Chicago WhiskeyFest 2006

[Rancastle]

Dane and Sally Miller.

[Rancastle]

Adam Seger mixing one of many bourbon cocktails!!!

[Rancastle]

Julian and Preston making Old-Fashioneds at Delilah's.

[Rancastle]

Old Mock distilled 1916 & bottled 1933. And still great stuff!!!

[Rancastle]

Mike Miller (owner of Delilah's) removes the riffraff from behind the bar!:slappin:

[TNbourbon]

I'm afraid I wimped out on Day 2. I left Delilah's after only an hour or so and went back to the hotel because my voice had suddenly disappeared (throat's still sore:frown:), and I was afraid I'd drown in my beer because my head kept bobbing like one of those old, thin-glass weather storks. I felt much better this morning. Apparently, less whiskey and more sleep is a good thing. Who knew?

But, after 11 hours' driving today to get home, I'm kinda tuckered out again.

Many thanks to Randy, Randy and Dane for a great time.

[Gillman]

Gents was that Old Mock bourbon from the Prohibition time tasted by anyone? If so what was it like?

Gary

[Rancastle]

Gary...Randy and I both tried the Old Mock. It was very well ballanced, and easy to drink. The alcohol was well hidden at 100 proof. Although after all those years who knows what proof it was? We tasted it late in the evening and I'm sure my taste buds were nearly comatose. I'll let Randy give more discriptive notes!!!

Here a shot of Chuck and Tim.

[Gillman]

Thanks Randy, most interesting!

Gary

[gr8erdane]

Well, Tim almost lasted as long as I did, I was hit my a major case of acid reflux sitting in Delilahs and departed not too long after him evidently. Lucky a friendly face was willing to share his cab with me, Guthrie from Bardstown's Toddys and his wife allowed me to tag along back to the hotel with them. Even got back in time to catch the giftshop still open and let me tell you, when it comes to acid indigestion, nothing beats a 3 dollar roll of TUMS! So unfortunately I missed the Old Mock and many other wonderful experiences but at least I had no trouble seeing the road when it was my turn to drive on the way home! My favorite pours for the weekend?

1. Barrel Proof Pappy 20 is hard to beat.

2. HH Rye at 22 yo might be the one to do it.

3. New Welsh Single Malt Penderyn was interesting until I priced it.

4. Bushmill's 16yo SM "three barrel" was tasty!

5. Santa Theresa Rum rhymes with YUM

6. Pyrat Cask rum was worth the price of admission.

7. And for those of you worried about then end of SW whiskey, I found the new version of Lot B using Bernheim whiskey to be absolutely top notch. Julian was right when he said it was "damn fine whiskey".

8. New Irish Michael Collins from Cooley was interesting for a blend, didn't get to taste the single malt.

All in all, a great time in a wonderful city I'll not soon forget, made all the better by the company I was in. Was great to see board members Schlep, Chasking, JDKnaebel, as well as resident Guru Chuck Cowdery amd Mike and Mitch from Twisted Spoke and Delilah's sure can throw a party! If you'll excuse me now I need to go back to weekend recovery now...

[doubleblank]

The Old Mock was very well balanced and easy to drink......slightly spicy too. Julian also approved. Of course, at $40 per pour, we didn't have multiples.

Randy

[Rughi]

I found the new version of Lot B using Bernheim whiskey to be absolutely top notch. Julian was right when he said it was "damn fine whiskey".

Dane's endorsement is all I need.

Are there any identifying marks on the "B" for Bernheim to make sure I don't get that S-W stuff?

Roger

[schlep]

Sounds like the second night was as good as the first (sans women dancing on the bar?). Only making it to the first night of festivities was a good introduction....I hope to be able to stand up to both next year. Many thanks to all the SBer's in attendance and everyone at the Twisted Spoke for a great evening.

schlep

[gr8erdane]

A bit more recovered now, so I'll go on with a couple more notes on the trip to Chicago. The trip started off pretty good when Tim showed up in St Charles on Tuesday night with all sorts of goodies. And here I thought I was supposed to be playing host to him!

As a sidenote, my sister and family ALSO dropped in to stay the night on Tuesday and Tim and I got her and my brother in law to sample a bit with us. Tim produced a bottle of Joseph Finch and a pewter capped Kentucky Spirit among other goodies. We started off with a taste of Ireland in honor of my brother-in-law Michael McNern with a wee nip of Bushmill's Millenium Malt and Redbreast. Then transitioned with a small pour of Van Blankle and Tim's offerings. After they retired, we opened up a bottle of Olde St Nick 8 yo and finished the night with a drop of LBurg Pappy 23!

The next day Tim was so kindly patient as I saw the family off to visit with my Dad and then Tim and I loaded up the Tennessee Bourbon Express and headed for Chi-Town. 5 hours later we were greeted in the lobby by none other than Jimmy Russell (who was actually waiting for his ride to Binny's) and met the pair of Randys in the lobby after dumping off the luggage in the room. From there it was off to Binny's and the rest is recorded here somewhere in bits and pieces...

For once I didn't walk around all the time with my camera around my neck forgetting to take pictures. I just plain left it in my bag for most of the trip since Randy was taking his everywhere so sorry for the lack of bad photography I'm so well known for.

BTW, for those of you looking for it, the downtown Binny's had WLW on the shelf as well as some ER17. As we were going to Sam's via cab we decided that if we had time we'd come back. Didn't happen. So there were three bottles of each on the shelf when we left.

[TNbourbon]

Well, Dane, I was always taught to bring a gift for an overnight host. In Dane's case, it was a Batch 1 Sam Houston. Highlights for me from the St. Louis tasting were Weller 19, the green-bottle Pappy 23 (Lawrenceburg), and a final sip from some 1969 100-month-old Jim Beam I was carrying to Randy (rancastle) in Chicago. The wonder of Dane's bar is that he has about two-thirds of his bottlings -- rare or not -- open!

I DID carry my camera around Chicago a bit -- most notably to the Art Institute of Chicago on Thursday afternoon while everyone else napped (and which explains my condition at Delilah's later in the evening). Surprisingly, to me, we were allowed to take non-flash pix of the art, so I 'stole' some masterworks:

[chasking]

Damn! Looks like the party at the Spoke really kicked into high gear after I left. (I hope there was no cause-effect relationship there---I hope I didn't scare off the dancing girls!)

The high point of Wednesday and Thursday for me was that 21 year old Heaven Hill rye. I would have been leery of spending so much if I hadn't tried it, but I am definitely getting a bottle when it comes out.

At the Binny's event, I bent the ear of the Barton's rep for a while to try to convince him that they should sell Fleishmann's Rye in other markets---he said right now they only sell it in Wisconsin, around Green Bay.

Other interesting discoveries included that Penderyn Welsh malt whiskey. I didn't price it, but Dane's comment has me worried. Despite the all-malt mashbill it was distinct from SMSW. The distillery manager was there, and he said that they have a different kind of still, very up-to-the-minute technology to emphasize their preferred taste profile. It's a refreshing difference from Scotch malt distilleries, where the stills are carefully made to be exactly like they were two hundred years ago. They produce classic whiskeys, but it's nice to see somebody applying advances in technology to making malt whiskey. It gives them the opportunity to carve their own flavor niche.

I also talked for a while with Jim McEwan from Bruichladdich, one of my favorite Scotch distilleries. I ended up getting a bottle of their "Yellow Submarine" 14-year-old, which aside from being the best Bruichladdich I can recall tasting, is apparently being snatched up by Beatles fans.

At Whiskeyfest proper I went to a couple of the seminars. First, Craig Beam and Larry Kass from Heaven Hill gave a seminar on Bernheim wheat whiskey, including a tasting comparing the straight wheat whiskey to wheated bourbon (Old Fitz mashbill) and rye-based bourbon (EW-EC mashbill. They had samples of those bourbons at the same age and proof as the Bernheim (5yo 90 proof), which I don't think correspond to any of their commercial offerings (although among all the HH cats and dogs, who knows?). It was an interesting comparison, and really showed the effects of wheat, corn, and rye on the flavor of the whiskey.

I also went to a talk by Michael Head, the distillery manager from Isle of Jura. (A lot of Scotch distilleries are really out in the very middle of nowhere. A North American analog of some of those spots on Islay, Jura, Skye and Orkney would probably be somewhere in the Yukon territory, or out in the Aleutians.) I had had the Jura 10yo and I was curious about the older expression, but not curious enough to spend $50 on a bottle of it to find out. Well, I would not hesitate now. The older Jura expressions are an order of magnitude beyond the 10yo (which is not bad to start with, although a bit salty and austere). He had samples of a 21yo that they are going to introduce here this year, and that was really amazing. He also had samples of a yummy peated 7yo that's available only from the distillery shop, alas.

It was great to see everybody. I'm just sorry I couldn't close the joints down with y'all---day job, grumble grumble.