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Eighty years, three months and twenty-three days ago, the 21st Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified. This amendment repealed the 18th Amendment and marked the end of Prohibition, a 14 year period where the manufacture, transport, and sale of liquor was outlawed in the United States.

To commemorate this important moment in our booze loving country’s history, Cutty Sark recently released a new blended Scotch whisky which they call the “Prohibition Edition”. Here is a bit more information about this new expression which was taken directly from their website:

Released 90 years after the end of the era which it celebrates, Cutty Sark Prohibition Edition has been crafted as a salute to the notorious Captain William McCoy, who smuggled Cutty Sark blended Scotch whisky into America during the Prohibition era of the 1920s.  Captain McCoy’s impeccable reputation for fairness and dealing only in the finest, genuine and unadulterated liquor gave rise to Cutty Sark being referred to as “The Real McCoy”. Prohibition Edition is bottled at 50% ABV (100 Proof – USA Measure), whilst our regular Cutty Sark blend is 40% ABV. This is a “small batch” blend of the finest single malts and top-quality grain whiskies.  Hand-selected American oak casks give subtle signature flavours of vanilla and citrus fruits, whilst the overall flavours and finish are extremely smooth and thrillingly complex. The black glass bottle has a cork seal – reflecting the traditions of the time.

And now for our thoughts on this whisky…

• Appearance: Golden yellow with a slight amber tint.
• Aroma
  • Limpd: Astringent and buttered toffee. Hints of butterscotch, mint and cough drops.
  • G-LO: Lightly sweet and fruity when I first stick my nose in the glass. Vanilla, almond paste, orange zest, coconut, some light brown sugar, and a touch of dried fruit. If you give it a bit more time, a hint of tobacco and menthol comes through.
• Taste
  • Limpd: Not overly sweet with a bit of citrus tartness (orange zest) and some pepper. A bit like a scotch-soaked Red Hot. Mid-palate, the flavors cascade more than blend to form an interesting procession of sugars, cinnamon and heat. This ends with a long, warm, caramel finish.
  • G-LO: Medium bodied with a touch of oiliness. All of the flavors are concentrated on the front third of my tongue. A touch of sweet smokiness at the start with a warming spiciness of the cinnamon variety that builds slowly as you approach mid-palate. Definitely getting a Sherry vibe on this one with lots of dried fruit coming through. It all comes together at the finish with some sweet tobacco, dried fruit, and cinnamon flavors.
• ABV: 50%

The Verdict

Limpd: In a bit of a panic purchase, my mom had grabbed a bottle of Cutty on her way to my house one Christmas. While this might not have been my preferred blend, suffice it to say the contents were thoroughly enjoyed and the bottle properly recycled. That said, the Prohibition edition is leaps and bounds beyond Cutty. Maybe it was the higher ABV; maybe it was the healthy pour, but this was a surprisingly good blend. Not overly sweet or peaty or briny, just a nice blend of flavors and a really nice finish.

G-LO: I gotta admit, my expectations weren’t very high for this whisky. While there’s nothing really wrong with standard issue Cutty Sark, it’s a bit too light for my taste. Thankfully, the Cutty Sark Prohibition Edition is a completely different animal. Given it’s suggested retail price of around $30/bottle, I’d say that this is one hell of a Scotch whisky bargain. And when you factor in the relatively high octane and smooth, rich flavors, this is an absolute steal! I really like this whisky and would definitely buy a bottle.

The post Whisky Review – Cutty Sark Prohibition Edition appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

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Not all that long ago, Mrs. G-LO left me home alone with The Boys (aka our two sons) on a Saturday night so that she could attend a bridal shower / bachelorette party for my future sister in law in Atlantic City. As luck would have it, The Boys were a bit tired that night, so both of them were asleep by around 9PM. Since I knew that Mrs. G-LO would be out for quite some time, I decided to take advantage of the situation and sat down to finally review the two Papa’s Pilar Rum samples shown in the above photo which I received from RoBro Marketing.

Although I have always been a fan of a well crafted Rum cocktail, I can’t say that I’ve spent much time drinking it straight, so when I started to do a bit of research about these Papa’s Pilar Rums (i.e. a bit of Googling), I was curious to see how they would hold up on their own. Here is what I was able to find out:

• Pilar was the name of Ernest Hemingway’s boat, a customized 1934 Wheeler Playmate Cruiser.
• The Papa’s Pilar Rum brand was co-created in 2009 by Miami advertising agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky.
• There is no Papa’s Pilar Rum distillery. The Rums used to make Papa’s Pilar are sourced from distilleries in Florida, The Caribbean, and Central America.
• Papa’s Pilar Blonde and Dark Rums are created using a Solera aging and blending process that involves aging in Bourbon barrels and Port wine casks followed by finishing in Spanish Sherry casks.

At around 9:30, I started nosing the Papa’s Pilar Blonde and was instantly intrigued by the aromas. As I have already mentioned, I don’t have any experience with Rum tasting, so I quickly decided to recruit Limpd for some help and a second opinion. After a quick round of back and forth text messages, Limpd popped over at around 10:30 to assist with the review.

Here are our results…

Papa’s Pilar Blonde Rum

• ABV: 42%
• Appearance: Pale blonde color that reminded us of a Pinot Grigio or perhaps a Ginger Ale. Lots of thick slow moving legs form after giving it a swirl in the glass.
• Aroma
  • Limpd: Slightly medicinal with a witch hazel or menthol like quality. Once you get past the alcohol, it turns sweet with hints of simple syrup, vanilla, and caramel.
  • G-LO: Very sweet and citrusy with lemon and lime zest, vanilla, whipped cream, and light brown sugar.
• Taste
  • Limpd: A fair amount of cinnamon and black pepper spice at the onset. Syrupy sweetness kick in at mid-palate. Ends with a lingering Red Hot candy finish.
  • G-LO: Light and somewhat watery mouthfeel. A bit of alcohol burn at the start. Once you get past the alcohol, you get a vanilla buttercream sweetness. Lemon zest shows up at mid-palate along with a mild chile pepper heat. It all comes together in the end, i.e. vanilla creaminess, citrus, and a bit more heat. Medium finish with a lingering light brown sugar and vanilla sweetness.

Conclusion: We both found the Papa’s Pilar Blonde to be much more interesting than we expected. Most white Rums that we’ve tried straight tend to be a bit one dimensional, but this stuff has a delightfully layered flavor profile which we’re sure has a great deal to do with the Solera process. We could totally see ourselves sipping this Rum on occasion, or using it to create a really delicious cocktail.

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Papa’s Pilar Dark Rum

• ABV: 43%
• Appearance: Antique copper or chestnut color. Again, lots of thick slow moving legs form after giving it a swirl in the glass.
• Aroma
  • Limpd: Medicinal at first followed by toffee, cinnamon, and vanilla.
  • G-LO: Rich and aromatic with hints of dark brown sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, allspice, and dried fruit. Very Banana’s Fosterish.
• Taste
  • Limpd: Tastes a lot like the aged rums that I’ve sampled. The Port Wine and Sherry influence is readily apparent. A little woody with sweet vanilla, cherries, and then a little licorice showing up in the finish which doesn’t last very long.
  • G-LO: Somewhat thicker mouthfeel with a touch of oiliness. Very sweet with an almost nutty quality. I’m thinking roasted hazelnuts. Mellow and easy drinking with just a hint of cinnamon bite showing up in the finish. Picked up some dried figs in the aftertaste.

Conclusion: It’s funny how expectations work! We thought for sure that we would have preferred the Dark Rum over the Blonde Rum, but it turns out that the opposite is true. While there was absolutely nothing wrong with the Papa’s Pilar Dark Rum, we both found it to be a touch too sweet for our taste.

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I guess when it comes to Papa’s Pilar Rum, the gentlemen preferred Blonde.

The post Papa’s Pilar Blonde and Dark Rums appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

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I married a rocket scientist. Ok, not really. She’s a satellite engineer. Same difference. Well, not exactly, and Exactly is an art form for engineers. Numbers and formulas and complex algorithms are buzzing in her head constantly. She won’t admit it but she talks in her sleep and recites Fibonacci sequences. Or maybe they’re Poisson distributions. I get them confused at 2:00 am. The point being that her brain is always fermenting and distilling concepts in highly organized, numerical ways, I assume keeping satellites up in the atmosphere sending signals out and also not falling on our heads. (How’s that for a potential tie-in to something on a booze blog?). It’s a special mind that works that way.

Chip Tate has that kind of mind too. Chip is the maestro behind the artisanal orchestra that is Balcones of Waco, Texas. He recently led a LA Scotch Club tasting of his mighty whiskies in Los Angeles at the Village Idiot on ultra-hip Melrose Ave where the tattoos and piercings meet Kosher-Mexican restaurants and noisy gastropubs while bacon-wrapped hot dog stands warm the air in front of chic clothing boutiques that have valet parking for ten bucks. Beats a parking ticket when you just have to have those $300 pair of kicks. It almost doesn’t compute thinking about Balcones in this environ but then again, it does. Wild, wacky and experimental, Chip is Wile E. Coyote and Bugs Bunny morphed into one except the dynamite doesn’t blow up and light his lengthy beard on FIRE, but if it did, he’d only see it as another desert road to drive down for one of his projects.

“Every problem is an opportunity.”

Those are Chip’s own words that speak volumes about the Balcones culture and not-so-urban mythology that has grown amongst the lovers of his award winning Texas style whisky. His brain is working much like my better half’s. You can see the chemistry and possibilities bombarding inside him endlessly. I wonder if he sleeps or just lays in bed writing equations and recipes on the ceiling with a laser pointer. Damn, I probably gave the missus an idea. He speaks of “things in his head” which for the Balcones fan base can only mean crazy (good) experiments with who-knows-what grains, fruits, elements, waters, woods, and fire in some (im)possible bottling they can hope will be available one day. He assures the group that now that his distillery is tripling in size in Waco, most everything he’s ever bottled will be made again in the next 4-5 years so the endless searches on spirit websites will lessen hopefully calming the adoring legions. No doubt, there is a spreadsheet, little black book or massive whiteboard with all of these scribbled formulas, and maybe they’re locked away in an ironclad gun case buried in the central Texas desert which would just add another level to the Balcones legend. So, if there is a Whisky God in Waco, 300 bottles of one of Balcones’ signature, classic cask strength corn-crazy spirits infused with whatever is floating in Chip’s imagination that years(s) before, might become 900 bottles one day and available at your local spirits shop still bottled in that distinctive Balcones manner. In 4-5 years. Sigh.

His is a brain of a chemist and of a chef balancing and massaging equations and flavors as the ingredients and processes change in a logic that he only knows. Figs, sugar and honey all from Texas become Rumble in what sounds like a grandmother’s old recipe for some long lost dessert, except his fingers and mind flips everything backwards and upside down into something so beautiful and clean and rich that a friend told me after smelling it that she wanted to just bathe in it. Is that a compliment for a great spirit or for the essence of what Balcones is all about? The sum of the parts is what chemistry is, like grandma mixing a little of this and a little of that together and it becoming something so wondrous that the smell filled the house, and the taste filled the mouths and tummies with a goodness that lasted and lasted but still left you wanting more.

Maybe Chip is not so much a unique distiller as much as a new version of that cook in our past that filled us with tastes and flavors and memories like no one else could. And that Balcones essence comes from the heart of Texas which Tate rightly points out covers a lot of territory where oaks, mesquites, cottonwoods, walnuts, pines and alders come in varieties too long to list. Texas is big, you may have heard. And for Chip who wants his spirits to be oh so Texan in every bottling, the palette of potential flavors stretches as long as Interstate 10. One flavor that one wouldn’t seem to be Texas specific is smoke, and smoke is an important element in Chip’s periodic chart ranging helium light to atomic weight heavy. It’s a constant presence in all of his spirits with subtle to ka-pow effects. It’s Texas barbeque, scrub brush over a campfire, and forest fire in the mountains of West Texas. He plays with the Texas fire and wood smoke to enhance his whisky in ways never seen or tasted before.

“Resurrection is Octomore that went to Texas.”

That’s how Chip describes the “big mistake” in his laboratory, er, distillery that resulted in one less intern and the massive, fiery, bold Brimstone Resurrection that scorches the earth with burned molasses and caramel, smoldering oak and cinnamon, and ashy Texas corn. The devil may have went to Georgia but he surely stopped in Waco for a night cap of this one. There may be no real mistakes at Balcones. Every trial balloon is floated and goes into the book of experience and the pieces are used in future test flights. The learning goes on with each chemical reaction, good or bad. Of course, bad can mean undrinkable swill or a huge inferno. Either way, Chip tucks it all away back into his head for future use.

Eye to I
Reaction burning hotter
Two to one
Reflection on the water
H to O
No flow without the other
Oh but how
Do they make contact
With one another?

– From “Chemistry” by Rush

This may be the fundamental organic question for Balcones. Their mission question, as it were. Can we connect similar and seemingly dissimilar elements into something more; more being a unique whisky, bourbon, rum, rye or something without a name yet. From the aromatic Rumble to the apocalyptic Resurrection, Chip Tate and Balcones are imaginatively distilling spirits, taking chemical engineering and Texas passion and creativity to places the world of whisky has never gone.

The post Chip Tate’s Formula for Balcones appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.