Pappy Van Winkle Tasting
“Lady Luck is indifferent. She smiles sometimes, and she frowns sometimes.”
One of our best experiences since starting the Bourbon Gents was the Pappy tasting event we were invited to a while back. Below is our write up of that event.
We nearly fell off our chairs after we had just been sent an Instagram message inviting us to a Pappy tasting. The holy grail of bourbon was coming to our backyard. The Gents luck was in.
Not only would we get the opportunity to try out the entire Old Rip Van Winkle collection (apart from the rye), it would also be hosted by non-other than the main man himself, Preston Van Winkle. Now this was a serious result and was not to be missed by the Gents. Well, that was the original plan however, the bourbon Gods seemed to have it in for Mav as he was working on a project out in Sweden for a few months so unfortunately had to miss the event.
So now what to do with the extra ticket? Mav came up with the great idea of giving it away to a complete novice (I’m sure she won’t mind us saying that), his work colleague Caroline. Doing this meant we could write about it from Mr Pie’s relatively experienced perspective, and also hear about it from someone with very limited exposure to any whiskey at all. What exactly would a complete amateur make of Pappy Van Winkle?
The Arrival
Caroline and i arrived relatively early to the event but we were not the first. The room filled up pretty quickly from there on and there was a genuine feeling of excitement and giddiness from the audience.
As you may suspect, Mr Van Winkle, or Preston as we now refer to him, was a delightful speaker who filled the room with his huge presence and engaged with the audience expertly. Preston talked openly about the history of the Old Rip Van Winkle distillery, his family and about what the future holds for the company. Throughout his speech he encouraged interaction with the attendees and was more than happy to pose for photographs. What a guy!
The Main Event
Now the reason everyone was there of course was to taste the bourbon.
All five had been pre-poured much earlier and the plan was to taste each one in order of age - and also to taste alongside each drink a specially prepared dish from the bar's chef (the dishes are listed below in the tasting notes). Myself and Caroline did manage to sneak out a couple of samples for Mav. We nabbed him the 15 and the 23, so he has been able to give his thoughts on those two below.
The bourbons are all produced under the distillery name of Old Rip Van Winkle but the distilling process has been at the site of the Buffalo Trace distillery since 2002. The bourbons are all classified as Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey and all share the same mash bill of 70% corn, 16% wheat and 14% malted barley. You can read more about the distillery on their website Old Rip Van Winkle
Tasting Notes
The individual bourbon rankings on the night are also listed below (but of course Mav is only able to provide two)
Old Rip Van Winkle
Vol: 53.5%
Age: 10 years
Food pairing: Corn bread with chilli sour spring onion
Mr Pie:
Corn, cream, sweet vanilla and fruit. A super smooth entry into your mouth, sharp spice and sweet caramel (contrasting but works so well) and an undeniable strength of alcohol. Nutty oak. Finish was intense and lingering, had to quickly disperse with water before the next tasting.
Ranking – 1st
Caroline:
Very sweet and fiery, it took an absolute age to go away (but in a nice way).
Ranking – 3rd
Van Winkle Special Reserve
Vol: 45.2%
Age: 12 years
Food pairing: Corn dog
Mr Pie:
Extremely soft and delicate nose with floral hints and caramel toffee sweetness. On tasting there is immediate gentle warmth to the mouth, very mild traces of tobacco with fruit. A very dry and medium finish
Ranking – 4th
Caroline:
Soft with caramel, creamy, gentle and smooth. Very lovely to drink
Ranking – 1st
Pappy Van Winkle Family Reserve 15
Vol: 53.5%
Age: 15 years
Food pairing: Devils on horseback – baked bacon wrapped dates
Mr Pie:
A forceful nose, taste of leather and oak are predominate with citrus fruits (mainly orange), 2nd and 3rd sips seem to propel further elements of mild all spice. A woody medium to long finish.
Ranking – 2nd
Caroline:
Very strong on the nose, burnt orange, shorter finish than the 12 year old.
Ranking – 4th
Mav:
Not too strong on the nose, citrus, sweet orange flavours with caramel. Super sweet and woody palate, hot dry finish. My kind of bourbon! Strong, bold, and sticks around on the tongue.
Ranking – 2nd
Pappy Van Winkle Family Reserve 20
Vol: 45.2%
Age: 20 years
Food pairing: Country biscuits and red eye gravy
Mr Pie:
Incredibly different nose to all the others. Smoky and almost peaty. Sherry like texture with dried fruits, tobacco and coffee on the palate (Preston Van Winkle on the night called this out as to being very similar to a Cognac). Finish was oily and long.
Ranking – 3rd
Caroline:
Very smoky, thin and almost watery. Least favourite of all of them, significantly different from the others.
Ranking – 5th
Pappy Van Winkle Family Reserve 23
Vol: 47.8%
Age: 23 years
Food pairing: Pecan Pie
Mr Pie:
Super sweet creamy caramel, sweetest nose of them all. Oaky as hell which you would expect. On the palate, honey and nut (pecan), caramel and sweet cocoa. Spicy and woody finish. Short, woody and slightly disappointing.
Ranking – 5th
Caroline:
Complemented well with the pecan pie. Gentle on the nose and you could taste the quality in it, but maybe not the price. It was enjoyable but she couldn’t drink a lot of it. Although Caroline did comment that “she liked like what it did to her face” apparently.
Ranking – 2nd
Mav:
Ridiculously sweet, caramel and hints of nuts. Intense oak at first but left with almost no finish whatsoever. It is like licking the inside of a barrel there's that much wood going on.
Ranking – 1st
The conclusion
All in all it was an absolutely fantastic evening and I still can’t quite believe I was lucky enough to taste so many bourbons from the Old Rip Van Winkle range while in the presence of Preston talking us through them.
Since this night Mav went straight out and purchased a bottel of Pappy 23, so stay tuned for our deeper review of that one now we have had longer to spend with it.
