VW-light

[nor02lei]

I did get a couple of bottles VW 10Y 107 proof a month and a half or so ago. Series A in the 75cl fat bottle is one of my favourite bourbons. This in a 70cl slim export bottle turned out to be series I. The light collar did puzzle me directly that I saw the bottle. I did bring it to Stockholm when I was visiting Stockholm whisky and beer festival about a month ago. Back at the hotel I did pour it up and tasted it. Didn’t taste at all as I was used to and not really much at all as it seemed at the time, but I had been drinking a lot to say the least on the festival for 7 hours or so so the timing wasn’t that good I guess.

I did re-taste it a couple of weeks later “on a empty stomach”. This time it was much better. Still light but very lingering and appetising. The long finish is one of the best if not the best I ever had in a VW bourbon. Stile wise it did remind me a lot of WT Legend single barrel.

A week or 2 ago I did a side by side with series A. Same distillery and ground flavours for sure (Bernheim) but the stile is enormously different. One is the heaviest VW bourbon I have ever had and the other the lightest at 100 proof or more. Still I do like both very much, but the I bottle is defiantly a aperitif/early on the day bottle and the A is the opposite and almost impossible to “kill” by any food or drink nether by heavy tasty or the fact that the level of alcohol in the blood goes into real high figures.

It has struck me before but isn’t the different VW-bottlings of the same labels very different to each other, or am I only imagine? I would say that the same goes for the rye line as well for my personal taste. As for these 2 bottlings I would go so far that for my personal taste they are at least as far from each other as any 2 bottles of OFBB.

This said I don’t mean that this is a negative thing, but just a observation due to personal taste.

Leif

[TNbourbon]

Leif, I don't know if anyone in the bourbon industry (I'd bet there's someone, somewhere) tracks and graphs the aging conditions (summer heat/winter cold, general weather, et al) over time in mid-Kentucky, but I've noted the same differences you mention -- particularly in yet another Van Winkle 'line': older Old Fitzgerald BIBs -- and wondered if the differences aren't simply climatic. For example, a 6-year period of temperature extremes will yield a very different whiskey than a 6-year period of year-round mild temperatures. I've had some OFBIBs with bold, assertive flavors, and others similarly-aged that were almost ethereal in their lightness of being. Your 'A' and 'I' bottlings, I assume, are several years apart, and thus may have experienced vastly different aging conditions. I wonder if the explanation isn't something that simple.