The Four Finalsts and the new contender. They’re all good.

It has taken me an awfully long time to get around to doing this.  Part of that was the arrival of summer, which is generally not a whiskey-drinking time of year for me, and then getting ready for Nats (which kept me sober) and at some point my schedule got kind of twisted around where I didn’t have a nice block of time in the evenings anymore that I could devote to this.  So in order to finally get this written, I’m starting at 2:30 in the afternoon.  The sacrifices I make for you people.

To refresh the rules:  it has to be a) a rye whiskey, b) at one of the liquor stores that I drive by routinely, and c) under $40/bottle.  I could easily get another ten candidates up here if I ignored that last rule, but that would cost as much as a case of 9mm.  Besides, great rye can be had for cheap, I’ve proven that.

I actually did learn a whole lot doing this exercise, one of the things I learned is that I really like rye.  Is it Scotch?  No.  But it’s definitely a great dram, and one I prefer to Bourbon and barrel aged vodka Irish.  I also learned that cheddar pairs best with rye, while goat and bloomy rinds are best with Scotch and Swiss/alpine style go best with bourbon.  I also learned that my first taste of rye, back at a football game from a shared flask that lead to this project so many years later, was one of the worst rye whiskeys available.  And yet it was still good! (It was Jim Beam yellow label.  Never buy it.  Literally everything else I tasted was better, including J.D.’s rye and Old Granddad.)

A few honorable mentions here before today’s tasting notes.

Few – Excellent.  Delicious, within type, but with enough of a deviation as to be really interesting.

Bulleit – The best smelling one of all of these.  I could totally go for a candle that smells like this.  It was disqualified because if someone didn’t know whether or not they liked rye, and they tried Bulleit, they still wouldn’t know if they liked rye.  Delicious though.

Basil Hayden’s Dark Rye – Disqualified because it’s a bottled cocktail, not a whiskey.  But it is delicious.

Like always, I’ll have distilled water for proof-levelling, sharp cheddar, chocolate, and a neutral cracker-thing to see how the flavor changes.  One thing that will be different this time is that I keep my house 63 degrees in the winter which is frankly too cold for whiskey, so I’ll need to use my thinnest glasses and cuddle the drinks for a bit.

So to start things off, when I went to the liquor store to replace the finalists that I had drunk and not replaced, I noticed there was a new offering that fit the above criteria.  I went ahead and bought it, though you could claim it is jumping the line since it didn’t have to pass through a preliminary round first.  Tough. The other thing that made me decide to include this one is that it’s made in Washington, so finally I get a West Coast entry.  Hopefully this confirms the idea that good rye can be made anywhere.

Woodinville – Considerably darker in the glass than anything else here, but the color isn’t indicative of gross adulteration like with the Basil Hayden.  There is less of an ash scent on the nose than I as expecting, sweet and oddly enough, some terpenes.  Definitely a hit of an amyl ester too, but it’s in the background.  First sip says this stuff is really good.  Since I identified that ester, I was mentally primed for fruit, so that’s what I got — orange peel, char, honey, much less vanillin than I was expecting.  It’s got a really nice bite too.  Very makes your throat glow.  Excellent stuff.  I’ll just use a few drops of water since I’ve got less than a finger left and it’s only 90 proof to start with.  It doesn’t open up so much as get rounder and a bit sweeter.  Very interesting.  Highly recommended.

I’m not going to do notes on the other finalists, since I’ve already done that.  Instead I’ll just comment on how they fit into my liquor cabinet.

Templeton Rye – Pros:  <$30/bottle, subtle, sophisticated, elegant, smooth.  Cons:  perhaps too smooth, may be made by shitheads.  Best for:  people scared of drinking neat whiskey, wine drinkers, snobby guests (as long as you transfer it to a decanter first, obviously), family gatherings, large parties where you care about if the guests like the hooch.

Knob Creek Kentucky Straight Rye – Pros:  100 proof, classic rye, exemplar of the class, absolutely wonderful.  Cons:  on the high end of the price limit, not currently <$40/bottle.  Best for:  introducing someone to what rye whiskey is supposed to taste like, whiskey drinking guests, celebratory drinks, impressing dates that have taste.

Rittenhouse Rye Bottled-in-Bond – Pros: 100 proof, absolute value leader, cheap enough to make your well rye and/or experiment with, still excellent.  Cons:  bottom-shelf stigma.  Best for:  always having on hand, mixing drinks, keeping behind the bar, open bar functions where you don’t hate the guests, generally getting hammered, buying cheap and stacking deep.

Wheel Horse Rye – Pros: 101 proof, lively, assertive, delicious, interesting.  Cons:  give me a minute, maybe I can think of something.  Best for: surprising a good friend who wants “a drink.”  Treating yourself, drinking with more strongly flavored foods (in my tasting it held up to alpine cheeses, sliced steak, and chicken parm), drinking by the fire with a good book, drinking without a fire or a good book.

 

So if I had to pick a “best” one out of the… eighteen(?) I’ve tried in this little project (and I guess I do, the title does specify “ranking” after all).  The winner is…

 

Our Winner. Well MY winner, but until one of you puts together your own meticulously documented version, it’ll count as “our.”