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 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.