Bourbons from the Same Line: (Blind) Comparative Tastings and Thoughts

[CoMobourbon]

Based on my own recent experience, I strongly recommend that everyone try this: take all of the bourbons from the same brand profile (or even from the same mashbill + distillery) and do a few comparative tastings. Specifically, I recommend that you do this comparative tasting blind. So, for example, take off-the-shelf bottles of Weller Special Reserve, Old Weller Antique 107, and Weller 12 (not sure if W.L. Weller of the BTAC belongs in the conversation, but maybe that too if you have it) and try them blind back-to-back . Take notes, identify differences, and assign ratings for yourself.

Any blind comparative tasting can be interesting, but the tasting format described above adjusts for mash bill and brand profile, highlighting other factors like age and proof. Most of the time when I drink and compare different whiskey pours, the whiskeys come from different brand profiles and even different distilleries. Most of the judgments I make about them and their defining characteristics (age, proof, etc.), then, are based on conjecture, memory, and extrapolation. Concurrent tastings of everything from the same line removes some of this ambiguity and really exposes what I like. (Do I really like more expensive? How much difference does the extra proof make? How much difference does the extra age make? How much difference does the special barrel selection make? etc.)

I will post my first try at this below: I lined up (small samples!) the Evan Williams green label, the Evan Williams black label, the Evan Williams Bottled-in-Bond white label, and the 2003 Evan Williams Single Barrel.

Disclaimer: I could not find another thread with this premise, but I would be willing to believe that it exists.

Disclaimer #2: I don't have the EW 1783 around me, so I could not include it.

Edited March 3, 2013 by CoMobourbon

[CoMobourbon]

Last night, I did blind tasting of Evan Williams green label, Evan Williams black label, Evan Williams BIB, and the 2003 Evan Williams Single Barrel. I am usually content to just enjoy and compare different whiskeys side by side, but my friend is a science grad student and a statistician who loves that experimental rigor. Plus, he is even more casual about bourbon than I am, so he feeds my skepticism about the quality-price ratio of the fancier, more hyped bottles (e.g. EWSB) versus the value bottles (e.g. the EWBIB or the EWB). Especially considering that all the bottles came from the EW line, I thought it would be a useful test of the "do I really like it better, or do I just think I should like it better because it costs more?" question.

I won't pretend competence in tasting notes, but I will say that we (even my friend, the ultimate bourbon skeptic) tasted significant differences in this blind format. We were both struck by the higher alcohol content and thickness of flavor in the BIB. Also, we noticed a little more going on (more muted wood char, more fruitiness, etc.) in the EWSB. And the nose on the single barrel stood out as markedly more rich and satisfying than the other two pours.

Overall, though, we were struck by how much we enjoyed all four pours, these differences notwithstanding. The conclusion? When we pay extra for higher age, single barrels, or otherwise more special products, maybe we are mostly just paying for something different, not necessarily something better. Tasted blind, maybe I would enjoy the EWBIB almost as much as the EWSB (except for that nose) most of the time, even though the former is 2/5 the price of the latter.

Does this mean that I would never buy the more expensive single barrels again? No; they are different, and slightly better maybe, and sometimes I want something different. But this experience has opened my eyes further on the best ways of enjoying whiskey. Most of the time, now, I intend to just find what I like and drink it, even if it is 2/5 the price of the more special bottle.

Edited March 3, 2013 by CoMobourbon

[Meruck]

CoMo, your conclusion is right on, "I intend to just find what I like and drink it",. Thats the key. But sometimes you have to try really hard to understand what it is you like and why. The blind test is in fact a great way to do that. I recently sampled teh Wellers you mentioned in your first post side by side, albeit not blind. I found that if I could only choose one it would be the 12. (WLW BTAC was not included). But the others have thier place and purpose. I found the spec resev to be what I refered to as a wonderful casual pour and the 107 simply a fine bourbon. But in the end I found the complexities of flavors in the 12 more to my preferance, at least at that moment. And that adds the true variable. individual palets and outside influances. I love orange juice, but not right after I brush my teeth. If you get my meaning.

[Enoch]

I have tried several blind tastings with Elmer T. Lee, Hancocks, Blantons, and Rock Hill Farms, and I cannot consistently identify which is which even though they range in price from $25 to $50.

[CoMobourbon]

I have tried several blind tastings with Elmer T. Lee, Hancocks, Blantons, and Rock Hill Farms, and I cannot consistently identify which is which even though they range in price from $25 to $50.

That's really interesting.

My conclusion (if it had been me): I think I'll buy the ETL from that line 90% + of the time.

[squire]

Excellent post CoMobourbon, excellent. Blind tasting is the only way to objectively evaluate whiskys and one of the first things we learn is more expensive is not better in any quality sense, just more expensive and sometimes (not always) may seem to have something a bit different.

Try this, get 4-5 friends together, pool your money, buy a couple of the expensive bottles and compare them blind to others by the same Maker. The results can be, ahem, revealing.

[MyOldKyDram]

Blind tasting can indeed be quite the humbling experience. It's why I don't do it very often! I'm generally okay with my delusions re quality.

[CoMobourbon]

Absolutely right; blind tastings are revealing and humbling - maybe in uncomfortable ways! Really, this is such a truism that it almost sounds cliche, but blind tastings are really the only way to know.

But I think concurrent blind tastings of whiskeys from the same maker, mashbill, or even the same brand profile amplify the power of blind tastings even more. Because when you have different mashbills and different profiles from different distillers, you never really know what how to account for the differences in flavor. Concurrently using bourbons from the same line, though, controls for these a lot of the variables.

I feel like, for example, that I can make some fairly useful generalizations about how much age matters to me versus how much proof matters to me. Specifically, I have come to think that higher proof matters much more - especially as it can be had for more bang-to-buck. I like older 8-12 year stuff better sometimes - there are noticeable differences in any case - but don't think that it is usually worth the money.

[squire]

An attractive package will definitely sell whisky, or get you married for that matter.

[higgins]

Awesome post, CoMo. I'm a big fan of separating the bourbon from the label to really figure out why I like or dislike a bourbon.

I used to struggle with why I didn't seem to like BT as much as everyone else, until it was slipped into a few blind tastings. Then I realized that to my palate, BT tastes like an entry-level bourbon (somewhat similar to EWB). It's not bad, but for me there's no reason to spend extra money on it.

[Enoch]

A real sobering blind tasting is OWA paper label and Pappy 15. The reason I didn't pay $80+ per bottle this year.

[Meruck]

Its only a matter of time (not much either) until the remaining stocks of SW juice PVW are gone. At this point only the 20 and 23 are left. That was the whole point of JVW teaming with BT. The Weller line is an excellent line of wheats. The current runs of PVWs are little more than hand selected premium versions of this. Taking nothing away from the BT runs of PVW. But facts are facts.

[callmeox]

Proof again that any thread can turn into a Pappy thread given sufficient time.

[sailor22]

Proof again that any thread can turn into a Pappy thread given sufficient time.

Rolling on the floor laughing!!

[SFS]

Proof again that any thread can turn into a Pappy thread given sufficient time.

I posted the same thing earlier this week in a new member thread.

[CoMobourbon]

There should be a Pappy law, like Godwin's law. Would we just call it Pappy's law? Or callmeox's law?

Godwin's law (also known as Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies or Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies^[1][2]) is an observation made by Mike Godwin in 1990^[2] that has become an Internet adage. It states: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."^[2][3] In other words, Godwin observed that, given enough time, in any online discussion—regardless of topic or scope—someone inevitably makes a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis.

Edited March 3, 2013 by CoMobourbon
reference

[sailor22]

I have tried several blind tastings with Elmer T. Lee, Hancocks, Blantons, and Rock Hill Farms, and I cannot consistently identify which is which even though they range in price from $25 to $50.

Isn't Rock Hill a batch from the same ricks that ETL comes from? - Just the ones that weren't used in the ETL single barrels. Seems I recall hearing that somewhere - if so then they should be very similar. Also I can see how Blanton's would be very similar in a blind taste.

Blind tastings are the most instructive and almost always surprising.

[squire]

Van Winkle has always been about more than bottling up remaining SW stocks (SW didn't make rye, for instance) and I expect the long term plans of partnering up with BT will last far beyond that.

[callmeox]

I can't believe that CoMo Godwinned a nascent Pappy thread.

As far as the topic, I'm a fan of blind tastings and of the format of the BTOTY events. Keying in on house styles and removing label influence is very educational.

[squire]

Oh, and CoMo, Godwin is an idiot.

[SMOWK]

Blind tastings are THE best way to taste bourbon. It really allows you to hone in on what you like and why you like it. When conducted with others, it can really help to identify what you look for in a bourbon. The descriptions fellow bourbon tasters discuss blindly can really provoke some "aha" moments. I've learned just as much from guys with "weirdo" tongues as I have from guys with "fellow" tongues.

[squire]

Through blind tastings I've even awoken the senses of a few die hard scotch drinkers.

[CoMobourbon]

It would be interesting to hear if anyone had done this with all of the bottles of a standard mainstream scotch lines (e.g. Macallan). I can think of a few professional or semi-professional reviewers who engage in this basic approach; I think David Driscoll did the Johnnie Walker line pretty recently. But, crucially, they don't do it blind. I'm telling you, the combination of the bourbons from same line and blindness is powerful.

Now that I think about it, I have definitely read a non-blind tasting on this site covering all of the PVW bourbon releases. [i can't remember the title...] While the non-blindness (awareness of the bottle label) definitely affected perception of the whiskey in the glass, I think that the poster picked the PVW 15 as his favorite over the PVW 23, which runs at about 2X + the price of the 15. And, IIRC, the poster explained how the experience exposed his preference for moderate wood and relatively more vibrant palate flavor instead of more delicate flavors and deeper wood influence.

[CoMobourbon]

Through blind tastings I've even awoken the senses of a few die hard scotch drinkers.

See, I would think that this would be difficult because of the very noticeably different (maybe not better) character of scotches versus bourbons. I believe you, and admire you for pulling it off, but I would think that people would entangle themselves in their own pre-existing notions about scotch versus bourbon. That people would recognize the scotch flavor profile, fall back on their previous assumption that scotch is better, and decide that the scotch tasting sample was better regardless of the actual taste of either the scotch or bourbon sample.

Pretty much the same thing happens to me when I try to blind taste, say, Four Roses products against Heaven Hill products or Wild Turkey products. I just taste the different brand / flavor profile and fall back on a priori beliefs about what I like better. That's why I'm starting to comparatively blind taste products from the same line.

[ErichPryde]

CoMo, the trick is to do a double-blind experiment- in this case, YOU'RE double blind. Have someone else pour all the samples for you and have no idea what they've poured. Yeah, sometimes you can nail the specific "house touch," but sometimes it's interesting to see what you like in this type of format.