by cowdery » Mon Jul 06, 2009 10:35 pm
That's a good theory, although Wild Turkey still has a pretty low proof off the still and into the barrel, so it's not like nothing since 1984 has been in the traditional range of distillation proofs. As for the bottlings I mentioned. the earlier Parker's were post-1984. So are all of the current and recent Van Winkles, both S-W juice and Bernheim juice. The last of the pre-fire vintages of EWSB were exceptional and all EWSBs are post-1984.
I named the ones that I did because I thought the person asking the question was interested in which very old (say 15 or older) bourbons I thought were exceptional, since I said the truly exceptional ones are rare. To mention another, the Ezra Brooks 15-year-olds. Although those may have been pre-1984 juice.
I think my original point was that just because something is 18-, or 20-, or 25-years-old, that doesn't necessarily mean it's great, it doesn't necessarily mean it's even good and, in fact, I have tasted a great many very old bottles that, in my opinion, never should have been bottled.