Brown Stuff

Nothing will sour your taste for whiskey more than a whiskey tasting. I've met many, in fact, whose last taste of whisky was in their youth when it was unceremoniously tasted twice and never again. I have not had such an experience but I can tell you that after tasting six, I had no reason to drink any more.

I'm a devout Jack Daniel's fan* but am aware of the opinion that charcoal filtering is cheating, meaning Jack doesn't have to be aged as long and the charcoal filtering influences the flavor of the whiskey more than true craft. In the interest of science and increasing the high brow-ness of my whiskey choices, I hosted a whiskey tasting.

Rather than buying several bottles of whiskey, I purchased an assortment of miniatures. Admittedly, this excluded most of the truly top shelf whiskeys but it gave me several choices. After all, I wasn't going to drink them all. I just wanted a taste.

We tried:

• Jack Daniel's
• Mischief Whiskey
• Early Times (whiskey)
• John Jacob Rye Whiskey
• Woodford Reserve (bourbon)
• Gentleman Jack

Only Hubby and I were present for the tasting but we each served the other in a blind tasting. After comparing notes, we found that we were both able to pick out the Jack and the Gentleman Jack from the rest. Based on preconceived notions we would have picked Early Times as our least favorite before the tasting however we found it to be reasonably drinkable. Turns out Early Times and Jack Daniels are both owned by The Brown-Forman Company so that may have something to do with it.

Mischief Whiskey and John Jacob Rye Whiskey are both made by Fremont Mischief in Seattle which I didn't know until I looked it up after our taste test. We liked the rye whiskey but neither of us cared for the Mischief, even as we are mischievous.

So there you have it. We are destined to be low brow drinkers of the brown stuff, although it might be a while before we have any more of it. A whiskey tasting will anesthetize your nostrils and burn your tongue. But there's always tomorrow. And, the next day. 

I'm sure we'll recover.

*I have a Jack Daneil's Field Tester cap signed in 2005 by Jimmy Bedford, the sixth of seven Master Distillers in the history of the distillery.