This year when Heaven Hill unveiled their "97 Vintage" of the Evan Williams Single Barrel, They called me asked me to help entertain some of the writers they brought in for the tasting. I arranged of a tour of the Archive at Stitzel-Weller on the Friday before the taeting (friday 13 October). I started the day by having lunch with Larry Kass and Jim Murray and a couple of the other Heaven Hill bourbon people at the Bristol on Main Street. I had not seen Jim for a few years and had not had a chance to talk with him in length for an even longer time.
Lunch was excellent. Jim, Larry and I talked on many subjects. For those that do not Jim Murray, he tends to takes himself and his job very seriously. This can come across as him being very self centered, but he really is not. He is a good guy and is often willing to poke a little fun at himself in a very typical British style of humor. I have spent many hours with Jim when he was researching his book on bourbon, rye and Tennessee whiskey. I always liked him as a person and a writer, but I will have to admit this weekend gave me a greater respect for him as a whiskey reviewer.
I have always been like Chuck Cowdery in that rating whiskey is pretty worthless unless your taste runs the same as the writer. I still feel that way, but Jim really does work hard at making sure every whiskey is given a fair tasting without prejudice. I don't always agree with Jim on what is a good whiskey, but my taste do not run the same as his. If he gives a whiskey a high rank in the 90's, he really believes it deserves that ranking, and if he gives it poor marks, then he really thinks it deserves the poor ranking.
After lunch we went to the Archive and spent a couple of hours poking through old papers and artifacts. It was hard to get out of there without cracking open a few of the old bottles, but we did resist. After that I took Jim down to the Filson while Larry and Kirsten went back to work, getting ready for a dinner and tasting at Proofs. They invited me to join them and I accepted. Jim enjoyed the Filson and I showed him some of the Taylor-Hay family papers and a few other items of interest. I took him back to the Brown Hotel and went home to change for dinner.
Dinner at the 21c hotel and Proofs bar and restaurant was very interesting. We were joined by a few other writers in for the event on Saturday, including Gary and Mardee Regan. I sat at the table with Jim Murray and Parker Beam. I learned a few things about Parker's philosphy of distilling that night. I will have to say his methods and philosophy were quite different from what I have been taught from other distillers. The biggest difference is barrel proof. He likes high proof whiskey coming out of the barrel - the higher the better. When the laws were changed to allow a higher barrel proof in the 1980's, he was ready to raise it to 125 the next day. His father did not want to do that and made him phase it in over a period of about 4 years, going to 115, then 118, then 121, and the 125. Parker makes some good whiskey that sells quite well, so I will not say that he is wrong. As a matter of fact I would say more power to him - he does make a very different flavor profile than other distillers and there is nothing wrong with that.
After dinner we did a verticle tasting of every Even Williams single barrel vintage from 86 to 96. They were quite different from year to year and the comparison was very interesting. I have my rough tasting notes here somewhere and I will try to post them later. We also tasted the white dog from a new experimental whiskey Heaven Hill distilled that week so we ended up with samples from 12 products sitting in front of us. Needles to say the night got a little wild.
The next day I went down to the Ali Center for the "Unveiling" of the Evan Williams 97. Before the unveiling I went to Jim Murray's seminar on single barrel whiskey and had a chance to taste the Rittenhouse 21 yo single barrel rye. It was pretty good rye, but in my opinion, not $150.00 worth of good. I might consider it $80.00 and would by it for $50.00, but not $150.00. Unfortunately for us poor folks, but fortunately for Heaven Hill, they have distributer in New York that can sell all they can prduce atr the $150.00 price. Don't expect the price to go down.
The 97 Evan Williams dinner party was also very good. I sat at a table with Gayle Hack and JD Knaebel as well as some other people from Lexington. They passed out the glasses with this years vintage and did the barrel proof sample for the VIPs. I managed to steal about 1/2 of Mardee Regan's sample and shared it with the people at the table. The barrel proof was excellent. The bottle proof was pretty good but not outstanding in my opinion. The extra water did not improve this whiskey. After the tasting several of us went to Jockey Silks at the Galt House and we called it a night at about 11:30.