2007 Sazerac 18

[Rughi]

So is the take-away that all of the extra-aged (17+ years) rye whiskey currently on the market is likely from the same provenance - Cream of Kentucky rye distilled in the early '80s?

Well, that and the Medley stocks.

Roger out

[BourbonJoe]

Does anyone know, or can anyone find out the exact age of the 2007 Sazerac 18 y/o rye?

Joe :usflag:

[Rughi]

Does anyone know, or can anyone find out the exact age of the 2007 Sazerac 18 y/o rye?

Joe :usflag:

I'd say it's pretty unlikely that it is from any one year, nor any one distillery. I think it's the same vatted whiskey each year, just like the VW rye.

If you want to get a better idea, you might search for what Julian has said about his rye several years ago; IIRC the Sazerac we've had for the last few years was blended and tanked at the same time that Julian blended and tanked his own COK and Medley stocks together.

Roger

[Pharaoh]

I'd say it's pretty unlikely that it is from any one year, nor any one distillery. I think it's the same vatted whiskey each year, just like the VW rye.

If you want to get a better idea, you might search for what Julian has said about his rye several years ago; IIRC the Sazerac we've had for the last few years was blended and tanked at the same time that Julian blended and tanked his own COK and Medley stocks together.

Roger

Roger that!:cool:

[mgilbertva]

Does anyone know, or can anyone find out the exact age of the 2007 Sazerac 18 y/o rye?

Joe :usflag:

According to the fact sheet, it was distilled in 1985, making it 22 years old!

[BourbonJoe]

Thank you. Can you post the fact sheet?

Joe :usflag:

[Rughi]

According to the fact sheet, it was distilled in 1985, making it 22 years old!

So I took a look around the archives and found this fun thread, which speaks of an as yet unnamed BT rye to be offered _at barrel proof_ made from stocks distilled at AA and then shipped to Bernheim.

Interesting that Julian turned down first chance at what became Saz 18.

Incidentally, here are posts where Julian talks of the Bernheim/COK and the Medley sources for his rye:

here and here .

Fun research, obviously not the whole story.

I had thought I would find a post by Julian where he said that when he finalized his deal with BT they together took every undamaged barrel of rye Charles Medley had and split them between their two bottling programs. I didn't find that in a post.

Roger

[craigthom]

According to the fact sheet, it was distilled in 1985, making it 22 years old!

There's been some speculation that this whiskey was dumped from the barrels all at once and is being bottled in batches, hasn't there?

[barturtle]

I first bottled the Hirsch rye in Jan. of 1998. It was bottled from the same bottling tank as my 13-year rye-so it was the same whiskey. Not a single barrel, although sometimes I only bottled 1 barrel at a time. All the whiskey was distilled in either 1984 or '85. So when my rye & the Hirsch were first bottled, they were 13 yesars old. Each subsequent bottling was of older whiskey. I did the final bottling of Hirsch in Jan. of 2001. So it could have been as old as 16 or 17 years.

According to the fact sheet, it was distilled in 1985, making it 22 years old!

There's been some speculation that this whiskey was dumped from the barrels all at once and is being bottled in batches, hasn't there?

Hmmm... that now makes 3 Saz 18s that were barreled in 1985 and the VW Rye was tanked in 2004...

[mgilbertva]

Thank you. Can you post the fact sheet?

Joe :usflag:

Posted here.

[Pharaoh]

Posted here.

Thanks for posting that fact sheet on the other thread!

I'm surprised it lists the distill date but am not surprised the least bit in what the distilled year is. Seems like the same year as bottles A thru like E or F of VWFRR.

That said, the obvious question, why did BT sit on this 4.5 years past the 18 year age statement? They appeared to do so for the last 3 or more years with the whiskey being 20+ years old. I'm sure some of us might conclude that's because it's meant to be an allocated product. I don't see the benefit in doing so under normal business practices.

- Roger I think I have an inkling to what you are remembering, but I don't think it was Julian who implied every imaginable barrel that made the cut was to be dumped & tanked.

[Rughi]

Ya, Titus,

I can't find the source I was half remembering, and my fuzzy memory is not to be relied upon. Someday we'll unravel it and hopefully find there's some kernel of truth in it. But as of now, suspect info...

Roger

[fussychicken]

I was taking a look at the 05, 06, and 07 Sazerac fact sheets and wanted to add a couple of thoughts/complications:

• It does appear that BT is doing just like Julian and tanked all the '85 distillate at some previous date. The distillate age is the same and the number of barrels per year is the same which leads me to believe they have calculated out how many they can release a year from a given supply until the new stuff kicks in.
  
• HOWEVER, while the '05 and '06 Sazerac fact sheets are basically identical for all the key facts, the '07 sheet has an abnormality. The evaporation loss for '05 and '06 was listed as 67.73%. The evaporation loss for the '07 version is listed as 51.94%. Why? The distillate age is the same. (Spring '85) Is the '07 from some other source? Probably not. Maybe this is a typo?
  
• None of the '05-'07 Sazerac fact sheets list a product age, while all the other whiskeys in the BTAC have this information. I wonder when this was tanked?

Does anyone have any of the 2001-2004 fact sheets that they could put up? (I'd be interested in all of them if you have them, not just the Sazerac) Of course, many thanks in advance if you do have them!

[mgilbertva]

Heck, I was looking for the '05 - '06 fact sheets with no success.

[Brennan77]

Whatever the story, the 2007 release is a great whiskey. Very nice! Just in time for Thanksgiving. :cool:

[NorCalBoozer]

Here is the 05 Saz sheet.

Heck, I was looking for the '05 - '06 fact sheets with no success.

[NorCalBoozer]

Heck, I was looking for the '05 - '06 fact sheets with no success.

The 2005 fact sheets are here:

http://www.straightbourbon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4625

Greg

[fussychicken]

And here are the '06s and two older staggs:

http://www.straightbourbon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6051&highlight=fact+sheet

[mgilbertva]

Thanks! Not sure why I couldn't find 'em ... maybe it was because it was 2am and I'd worked all day.

[libertybar]

Here's a post that I just put up on another thread about the Saz18.

As many of you are probably aware, Buffalo Trace released their "Antique Collection" a number of years ago, comprising this collection of the Eagle Rare 17yr, George T. Stagg, William Larue Weller bourbons and Thomas Handy and Sazerac ryes.

  Last year, I happily drank from a number of the Saz17yrs and found them to be outstanding.  

 Last week, I opened up a new bottled of this years allotment of the Saz17, and gave a taste to some friends here at the bar after expressing my happiness with this whiskey. What I found though after tasting it quite surprised me. This years bottle was comparably flat next to what the other bottles tasted like. It is of course still delicious, but the body seemed to be a bit flat, and the finish just drifted away. This was quite a surprise.

 Sure, every year, a whiskey is going to change a bit depending on a multitude of issues related to distilling and aging - but this rather drastic change from year to year surprised us.

 I did not think much more about this, but a few days later, one of the fellows that came in that night told me that his friend got in touch with someone at Buffalo Trace to ask about this change and he was told that in fact, this was the same 17yr as the year before, not a new vintage. What he was told was that apparently Buffalo Trace had put the remaining casks into stainless steel. And, because there was a lot of air in the container, it seems that the rye had somewhat drifted in its taste from what it had previously tasted like when just in the oak.

  This is rather interesting, is it not?  I wonder how often something like this happens?

[libertybar]

Here's a post that I just put up on another thread about the Saz18, which I mistakenly wrote as the Saz 17yr.

--------

As many of you are probably aware, Buffalo Trace released their "Antique Collection" a number of years ago, comprising this collection of the Eagle Rare 17yr, George T. Stagg, William Larue Weller bourbons and Thomas Handy and Sazerac ryes.

Last year, I happily drank from a number of the Saz17yrs and found them to be outstanding.

Last week, I opened up a new bottled of this years allotment of the Saz17, and gave a taste to some friends here at the bar after expressing my happiness with this whiskey. What I found though after tasting it quite surprised me. This years bottle was comparably flat next to what the other bottles tasted like. It is of course still delicious, but the body seemed to be a bit flat, and the finish just drifted away. This was quite a surprise.

Sure, every year, a whiskey is going to change a bit depending on a multitude of issues related to distilling and aging - but this rather drastic change from year to year surprised us.

I did not think much more about this, but a few days later, one of the fellows that came in that night told me that his friend got in touch with someone at Buffalo Trace to ask about this change and he was told that in fact, this was the same 17yr as the year before, not a new vintage. What he was told was that apparently Buffalo Trace had put the remaining casks into stainless steel. And, because there was a lot of air in the container, it seems that the rye had somewhat drifted in its taste from what it had previously tasted like when just in the oak.

This is rather interesting, is it not? I wonder how often something like this happens?

-------

Posted here.

[fussychicken]

Thanks to John Hansell, we have found out much more about the past 3 years of the Sazerac 18. Here is an edited post I made under the stainless holding tanks thread.

--------------------------------------------------

Secondly, it appears that John Hansell from Malt Advocate is either lurking on the boards, or simply read my mind. Here is a great post about stainless tanks, specifically at BT and Saz 18.

http://blog.maltadvocate.com/2008/01...e-18-year-old/

A couple of thoughts and highlights:

• Our hunch they they tanked the Sazerac 18 year is correct. This was apparently done 2 years ago.
  
• This then means the evaporation loss listed on the 2007 Sazerac 18 year info sheet is incorrect.
  
• If you believe the info sheet information of the Saz 18 being barreled in 1985, and then added with this new info of being tanked in 2005, that would make the Saz18 20 years old.
  
• Based on my calculations using the info sheets, and also looking at Mark's comments about the tanks they are using to hold this rye, it looks like BT plans on using this tanked source for at least another 5-8 years for Saz18.
  
• If you believe John Hansell's taste buds, there is indeed changes happening in the tank. Since it appears that the level of air in the tanks is not always controlled most of the flavor change is coming from this oxidation. It also appears that aeration from moving the whiskey around can change the taste.

--------------------------------------------------

He then posted some more info:

http://blog.maltadvocate.com/2008/01/15/sazerac-rye-18-yr-old-revisited/

which confirmed two more items:

• The supply that is currently being tanked is going to last for 7 more years. After that we will have a Saz 18 which has a new distillation source.
  
• Also, the rye is apparently indeed 18 years old instead of 20. This then means that BT had access to rye from multiple years of distillation, instead of a supply from just one year of distillation.

[TNbourbon]

Thanks to John Hansell, we have found out much more about the past 3 years of the Sazerac 18. Here is an edited post I made under the stainless holding tanks thread.

--------------------------------------------------

Secondly, it appears that John Hansell from Malt Advocate is...lurking on the boards...

John is an SB.com member, though his only post was while we were ripping his and Malt Advocate's selection of the WR Four Grain as "American Whiskey of the Year" last year.

He is a regular attendee at the Gazebo during the Festival, and often appears at Bettye Jo's 'dos', too.