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VWFR 13 yr rye

Unread postPosted: Tue Aug 17, 2010 7:40 am
by delaware_phoenix
Last night I had the chance to stop in at Ward III, an elegant whiskey bar in the Tribeca section of NYC. Monday night is whiskey night there. What's special is that some of their top pours are available at half price. So it's a great chance to try some good juice with less of a hit on the wallet or purse. Then at 8pm they have a free whiskey tasting lead by someone, whether a distiller, spirits person, or what have you. I didn't have a chance to stay long enough for the tasting, but they had a pretty good group of folks.

To the crux of the matter... I ordered the Van Winkle 13 year rye. Very impressive, so I'd would have liked to have had more time to explore this. But very nice caramel and butterscotch, those deep sweet notes, that to me come from longer term aging (maybe from the higher levels in the rickhouse). For the reputation of rye being spicy it had it's spice, but in many ways I thought of this rye as being sweet. Perhaps that was also from the vanillins, which I also think of as sweet.

Maybe Chuck or Mike V. or any one of our other resident experts can tell us whether this was a found whiskey or made whiskey. (I know Pappy himself didn't have a hand in it as it can't be any younger than 1997, certainly too young to buy a drink of itself.) I definitely wouldn't pass up another chance at this whiskey.

Re: VWFR 13 yr rye

Unread postPosted: Tue Aug 17, 2010 10:07 am
by p_elliott
VWFRR is actually 18 years old not the 13 it says on the bottle. It's all been held in vats since 2004 to stop it from aging. They have enough to to bottle 290 cases a year till 2017 when the BT rye will be 13 years old. Your lucky to find any of this to try, it's a very good rye. As I understand it it's a vatting of two ryes some from Medley and another distillery that I can't remember at the moment (Chuck will post up and tell us). That's what I know about it I don't know if it answers any of your questions or not.

Re: VWFR 13 yr rye

Unread postPosted: Fri Aug 20, 2010 9:00 pm
by Bourbon Joe
p_elliott wrote: As I understand it it's a vatting of two ryes some from Medley and another distillery that I can't remember at the moment (Chuck will post up and tell us).


I'll beat Chuck to the punch. It was Cream Of Kentucky Rye.
Joe

Re: VWFR 13 yr rye

Unread postPosted: Sat Aug 21, 2010 8:12 am
by gillmang
And I would add simply that the component ryes were apparently made with the minimum amount of rye you can use, i.e., 51% or not far from it. This would accentuate the sweetness since such ryes offer bourbon-like notes (via the corn) in addition to ginger spice-like qualities. This is an excellent rye whiskey, one of the best available today. It also is a particularly good vatting although the all-Medley version was great too.

Gary