent thread, "New Recent Favorites", with "New Recent Disappointments". Personal tastes do change, as do bottlings, and things fall in and out of favor. Well, to me there's been a change for the worse somewhere between Weller 12 and me. The last couple of bottles that I've had of this have just fallen completely F-L-A-T...Flat. This has always been one of my favorites, going back several years. I'm not saying it's the whiskey, it could be me. But, I've been disappointed over the course of a couple of bottles.

Has anyone elses love affair with a favorite bottle lost that "spark"?

[OscarV]

I hope it's just you Joe because I plan on getting some Weller 12, I haven't had any for about a year and a half.

I can't really come up with a new disapointment.
Nothing that I like hasn't let me down in a while.

[Virus_Of_Life]

IIRC somebody, probably Randy, mentioned that 12 was finally not getting any more SW mingled with it. Coincidence? ...

[IronHead]

It was a post about the KBF and I am pretty sure it said that this batch was the last batch that will get any SW juice. FWIW I think the Weller 12 is pretty damned good, but I've never had any until this year. So I wouldn't know if past batches were better or not. Just as well, really. It's harder to be disappointed when you have no base of comparison.

[smokinjoe]

I'm tending to think it's probably more me, than the Weller 12. It might be that I've been hitting more of the Weller Antique, which is really in a sweet spot for me, right now. These things tend to run in cycles with me.

[marco246]

Last summer I toured the Buffalo Trace distillery. The gentleman leading the hardhat tour remarked that Weller 12 was his favorite whiskey. I took it to heart, bought a bottle, and was therefore predisposed to like it. When I made my first notes on tasting the stuff, I concluded that it was an excellent whiskey but did not quite come up to expectations. The bottle is nearly done now; I had a postprandial drink the other evening, and the first word which popped into my head to describe the whiskey at that time was "tired". Perhaps the whiskey has deteriorated somewhat after having been opened so many months ago.

Since acquiring that bottle I've picked up a couple of other wheaters which I like better: William Larue Weller (a hard act to follow) and Old Rip Van Winkle 10/107.

[OscarV]

Hey marco246, agreed, the Larue and the Old Rip 107 are better than the Weller 12yo.
In the future if you are going to drink a bottle slowly and to avoid the "tired" taste/experience, here is what I do with special bottles that I plan on savoring over a long period of time.
Get yourself some 200ml, 100ml and 50ml bottles and pour that special bottle into them, that way they won't get aired out over a long period of time.

[marco246]

ovh,

Thanks for the recommendation. The obvious alternative is to drink more/drink faster. I got no downside here!

Cheers,
Mark

[BBQ+Bourbon]

I have an 08 OWA that is a real let-down. The 06 and older OWA is my favorite, and the 07 tends to be excellent but this one is a dud. It has the same profile that you expect from OWA but just doesn't have the depth. There is a vanilla/caramel flavor that comes on mid-palate with OWA and it's missing from this bottle. This is the second 08 bottle I've had that was disappointing.

I believe this will be my last 08+ OWA. Shame.

[ILLfarmboy]

I have an 08 OWA that is a real let-down. The 06 and older OWA is my favorite, and the 07 tends to be excellent but this one is a dud. It has the same profile that you expect from OWA but just doesn't have the depth. There is a vanilla/caramel flavor that comes on mid-palate with OWA and it's missing from this bottle. This is the second 08 bottle I've had that was disappointing.

I believe this will be my last 08+ OWA. Shame.

I opened an 08 the other night and felt the same way. But I was drinking it (most of it anyway) with BBQ pork steaks. It is a bit lighter in color than the 04 I had open. The 04 has a slightly deeper nose and taste. I drank the 08 down to just below that necklace point raised design in the glass. After letting it sit over night, and nosing the bottle, it had a better deeper nose that when first opened but pouring a taste of the two side by side, the 04 is easy to pick out as the better.

Someone posted in one of the recent OWA threads that they thought the first NAS Antique was better than the last of the old label. I'll be buying on of the new NAS bottles when they show up in my area, test it against the 04 and 08, and make a decision whether to buy some of the NAS before the brand has a chance to slip.