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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Brown Water Weather

It’s still cold and wet, and you’re still broke. The romantics and better halves may call it “snuggle weather,” but you and I know better. You’re possibly on the end of a Dry January, but now those bills are starting to show up and, well, you need a bracer. This, my friend, is “whiskey weather.”

When is it not? We are living in a golden age of bourbon: Distillers have elevated America’s spirit from rotgut to an art form, and they should be proud of themselves. And to look at the price point of some of these artisan products, they really are. To wit: Here are some exceptional whiskeys for the enthusiast whose credit limit isn’t quite what it was on Black Friday:

Old Forester’s flagship bourbon retails for about $19 and is not rotgut, but it is your grandfather’s bourbon. When my friend Tom Morris became master distiller (he started working for the former master distiller in high school), he wanted to up the brand’s game. And he has. Old Forester has several expressions in the $55 to $65 range, and some higher. Every bottle I’ve ever had has been worth the money (assuming that you have it). Hidden among these boozy gems is Old Forester Signature — which will cost you about $26. A friend of mine and I had a side by side with Old Forester’s Signature and the coveted Birthday expression, which was about $55 at the time. We both agreed that the Birthday was the better whiskey, but was it twice as good? What we decided was that Signature was one of the best bourbons for the price.

If you are angling for a local favorite, Blue Note has a couple of expressions that won’t break the bank: Juke Joint comes in at $29. Like Old Forester, Blue Note has some bourbons at a higher price point, and they’ve been worth the money. While Juke Joint has a touch of heat, it really is a great value. Blue Note’s Crossroads comes in at $39, is finished in French oak barrels, and, at 100 proof, I don’t guess you need that much to forget your problems. Either will warm your cockles when you start getting miserly about the thermostat.

If you want to try something a little outside that classic bourbon taste profile, a favorite that I’ve written about before is Old Dominick’s Bourbon Whiskey at $39. What gets me excited is the high rye content, which gives it wonderful spice pepper notes. For a whiskey to be legally called bourbon, it must have at least 51 percent corn — so there is that round sweetness from the corn, but at 44 percent rye, the sweet is balanced with spice.

If you were carousing at a Bobby Burns dinner last week, you might be thinking that you want to give Scotch whiskey a whirl. (Do it for me!) If nothing else, it will wash the taste of haggis out of your mouth. A word of caution — if you love those peaty Islay whiskeys, sadly, you are just going to have to pay up. Going cheap here is awful. If you are looking for a solid drinkable Scotch, stick to Speyside and Highland whiskeys. Without all the peat and smoke, there is a lot less to go horribly wrong. Besides, there is also less to freak the seasoned bourbon drinker out.

Tomatin has a 12-year-old single malt finished in a cherry cask that will cost only $39. It’s a Highland Scotch, but light enough to where I’d initially thought it was Speyside. It is soft, with some notes of crème brûlée, and if you are looking for a single malt under $40 these days, this is about the best you are going to get.

At any rate, cheer up: Warm weather is around the corner, and they just might raise your credit limit.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink Food Reviews

Blue Note: A Memphis Whiskey to Savor

Cutting quickly to the chase, Blue Note Straight Bourbon Whiskey Single Barrel Reserve is a great whiskey. It hits the right note, if you will. In fact, it hits a lot of them. Produced here in Memphis, I found this particular bottle — from a barrel hand-selected by the team at Buster’s — when one of said team, Kathrine Fultz, stuck it in my hand. I have a keen grasp of the obvious, you see.

These hand-picked barrels are more than just a gimmick. There is a lot of blending that goes into commercial production, which isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it’s how producers ensure a uniform product. No one expects their go-to bottle of bourbon to vary from batch to batch, like wine. Whiskey bottled from a single barrel, on the other hand, is something unique. Assuming that the people doing the picking know what they are doing, it’s a great way to enjoy a one-of-a-kind bottle. What Kathrine handed me was bottle #34 from the anointed barrel. I suppose that knowing exactly which bottle I was holding was a bit of a gimmick, but it’s a pretty cool one.

So, I opened up bottle #34 at nine years and, taking myself entirely too seriously, poured out a dram in a snifter. The color was beautiful. When cramming your nose into a tasting glass, remember to part your lips and breathe. That way you get to the whiskey and don’t just get a honker overwhelmed by ethyl alcohol. It’s deep caramel, with some oak spice to let you know it’s there. Then add a few drops of that pure, no-longer-needs-to-be-boiled, Memphis water. On the palate, there is also some citrus, but at 122.4 proof, there is some heat to it. At that proof there would have to be, but the feel isn’t raw.

Photo: Richard Murff

The truth is that those tasting glasses are small and I don’t suggest whipping one out in public unless you just want to look like an insufferable ass. I think that it’s important to try a whiskey out in what we might call “real world conditions,” so I poured what we might call a “real drink” into a rocks glass, along with a cube or two of ice — like an actual human. After giving it a swirl or two, I let it sit for a bit.

If you follow booze twitter or Instagram while pretending to be at work, you get a lot of whiskey-purists barking about not putting water in whiskey. What bugs me about this isn’t that it’s bad advice, but that someone with the handle “Supreme_Bourbon_Buddha,” or some such nonsense, is broadcasting such an obvious rookie mistake. I suppose we all need a code to live by, but the laws of both physiology and chemistry still stand: The tongue and nasopharynx can only process so much ethyl alcohol. At 122.4 proof, you are only getting about half of what you bought. A little water will do both you and your whiskey a tremendous service.

After a swirl, the Blue Note really opens up and hits some different notes. That heat mellowed out into a deeper caramel with hints of orange, and with that oak spice still moving along the palate. The body — or mouthfeel — is richer than you’d expect for proof in this neighborhood, and it all thankfully lingers in a good, long finish.

The downside to a selected single barrel is that there is only one of them, and so by their very nature supplies are limited. Which is as good a reason as any to get to know your local liquor store. You just never know what they are going to stick in your hand.