After a couple fun posts, back to the real deal: good booze. It’s interesting how many companies dabble with the outer limits of price, often with little regard for quality. A recent case in point is the Jefferson Presidential 21 year old. I’m not a fan. I’ve seen some people that love the stuff, but loads that don’t.

I even did a couple blind tastings and a twitter tasting with less than stellar results; and not just one batch or bottle but five. At a supposed 21 years, the stuff is good for $40, not $140. It suspiciously tastes nowhere near 21 years old.

Here’s a quick chemistry lesson: Wood destined for a Whiskey barrel is “seasoned” by leaving it out to dry and age for a while. The wood is like a hot model that is spending her first day on the beach in a long time, and needs a good tan to look better.

As the wood soaks up the sun great things start to happen. Mainly the tannic acid starts to go away the longer it is seasoned. After 6-12 months, most of the tannins are gone. When the barrel is charred, more potential magic happens to the wood chemically. Once the barrel is filled and ages, most of the good-guy chemical reactions eventually peak and the bad-guy chemical reactions start to make the whiskey taste bad.

Getting to the barrel at the right time is very important and not easy. If a distillery misses the boat, maybe they sell the barrel off with its bad-apple friends or hide it in a blend. Maybe a place like LDI/MGP (that only sells to brands and has none of their own) doesn’t care as much, as it doesn’t affect them the same way. What’s left of the tannins start to awaken and do bad shit to the booze.

This is why most good Master Distillers feel that 8-12 years are the best and peak for the Whiskey. I’ve read and seen some great master distillers say that less than 1 percent of their barrels are much good after 20 years. Then that barrel may only have 5-10 gallons of the original 53 left. This makes it real real hard to put out a great release of something special. So only a very small percentage gets better as time goes on while its volume also shrinks.

The best of the best people out there can squeeze the last bit of good-guy stuff out of a barrel before the bad-guy stuff kicks its ass, but it’s a race until it’s over the hill. Van Winkle achieves longer aging by aging the barrels as gently in cool places as it can. I have always wondered if this just makes a 20 year old barrel that has been in a sense “put to sleep,” the same as a 12 year old barrel that hasn’t and exposed to full, hot, kick-ass summers and climate of Kentucky? Whiskey geeks have been lulled into believing the theory that if old is better, real old must be best.

Scotch is responsible for this bad logic. The 110-140 degree temps of some Kentucky rickhouses where the new barrel volume quickly goes down and proof usually goes up isn’t the same as a used barrel used for scotch that might get as hot as the ’80s; proof usually goes down and volume loss much less than with Kentucky Whiskey. To really make my point, Pappy 23 year is hardly ever picked above the 20 or 15 year as the favorite. Unless someone likes the “woodiness,” it’s not a good thing. The woodiness comes from the badguy chemicals and from the tannins rearing their ugly head.

Back to Jeff 21. Not only doesn’t it really have the woodiness, it doesn’t taste old in a good or bad way. Did they filter the hell out of it, sacrificing good to get the bad out? Since I personally don’t trust the brand (because of a bunch of valid off-the-record reasons and the games they played on the Ocean Version), I’d like them to prove its 21 years old. To me, if anything ever screamed rip off more it’s this whiskey.

One only needs to look two years back at 18 and 21 year old Bourbon and Rye (of which many are long sold out) to see how expensive they have gotten. Highwest 21 year Rye was in the $60 range but is now more than twice that when still found. Under achieving mongrel brands such as James Pepper 1776, 15 years have doubled or more in a little over a year. Their value for the most part is terrible as these supposed older things aren’t good. Bottom line is that old is often not a good value; it’s just expensive.

Bourbon Exchange now has every Tom, DICK, and Harry flaunting some of the crappiest stuff to have ever been sold as if it’s the missing link of Whiskey. At the same time, insane prices for things 10 times what they were a few months ago are not uncommon. The extent of disposable income mixed with bad or little knowledge has resulted in an “Idiot’s Cocktail”. Yes, I’ve overpaid for stuff I really wanted, but it’s with my eyes wide open. Anyone that bought 10 Pappy Van Winkle 23 Decanters at the obtainable price of $350 four years ago has a new really nice car if they choose to sell. Other than some really old vintage stuff, these will surpass the A.H. Hirsch bottles by far and already have. Oddly enough, it’s a better value than a famous bottle of 100-point rated wine that is equal or greater in cost as the wine is drunk in an hour not over a decade.

Hiding in plain sight is last year’s Four Roses 2012 Small Batch LTD. At a release price of $80-$90 and just around 3,500 bottles, this stuff in five years will be nut$. I’ve never seen a bad review or given some to a novice or expert that didn’t have a WOW reaction. It seems that a very skilled Master Distiller with the respect, trust, clout and supply flexabily/freedom from his or her company has a much better shot getting to WOW.

Rutledge does it; the Parkers can do it when they want to. If someone put a gun to the Kulveen’s (Willett) head and told them to create the best Whiskey to be released in the last 20 years I’m guessing they could go do it if the gun was big enough. I’m not saying Willett doesn’t put good stuff out now. I’m saying legendary in 20 years; great, there’s only so much left they could do that with again as they’ve done it with some already.

There are then the rocking chair Master Distillers that take good publicity photos and charm the customers with the southern drawl and yawl. Doesn’t seem they would/could ever come up with legendary though.

So lets say Willett comes up with legendary - at that point Social Media and Whiskey geekdom would explode to get one of the 100 or so bottles, and price would be no object. One has to realize that there are some very, very, very successful people with millions and billions of dollars out there that have worked real hard to make their money. They value it very differently than those in the middle class. Some consider it drinkable art that’s never touched, just admired, while others might put it in coke or shot glasses like they are at a rap music mogul’s party.

Some people save for a year to give a bottle of Pappy as a gift while a guy betting $25,000 a hand in Vegas, when presented with the opportunity to buy a bottle of $240 Pappy 23 at $3,000, only wants to know how many they have.

Exclusivity in American Whiskey doesn’t really have a clear definition. To some it’s what they are being told is good. To some it’s a little better than what they can afford, to some it’s the stuff they had the knowledge, skill, and timing to stock up on while they could.

The Eagles rock group has a song called “The Last Resort.” In it are some of my favorite and most apropos lyrics ever written:

They call it paradise

I don’t know why

You call someplace paradise

kiss it goodbye

This couldn’t be truer in any anything more so than that of today’s Whiskey selections. Often it just takes something new, or takes a page from the Emperor and His New Cloths tale. It’s now a rarity if, by the time a great Whiskey makes it to your mouth, that you can get more, especially at the original release price. Is it better to keep your mouth shut when it happens? Sometimes. Is it better to buy every bottle you can when you see it leaving none for anyone else? Hmmmm.

There aren’t many secrets left out there. “Legend Lag,” as I call it, is rampant. Black Maple Hill that I’ve already written exhaustively about in my blog is a great example. It was great stuff and earned an amazing reputation when 16 years and older. Now it’s just average, overpriced booze (with no age) that, due to allocation and steadily increasing price, has improperly earned it some re-fame cred. Exclusive? Yes, deservedly? At one point, but not the current stuff.

Very gray, very confusing and you better put the time effort and common sense into this rocket-fast trend or exclusivity will only be a frame of mind in a store, bar or a well-meaning friend’s house.