When we go on holiday, I normally do all the planning, unless it's something that hubby is deeply interested in. Whiskey being one of them. For our recent USA trip, he was researching American whisky's, including whiskey tasting, and found a place called Laws. They have won the World’s Best Small Batch Bourbon from the World Whiskies Awards this year, and were located at Denver, one of the stops on our trip. (By the way, if you are curating this post not from livinguktaiwan's account, then you are curating a scammer who is stealing my post.) Hubby and his drinking buddies, ie my two brother in law's found a slot in our busy itinerary and all went together. Snowpea and me didn't go, but he told me all about it afterwards, and got all these photos for me.
Distillery tour
The tasting session was $20 to taste 3 different whiskys, and if you purchase any products or merchandise you get $10 credit. I think that's very good value considering what they tasted. We'll come onto that in a minute. First of all, the guys got an introduction talk and a tour of the distillery.
The tour started off in the bar area where many of their products were on display. There were quite a lot of selection, many of which the guys would end up tasting later on.
This is something we don't get to see in UK, or rather whisky distilleries in Scotland - brand new barrels. In USA, by law, whiskey distilleries can only use brand new oak barrels. Once the whiskey is bottled, the barrel cannot be used again. That's why there are so many new barrels here. In case you're thinking that sounds like a lot of waste, do not worry. All these used barrels are shipped off to Scotland and other whisky producing countries who mature their whisky in them. A win win for everyone!
The rest of the tour was quite similar to previous whisky distillery tours I've been to. In simple terms, the grain is boiled into mash, then it goes into a pot where it is heated up for the alcohol and vapour to pass through the neck for distillation. The process is pretty much the same all over the world, the main differences being the type of grain used, water quality, the shape and size of the pot, aging time and where the whisky is matured such as physical location and type of barrel. Snowpea was fascinated when she learnt about all this. There's a lot of science behind the whole process, but as the guide told the guys, whiskey production is all about science, but eventually it is an art as human intervention is required to blend and sample the whiskey as it's being stored and eventually bottled.
Whiskey tasting
After the tour, it was finally time for the whiskey tasting!
Hubby and my brother in laws got to try three different types of whisky. One was made from rye, another a bourbon made from four types of grains (60% corn, 20% wheat and 10% each of rye and malted barley). Both these are 47.5% ABV and cost $60 per bottle. The third one was a Bond Rye. Bond is a whiskey production standard defined by American law where the whiskey has to be at least 4 years old, exactly 50% ABV and produced in a single season by a single distillery. This sounds very much like the single batch whisky in Scotland. Apparently the Bond was set to maintain standards and hubby said it was reflected in the output. The Bond Rye he tried is a 7 year old one and cost $80 a bottle. It was hubby's favourite of the three.
After the tasting session, the guys decided to taste another flight. It only cost $10 and they could choose any of the whiskeys apart from the most expensive one at $130 a bottle! Unfortunately, they couldn't use the $10 credit on the whiskey flight, they could only use it on products you take away. Snowpea and I thought $10 is still very reasonable for a whiskey flight even though we don't drink.
For the second flight hubby chose the 58.2% Rye cask, this costs $88 a bottle. Hubby said if he remembered correctly, this is a blended whiskey. The second one he chose was the $80 4 grain Bond Bourbon which was also a 7 year old one. He said this was definitely a step up from the standard 4 grain bourbon he tasted on the first flight. The final one he chose was the $80 limited release 47.5% Curacao cask wheat. This one is stored in a new oak barrel, then it is stored again in old French oak casks that used to store curacao. So it sounds like once the whiskey has been in new barrels you can store it for a second time in old barrels like scotch. If I was present at the whisky tasting, I definitely would have asked the guide more about this, but hubby's focus was on other things of course 🙃, plus he doesn't need to think about getting more information for blogging! Think I'd better get Snowpea to give him some blogging lessons for future.
Hubby and my brother in laws didn't buy any bottles in the end. They all said the whiskey were ok, but a bit on the pricey side. Overall they all enjoyed the experience and said it was nice to do a whiskey tasting across the pond. Next time I'll show you what they did buy afterwards. I wouldn't have expected them to come back empty handed!!!