We had the pleasure of the company of esteemed forum members Bunghole & OneCube (aka Linn & Gary) on 6/24. We did no "formal" tasting - just sipped, gabbed & ate a delicious Tina signature meal of roast beef, zucchini & tomatoes, cucumbers from our garden, & freshly prepared homemade potato salad.
Some notable tastes included:
1) Gary generously brought AH Hirsch 16 year gold wax - fabulous! Smooth, rich, almost creamy - mellow with big vanilla and caramel. A head to head was done with Tribute - two different whiskey animals, both as top shelf as it gets, but I thought the Hirsch "won" this no lose proposition!
2) We all agreed that Old Charter Proprietor's Reserve stacks up nicely against Hirsch when you consider that it's price point is very different.
3) Linn burned me with a blind pour of one of my favorites - ER 17. At first I thought it was the Hirsch agagain, then OCPR, which was also Gary's first guess.
4) We had the good fortune of a super secret source providing some barrel strength Evan Williams. We all agreed that there was a rich caramel flavor that dissipated very quickly with the addition of any water whatsoever.
5) Fleischmann's bicentennial oddly had a flavor profile very similar to present day Henry McKenna Single Barrel (per Dave) & Evan Williams 1783 (per Gary) when compared side by side.
6) The Bernheim wheat was considered to be more of an interesting novelty than "great whiskey;" we agreed that it's nice to try one bottle, but it will probably be a while before anybody would purchase a second one.
7) The William LaRue Weller was considered clearly "antique" caliber and far superior in quality:cost ratio compared to the Bernheim. I also found that I liked it much better this time around compared to the last tasting of it.
8) "Old" Russell's Reserve 101 has made Gary rethink his bias against the Turkey flavor profile, although Rare Breed remmains very lackluster on the OneCube palate.
Most importantly, a good time was had by all, and we can't wait to get together again!