Bourbon (3rd one, Tastings #25)

Bourbon Tasting (December 1st, 2022)

This is our 3rd Bourbon Tasting. The bottles in question were;

We had 11 people on the Zoom, but 16 people took racks.  This was rescheduled to December 1st, from October 21st, due to personal reasons.  It was our 3rd Bourbon tasting, the 2nd Bourbon tasting was Feb 19th, 2021, and  1st Bourbon tasting was in July, 2020.

This was only the 2nd time we did a product line.  The 1st time we did Grand Marnier, which was our 1st tasting ever, back in 2019.  This tasting, and product line was Knob Creek, Bourbon and Rye!  Knob Creek 9 yr won our 2nd Bourbon tasting, and it was the cheapest Bourbon in the tasting, so it was only fitting to feature their product line.  I supplied the reviews for the 7 Bourbons from Distiller.com, the 8th was Knob Creek Maple Bourbon, so it’s kind of a give away, from a tasting perspective, and was my nod to my “signature”, cream at the end of the tasting.  The best anyone did in terms of guessing the Bourbon, based on the tasting notes, was 2/7, I think its much harder when all bottles are from the same product line.  The previous record was 4/6…

We tried to use electronic voting, with this remote tasting, with limited success.  We did lose one group of votes, since presently you only submit the votes once all bottles are rated.  Kelly left early, and didn’t do the 8th bottle, and therefore it didn’t prompt her to submit her votes, so they unfortunately were lost.  She did confirm F and G were her highest votes, both with 8’s, so that was consistent with the group.  I have learned more about the improvements to Zoom voting, and I think we can use that next tasting, although having multiple people in the same room, who want to vote, will be issues with the Zoom voting.  I’m still investigating this issue.

The winning bottles of the tasting were the highest proof bottles (120 proof), which shocked me.  I guess we are getting more sophisticated, as we do more and more of these tastings.  The higher proof bottles do have the most flavour, but often have some burn, so I was shocked, but impressed, that they won.  They were also near the end of the tasting, so maybe people were very ‘happy’ by then, and their votes were more liberal…not sure, anyway, good job team!

We did the 8 tubes, in about 90 minutes.  Marcia was there to time us, but we were still a little aggressive on the time.  We did a rum and coke toast to Wayne (Rum lover) at the beginning of the tasting, and many wore hockey shirts in his honour, I even saw a pink Canadians shirt, that was a 1st for me.  Thank you for that!

The Winners!

The winner  was a tie with 58/80, both F and G won, so the Cask Strength Rye (F), at 119.6 proof won, and the Small Batch, Single Barrel,  9 year (G), at 120 proof won,  in 3rd, it was also a tie, at 56/80. the 12 yr, and 9 yr came in 3rd.

So $$ for $$, the Knob Creek 9 yr ($50), and the Knob Creek Single Barrel ($60) are a good deal.  The 12 yr is $90, and the Cask Strength Rye is $120…so they’re a bit expensive for the votes they received.

1st Place (7.2)

1st Place (7.2)

2nd Place (7.0)

I think we needed some more people voting…8 is too small a survey, imho.  Dane couldn’t take part, due a child on the way that night potentially, but he did take part in the toast.  Rob was 2 hours late, for the 2 hour tasting, but still tried to catch up.  Kelly’s votes were lost, due to a technical glitch (let’s just say that).

The next Tasting is January 19th, 2023, it will be Tequila Blancos…some very nice ones.

The Survey Results