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Photo Gallery: Wine Across America 
Enlarge 儘管近年來全球各地喜愛喝香檳酒的人數已愈來愈多，但比利時人卻是世界上最習慣喝香檳酒的民族。
根據比利時荷文「晨報」報導，如以人均消費量計算，比利人是全球最習慣喝香檳酒的民族。去年比利時已進口九百三十萬瓶香檳酒，預計今年將超過一千萬瓶。
報導說，比利時擁有一千零六十萬人口，平均每一名比利時人每年約喝掉一瓶香檳酒。
報導指出，全球香檳酒銷售量正在大幅增加中，預估今年將銷售出四億瓶香檳酒，並打破一九九三年創下一年內銷售三億二千七百萬瓶香檳酒的紀錄。
2007年12月29日 星期六
『玉泉紅麴葡萄酒』
這廣告傳到我岳母處
Wine Made Across the U.S.A.
美國這10年種葡萄釀酒的增加一倍
NPR的一角....
NPR的一角....
Wine Made Across the U.S.A.
Listen Now [4 min 53 sec] add to playlist
More from the Interview
Daphne Larkin (left), co-author of Wine Across America, with photographer Charles O'Rear.
Morning Edition, December 20, 2007 · Napa Valley may be America's wine capital, but wine is now produced in all 50 states. Across America, wineries and tasting rooms can be found in converted buildings — a bordello in Arizona, a cotton gin in Texas, a church in Ohio. There's even a tasting room in an Alaska shopping center.
And with that broad reach, there are all kinds of ideas of what wine can be, according Charles O'Rear and Daphne Larkin, the authors of Wine Across America, a photographic survey of the U.S. wine industry.
A retired nuclear physicist in Los Alamos, N.M., calls his label — what else? — La Bomba. There's a cranberry wine from Michigan and a garlic wine from California.
Larkin says she and O'Rear didn't discover the next Chateau Margaux or any really spectacular vintages, but they did find a lot of fascinating people making wine because they love it.
"People from all walks of life are making wine, whether they're retired nuclear physicists or firemen or doctors or housewives or big families," Larkin tells Renee Montagne.
O'Rear says technology is making it easier to get into the wine business. "The Internet, for example, makes it so easy to learn the basics of making wine, of growing grapes."
Now, there are vineyards seemingly everywhere, Larkin says.
"We found that they're making it with whatever fruit they have," Larkin says. "If they can't plant the classic European grapes, like chardonnay and cabernet, then they have blueberries, or they have pineapple like they do in Hawaii."
Related NPR Stories
- Dec. 8, 2007A Visit to a Muslim Wine Merchant
- Nov. 22, 2007Music Alters Wine's Taste, Vintner Insists
- July 16, 2007Brazil Produces Award-Winning Wine
- June 19, 2007EU Agrees to Protect Napa Wines' Good Name
- May 28, 2007Wine-Tasting Divas on the Art of Sipping
- April 19, 2007Top-Notch Winemakers Struggle with Bottom Line
- April 8, 2007Madeira, A Wine for the Ages
- March 24, 2007Seeking the Truth About Wine Labeling
- March 7, 2007Ernest Gallo's Dream of a Wine Business
- Dec. 12, 2006Holiday Wine: Walking in a Vintner's Wonderland
- May 17, 2005Court Ruling Paves Way for Wine Industry Growth
- April 19, 2005'Mondovino': Making Wine in a Global Market
- July 16, 2007'Two-Buck Chuck' Snags Top Wine Prize
- April 10, 2002Wine Tips, from the Author of 'The Wine Bible'
2007年12月26日 星期三
水漿醴涼醫酏
（二）ｙｉ３《集韻》隱巳切，上止影。之部。 （１） 飲名。《集韻‧止韻》：“醫，和醴酏為飲也。”《洪武正韻‧紙韻》：“醫，飲名。”《周禮‧天官‧酒正》：“辨四飲之物，一曰清，二曰醫，三曰漿，四曰 酏。”鄭玄注：“醫，《內則》所謂或以酏為醴，凡醴濁，釀酏為之則少清矣。”清厲鶚《煙草唱和詩序》：“水漿醴涼醫酏之屬，其厚薄有殊，大抵不離酒林。”
酏劑 :一種芳香、甜味、含醇的透明溶液。通常作矯味劑用，如供醫療用者，則須含具有療效的主要藥品。
（２）梅漿。《五音集韻‧旨韻》：“醫，梅漿。”
| 薄粥。周禮˙天官˙酒正：「辨四飲之物，一曰清，二曰醫，三曰漿，四日酏。」鄭玄˙注：「酏，今之粥。」南朝梁˙簡文帝˙停省婦見令：「敬進酏醴，已傳婦事之則。」 |
 | 甜酒。玉篇˙酉部：「醴，甜酒也。」呂氏春秋˙孟春紀˙重己：「其為飲食酏醴也，足以適味充虛而已矣。」高誘˙注：「醴者，以櫱與黍相體，不以麴也，濁而甜耳。」 | |
 | 甘泉。文選˙張衡˙思玄賦：「飲青岑之玉醴兮，餐沆瀣以為粻。」宋˙蘇軾˙參寥上人初得智果院會者十六人分韻賦詩軾得心字詩：「雲崖有淺井，玉醴常半尋。」 |
2007年12月25日 星期二
A Tempest in a Champagne Flute
這世界類似凱恩斯先生那樣喜歡喝好香檳的人可是越來越多了
【2007/12/28 歐洲日報】
A Tempest in a Champagne Flute
SERVAL, France
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MAYOR SERGE MOUSSEAUX may run one of the poorest city halls in France. A lifelong farmer, he governs this village of 50 people from a three-room structure whose only adornments are the shredded flags of France and the European Union. But behind the building is a hiding place that for Mr. Mousseaux holds the key to prosperity.
It is here, in a troglodyte 穴居 limestone cave, that Mr. Mousseaux, 66, keeps hundreds of bottles of the fizzy wine he makes from his grapes. One day, he hopes to call it Champagne. At an impromptu, non-Champagne tasting at City Hall, he held up a glass of his creation. “Look at the fizz, the tininess of the bubbles!” he exclaimed. “That is magic, poetry — so different from what big Champagne houses do.”
Under French law, the only sparkling wine anywhere in the world that merits the name Champagne with a capital C must be made from grapes grown on officially designated plots of land in France.
But as global demand for Champagne soars, pressure is mounting to expand Champagne country. Champagne-producing houses want guaranteed long-term access to more of the pinot noir, chardonnay and pinot meunier vines that are used to make the real thing. Farmers and landowners who are not on Champagne-designated land hope to join the exclusive club of insiders.
To that end, a team of French government-appointed experts drew up a secret list last October designating 40 communities — communes — for possible addition to the 319 communes with the designation Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée, or A.O.C., a convoluted if coveted certification that authenticates the content, method and origin of production of a French agricultural item.
“原產地命名控制”（AOC）法國消費者很重視產品的產地。“原產地命名控制”標識是最古老的辦法。這種辦法創立於1935年，只有擁有地理概念上的原產地特色的產品，才能獲得這種標識。http://tw.myblog.yahoo.com/hcdeming/article?mid=26If approved, the initiative would start the largest expansion of Champagne vineyards in eight decades.
The list was promptly leaked by the local newspaper of Reims, setting off waves of protest, calls for justice and heated speculation about who might strike it rich. Mr. Mousseaux’s fields, for example, were left out. Only one community in Aisne, the region where his land is located, was included.
“This is incomprehensible,” said Mr. Mousseaux, whose family has grown grapes and other crops on the stony, spare earth here for generations. “We have exactly the same soil as the areas that were chosen, the same sun, the same beautiful hills. This land is so perfect that the grapes even grow wild in our gardens.”
Even though his land is only six miles from official Champagne-producing territory, he is an outsider, forbidden to sell what he informally calls Vin de Serval. He seals his bottles with metal bottle caps; Champagne-like corks are expensive.
For several years, he has been part of a lobby of 350 retired and active farmers — with the unwieldy name the Association for the Delimitation of a Champagne Vineyard and AOC Champagne Hills in the Valleys of the Aisne and the Vesle — whose goal is to expand Champagne-growing onto their farmland.
The association keeps a file of decades-old photos of fields of Champagne grapes and receipts proving delivery of his family’s grapes to an official Champagne-making house as recently as 1962, an era when legal controls were less rigidly enforced.
But others involved in redrawing France’s Champagne map take a harder line, saying the decision is much more complicated than the size of bubbles.
They dismiss farmers like Mr. Mousseaux as hopeless romantics who understand little about the five criteria involved in the current investigation: Champagne’s history, geography, geology, agronomy and an obscure field called phytosociology, the study of plant communities.
“It’s like the Miss World contest, all the contestants think they are the most beautiful,” said Ghislain de Montgolfier, the departing president of Bollinger and the head of the Union of Champagne Houses, the Champagne makers’ trade group. “I’m good friends with some of these farmers, but I tell them that old rules are not the criteria. We now have a fixed juridical and scientific system that is more rational. So there are going to be some who win, and some who lose.”
The main reason there is so much furor over the Champagne expansion is that so much money is at stake. The value of farmland for Champagne grape-growing is at least 200 times more than that of land where crops like wheat and beets grow, according to Daniel Lorson, spokesman for the Interprofessional Committee of the Wines of Champagne, a professional trade organization. Tom Stevenson, the British author of “World Encyclopedia of Champagne and Sparkling Wine” (Wine Appreciation Guild, 2003), estimated in an analysis in November that based on the location of the 40 proposed new communes, between 3,000 and 12,000 acres will be added. That, he said, could create up to nearly $9 billion of wealth for landowners.
Historically, grape-growing was not a ticket to wealth in this part of France. Many areas never recovered from phylloxera, the parasitic insect that destroyed vineyards in the 19th century, and then from the devastation of World War I.
Between the end of World War I and 1927, many mayors did not want their villages to be part of Champagne country because landowners tended to be aristocrats rather than businessmen. Besides, grain, dairy and cattle farming was more profitable.
The definition of the Champagne region came with a 1927 law that considered the quality of the soil, groundwater levels and exposure to the sun. The area has expanded haphazardly over the years to more than 79,000 acres today. In 1990, for example, the village of Fontaine-sur-Ay was quietly added without any fuss, because it had seemed like the logical thing to do.
“People started to ask why was Champagne status given to one commune and not another,” said Hervé Briand, an associate director of the National Institute of Appellations of Origin, the governmental agency in charge of food and drink quality in France. “It made us realize we had to have a global approach.”
Most official Champagne-designated land already had been planted, and demand in the $6 billion-a-year industry was increasing, particularly from new markets including Russia, China and India. So four years ago, the institute ordered a study on the expansion question.
Certainly there will be no new overnight millionaire farmers. If the National Institute decides to accept the initial recommendations, there will be a year-long public inquiry, in which all interested parties can object and lobby.
Then come the most difficult decisions. In 2009 at the earliest, the specific Champagne-worthy parcels of land will be chosen.
In principle, their topsoil will have to be light and not too fertile, their subsoil chalky, their slopes facing south. The fields must not be too vulnerable to frost or too close to forests. To maintain quality, the maximum volume of production per acre is laid down by law every year.
The first new vineyards probably will not be planted for several years, with the first harvest coming sometime after 2015.
For the most part, the 40 proposed communes fill in holes in existing Champagne areas, much of it near the Champagne centers of Reims and Épernay, rather than extending the perimeter. For reasons that have yet to be explained, Germaine and Orbais-l’Abbaye, two of the villages in the Marne region that currently enjoy Champagne-growing status, would be thrown out.
Complicating matters, identities of the government-appointed experts who chose the 40 communes are secret, raising suspicions about their impartiality.
“Nothing is quantified and amazingly, no minimum requirements have been set,” Mr. Stevenson wrote in his analysis. “This is how and where it could all go pear-shaped, because Champagne’s continued success depends on maintaining its reputation, which is already under threat due to the bad timing of its expansion.”
Officials at the big Champagne houses barely disguise their glee at the eventual expansion. “We are very serene, very unperturbed,” said Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger, managing director of the giant Taittinger Champagne house, which has lobbied for the change for more than two decades. “It’s so obviously logical.”
Some farmers in areas that are on the list, however, are reluctant to celebrate just yet.
Noël Maury, for example, and his brother grow grapes for Champagne on 12 acres of land in the communities of Broyes and Fontaine-Denis. They use half of their crop to produce various types of Champagnes every year under their own label, and sell the other half to the spirits giant G. H. Martel & Co.
They also grow wheat, rapeseed and beets on hundreds of acres on a plot higher up the hill in the adjacent community of Péas, one of the 40 potential new Champagne communes.
“People in town are talking about winning the lottery, but we have no idea how the experts did their work or which pieces of land will be chosen,” Mr. Maury said as he showed a visitor the two very different fields. “I expect it will only be a tiny percentage. I prefer to be very, very, very prudent and wait and be happy later on, than to celebrate now and be disappointed.”
Paradoxically, even if the proposal proceeds, some outsiders, like Mr. Mousseaux, would benefit, by being freed from a frustratingly French Catch-22.
Now, he cannot sell his wine because he is in a larger “zone of production” that bans any wine except Champagne from being made. The plan would redraw the zone’s borders to eliminate Serval and other communes.
Mr. Mousseaux could then sell his product as “vin mousseux,” sparkling wine.
2007年12月23日 星期日
Wine consumption (美 vs 法)
Wine consumption
Sour grapes in France
Dec 21st 2007
From Economist.com
IN 2008 America will become the biggest consumer of wine in the world, overtaking both Italy and the previous champion, France. Americans are drinking more as the French consume less. But where wine drinking per head is concerned France still wins hands down. Each French adult will quaff 58 litres in 2008 compared with a more abstemious 10 litres in America. More worrying for France’s winemakers is their declining share of the export market, thanks to competition from the New World.
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2007年12月13日 星期四
金香白葡萄酒
過去多年我們每年從親戚那兒取得這家酒莊的葡萄酒
似乎進步
不過我都覺得太甜
前兩周阿慶的大孫女滿周歲
宴席之後我們帶兩瓶"金香白葡萄酒"回來
我苦思要如何報導它
(包裝盒上有"流程"說明 不過這和"獎"等等 都無法說明它的真正品質 英文很有義意思 :Golden Muscat)
剛好網路上他們有blog
似乎進步
不過我都覺得太甜
前兩周阿慶的大孫女滿周歲
宴席之後我們帶兩瓶"金香白葡萄酒"回來
我苦思要如何報導它
(包裝盒上有"流程"說明 不過這和"獎"等等 都無法說明它的真正品質 英文很有義意思 :Golden Muscat)
剛好網路上他們有blog
湘羚酒莊報導
︹ 記者楊倩慧／通霄報導︺在國內葡萄酒釀造大賽，連續奪銀摘金的謝育峰表示，葡萄酒每批口感均不同，品酒首重均衡協調，找到適合自己的香氣就是好酒，掌握這 原則，不必迷信歐洲才有葡萄佳釀，他投入專業釀造，一步一腳印，打算把自家酒莊當成百年事業來經營，近幾年自釀的台灣紅酒品質穩定，已經讓人找得到值得繞 舌的口感。
謝育峰七十八年時還是服裝廠的老闆，在友人處偶然喝到口感極佳的葡萄酒，後來發覺可遇不可求，台灣葡萄酒給人印象甜度過高、品質不一，被老婆形容成個性龜毛的他，乾脆放棄走入夕陽的服裝廠，一股腦兒改行釀酒。
他四處﹁遊學﹂，到國外拜訪酒莊，到農改場、食品工業研究所、大葉大學上課，考取專業證照，學習專業技術。後來開設酒莊，打算一步一腳印，把釀造葡萄酒，當成百年事業來經營。
經過了七、八年，他的製酒經驗走向沈穩，品質愈做愈好，謝育峰的﹁湘羚酒莊﹂，在國內﹁葡萄美酒酒品大賞﹂94年獲得黑后紅葡萄酒組銀牌、95年再拿下金香白葡萄酒金牌，在通霄鎮自家並設一處小型品酒室，逐漸受到中小企業老闆的喜愛，常來這裡把品酒當成藝術欣賞。
謝育峰會帶著造訪的客人，以悠閒的心情品酒，先看顏色清澈度，再順著同一方向輕晃畫圓後，聞其香氣，香氣隨著葡萄園的環境、酵母菌種調整會有所不同，每個人可選擇自己的偏好，如帶有蜂蜜果香或有泥土芬芳。
接著重點是拉長唇齒與酒液間的交流，嘴含時感受舌內各部位的味道，舌苔處先感到澀味，接著整個口腔周圍有辣感、上顎微甘、兩頰不斷釋出口水，如果感覺到順口，就是適合自己的葡萄酒。一般而言，冬季葡萄釀酒，有助人體的單寧酸較豐富，但澀味比夏季葡萄強。
謝育峰對自家酒莊的經營哲學與風格是直接帶客人品酒，接受客人面對面的考驗。這過程感受到他從紅酒知識到自己經營酒莊的遠景，他並希望可以整合葡萄農民，加上他自己的專業技術。
讓人不禁也跟著想像，在台灣也可以就著本土的紅酒、美食，欣賞大片的葡萄園，這樣的情景似乎距離不會太遠了。
ml-061001-78213-001002003品酒先看顏色清澈度，再順同一方向搖晃後，聞其香氣，再嘴含而飲；跟著謝育峰品酒，感受到他從紅酒知識，到一步一步把自家酒莊當百年事業的一份用心。(記者楊倩慧攝)
2007年12月4日 星期二
蘇東坡【薄薄酒二首】
Maybe You’re Just a Perfectionist
蘇東坡【薄薄酒二首】：薄薄酒，勝茶湯；粗粗布，勝無裳；醜妻惡妾勝空房。五更待漏靴滿霜，不如三伏日高睡足北窗涼。珠襦玉柙萬人相送歸北邙，不如懸鶉百結獨坐負朝陽。生前富貴，死後文章，百年瞬息萬世忙。夷齊盜蹠俱亡羊，不如眼前一醉是非憂樂都兩忘。
薄薄酒，飲兩鍾；粗粗布，著兩重；美惡雖異醉暖同，醜妻惡妾壽乃公。隱居求志義之従，本不計較東華塵土北窗風。百年雖長要有終，富死未必輸生窮。但恐珠玉留君容，千載不朽遭樊崇。文章自足欺盲聾，誰使一朝富貴面發紅。達人自達酒何功，世間是非憂樂本來空。
2007年11月29日 星期四
All the drinks were on the house.
on the house
If you have something on the house, it is given to you free by a business:
All the drinks were on the house.
(from Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary)
If you have something on the house, it is given to you free by a business:
All the drinks were on the house.
(from Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary)
If it hasn't vanished yet, it's probably still there
11/29/2007
Hungarian folk tales often start with the phrase: "What follows may or may not be true."
Thus a story unfolds. And at the end, the story might refer to a character by saying: "If he is not dead, he may be living still," according to a collection of Hungarian folk tales, published by Iwanami Shoten, Publishers. The stories are very heartwarming.
One is about three housewives drinking in an inn. They tell the innkeeper they have decided that whoever among them can't manage to fool her husband will pay the tab.
All three go home, play tricks on their husbands and return to the inn.
As they all have fooled their husbands, the innkeeper says, "All right, the drinks are on the house." ...
2007年11月28日 星期三
Bourbon’s Shot at the Big Time
Bour・bon
━━ n. （フランスの）ブルボン王家の人; 〔米〕 頑固な保守主義者; 
（b-） バーボンウイスキー （Bourbon whiskey）.
（b-） バーボンウイスキー （Bourbon whiskey）.History remembers the queen for her wastrel ways, indifference to human suffering ("Let them eat cake") and death by guillotine, but Ms. Coppola's period film, which is playing in competition, conceives of her as something of a poor little rich girl, a kind of Paris Hilton of the House of Bourbon.
Ed Alcock for The New York Times
A plate of sugar-dusted cornes de gazelles, baklava and dziriate at Le Miyanis, an Algerian shop.
Nearly ready to abandon dziriate in favor of a bourbon and four aspirin, I did an online search that led me to a blog about Algerian cuisine by Farid Zadi ( chefzadi.com), a chef who teaches at the California School of Culinary Arts.
Spirits of The Times
Bourbon’s Shot at the Big Time
IN the recent history of whiskey, bourbon would seem to have had a lot going for it. It’s homegrown, for one thing. Grass-roots acceptance counts for a lot when you are battling for shelf space. Bourbon has always been right up there with college football, Nascar and canned beer — the sort of whiskey that anyone can order without fear of being labeled effete or snobbish.
Yet, awareness is not always enough in the whiskey business. The days are long gone when “Dallas” ruled the airwaves and J. R. Ewing made bourbon and branch a household term. When bourbon distillers looked up 20 years ago they saw the market moving in two directions, both away from them. Affluent drinkers were exploring the wonders and complexities of single malts while younger bar-goers were turning to vodka and rum.
The dive in sales forced bourbon producers to accept that the whiskey market had changed. They might not be able to compete with vodka, but to avoid permanent relegation to the dusty back shelves of liquor stores, bourbon producers would have to find a way to attract the budding connoisseur class.
Enter the small batch, the single barrel and the special selection, marketing terms for what the industry calls high-end and superpremium bourbons. These whiskeys are chosen to emphasize complexity and even elegance, a quality that has rarely been associated with bourbon and a word that no doubt panics bourbon marketers who still favor the rural look of bib overalls, boots and gimme hats (that effete snob thing).
If you love whiskey but haven’t thought of bourbon as being in the same league as a good Scotch, Irish and even, these days, rye, you owe it to yourself to give it another try. A well-made, well-aged bourbon offers a gorgeous spectrum of flavors, beginning with a distinctive sweetness that can, depending on the distiller’s aim, turn spicy and peppery with clear fruitiness, or mellow into a creamy caramel toffee with highlights of citrus.
Confidence bred of success has led distillers to pay more attention to their best whiskeys. Meanwhile, microdistilleries all over the United States are getting into the act. While they have not yet made their presence felt on a national scale — whiskey takes a lot of time — it’s easy to anticipate their eventually making a mark.
Clearly, the producers’ efforts to improve quality, coinciding with the rebirth of the cocktail culture, have been a big success. The resurgence in spirit sales in the United States has been led by the high-end brands, said David Ozgo, chief economist for the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, a trade group, and that is especially true of bourbon.
From 2002 to 2006, sales of bourbon and Tennessee whiskey rose by 12.23 percent. In the same period, sales of high-end whiskeys ($20 to $30) rose by 27.62 percent and sales of superpremium bourbons (above $30) rose by 60.52 percent.
Sales are one thing. The Dining section’s tasting panel recently evaluated 25 bourbons strictly to answer another question: How good are these whiskeys, anyway? The short answer is, very good. For the tasting, Florence Fabricant and I were joined by Pete Wells, editor of the Dining section, who has written extensively about drinks, and Ethan R. Kelley, the spirit sommelier at the Brandy Library in TriBeCa.
To begin, let’s get our nomenclature straight. While many people believe that bourbon must come from Kentucky, it’s not true. Bourbon can be made anywhere in the United States as long as two federal conditions are met. First, the blend of grains from which the whiskey is distilled must be at least 51 percent corn. Second, the whiskey must be stored in charred new oak containers. If it is aged in the oak containers (federal regulators do not seem to like the word barrel) for two years or more it qualifies as straight bourbon whiskey.
Bourbon is not Tennessee whiskey, like Jack Daniel’s, which is essentially made like bourbon until it is filtered through charcoal, at which point it becomes Tennessee whiskey. Bourbon is also not corn whiskey, which by law cannot be stored in charred oak containers. A whiskey can be distilled 100 percent from corn, but if it so much as kisses those charred oak containers it becomes bourbon.
While these laws may seem rigid, they leave a lot of room for creative distilling. Once you’ve got your 51 percent corn in the blend of grains (which distillers call the mash bill), you’ve got important decisions to make. Most distillers probably use 65 percent to 75 percent corn, blended with some proportion of rye, wheat or malted barley, and each grain provides different characteristics. The corn offers the sweetness and lush texture that are the basis of so many bourbons. Wheat adds a mellow roundness, while rye provides a spicy, peppery fruitiness and a dry quality. Barley can add a creaminess and a grainy sweetness.
Producers must also decide how long to age their whiskeys. Younger whiskeys tend to be more aggressive and fiery. Aging tames the whiskeys, rounding off raw edges and bringing out a smooth complexity.
Younger and older whiskeys have their attractions, but with bourbon long-term aging is particularly beneficial, at least in my opinion. I loved the smoothness and the added complexity in some of the older bourbons we tasted, but the combination didn’t always sit well with Ethan.
“I don’t know if bourbon was designed to be so elegant and proper,” he lamented, though not unhappily.
We all noted the wide range of flavors in these bourbons, from creamy chocolate and fruity to grassy and herbaceous. “It was not the full frontal corn assault that once dominated bourbon,” Pete said, noting that the flavors in some bottles seemed beyond the realm of what might be acceptable in bourbon.
The bourbons we tasted ranged in price from $14 to $120, and while a $20 bottle, Jim Beam Black, was our best value, there was some correlation between price and quality.
The most expensive bourbon, the 16-year-old A. H. Hirsch Reserve, was something of an anomaly. It was among the last batches of whiskey distilled at Michter’s Distillery in Schaefferstown, Pa., which closed in 1989.
The name Michter’s lives on as a brand, but it is distilled in Kentucky (Michter’s U.S. 1 Bourbon did not make our cut). The A. H. Hirsch is a fine whiskey, smoky and complex, but the $120 is mostly for its rarity.
Naturally, the bourbon industry wants to capitalize on the cocktail craze, which is fine, but anybody who makes a mixed drink of our No. 1 bourbon, Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve 20-Year-Old, needs some remedial shaking and stirring. This is clearly a sipping whiskey of wonderful complexity, which would be wasted in even the finest mint julep or bourbon punch. The same goes for our No. 2, the fruity and chocolate-and-caramel-flavored Vintage 17-Year-Old.
If mix you must, I would suggest our No. 3, the brisk, spicy Knob Creek, which tastes as if it has a rye component. It might be the perfect whiskey for one of those cocktails that seem to be at home with either rye or bourbon.
Some of the biggest names in bourbon did not make our list. Wild Turkey just missed. It was good bourbon, but the panel did not find it distinctive enough in this company. We also liked the Van Winkle’s 10-Year-Old, which we thought would be great for cocktails. Maker’s Mark did not come close.
While the rules do not require it, most bourbons do, in fact, come from Kentucky. One that does not is the Hudson Four Grain Bourbon, distilled by Tuthilltown Spirits in the Hudson Valley. We liked it very much but left it off the list because it is virtually impossible to find.
Each of us also had a favorite or two that did not make the list. Ethan liked an Elijah Craig 18-Year-Old and an Eagle Rare Single Barrel 10-Year-Old. Pete liked the Eagle and the Wild Turkey. Florence liked the Elijah Craig and the Virginia Gentleman, an old brand that has the distinction of being distilled in Kentucky then redistilled in Virginia. I very much liked a Corner Creek Reserve 8-Year-Old and Bulleit.
The strongest bourbon in the tasting was Wild Turkey, at 101 proof. The final strength of a whiskey is another choice that distillers must make.
While the just-distilled whiskey can be as high as 160 proof, those pesky federal laws mandate that it must be watered down at least to 125 proof before entering those charred oak containers.
By the time it is bottled, it can be as low as 80 proof, so producers have a lot of room to find just the right strength. If you find a bourbon that seems too strong, do what the producers do and add more water. Or ice.
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