Among the sub-regions of Armagnac, Bas-Armagnac is the most known and respected, and bottles from there proudly tout the region. Due east of Bas-Armagnac, the Ténarèze is the upstart sibling, not as flashy or well known but loved by aficionados for earthy brandies like Pellehaut, Aurensan and Pouchegu.
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What is the oldest bottle of whiskey in existence? According to a recent listing by the folks at Guinness, it’s a bottle of Baker’s Rye, an 1847 Monongahela Rye owned by Los Angeles Whiskey Society founder Adam Herz. Yes, you read correctly; this whiskey was distilled during the Polk administration. The fact that this bottle exists is pretty mind blowing, and its mere existence makes it a central piece of American whiskey history. You can read Adam’s extensive history of this bottle on the LA Whiskey Society website.
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What is Domaine le Chaou? It’s another one of those stories of small producers that you find in Armagnac. Domaine le Chaou doesn’t make brandy...or wine. They grow grapes. For about seven years in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, they sold Baco grapes to Domaine de Charron, an Armagnac producer known for making brandy in new oak casks. Instead of payment for the grapes, each year, Charron would give them back one cask of the Armagnac made from their grapes, and as happens in Armagnac, there they sat, with le Chaou selling a few of them here and there
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Recently, I was lucky enough to spend an evening with the owners of L’Encantada who were visiting from Gascony. L’Encantada, with the distinctive orange wax, has become something of a cult favorite among Armagnac lovers. It allowed me to talk to them in detail about their operation and the producers they worked with.
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I don't think I've ever seen an Armagnac develop a cult following in the US, but that seems to be happening with the L'Encantada bottlings – and particularly the L’Encantada Lous Pibous. Perhaps you've seen the bottles with the orange wax pop up here and there – K&L has brought in a few barrels as have a few other retailers. Since I was involved with bringing the first casks to the US, I thought I'd tell the story of how it happened.
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There seem to be more and more American whiskeys on the market that are blends of different types of whiskeys from different distillers. In the world of Scotch, it’s pretty easy to determine what a blend is. A combination of two or more single malts from different distilleries is a blended malt and a combination of malt and grain whiskies is a blended whisky. In America, it’s much more complicated. Most people still associate blended whiskey with the budget blends that combine whiskey with neutral spirts, but there are a lot more types of blends out there that are 100% whiskey.
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Does Irish Whiskey have to be made in Ireland? Does all London dry gin come from London? What about Jamaican rum? Japanese Whisky? There are spirits from all over the world, but the United States doesn’t treat them all the same. So when you see a country or other geographic area on a label, what does it mean?
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For all the growing interest in rum, though, the American regulations have very little to say about it. Want to know what dark and light rum are or what is required for a rhum agricole? The TTB’s spirits regulations won’t help you. If you look at the definition of whiskey in the US regulations, you will find about a dozen different categories described, from bourbon and rye to corn, blended, light, Scotch, Irish, Canadian, etc.
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The recent TTB Proposal to modernize spirits regulations added a host of new definitions for terms that are widely used but not defined in the regulations, including “cask strength,” “white whiskey” and “oak barrel.” Despite the voluminous nature of the TTB proposal, though, there are still a number of widely used terms that are not defined in the regulations, including the following:
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The designation of Bottled in Bond has been many things through the years – a guarantee of quality, a protection against taint, a sign of good budget booze...but does it really stand for any of those things anymore? And is it worth keeping around or is it time to retire the whole concept?
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A lot of interesting discussion ensued after I posted a summary of the TTB’s new proposed regulations for spirits. Of all the proposed changes, the most controversial seemed to be the definition of oak barrels.
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On Monday, the Treasury Department’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), the agency that regulates the production and sale of alcohol, published new proposed regulations for the labeling of wine, beer and spirits. This new proposal is a comprehensive revision of the current regulations. The 132 page publication includes many changes that those of us in the spirits world have been pushing for years. The list of revisions is too voluminous to recite here, but here are some of the most significant for whiskey and other spirits.
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With hundreds of craft distilleries making whiskey across the country, it can be hard to remember that the modern craft spirits movement is only a few decades old. It started with a smattering of brandy distilleries – Germain-Robin started up in 1982 in northern California making French style grape brandy and Clear Creek in Oregon followed with fruit brandies in 1985.
A few years later, the first craft whiskey distillery set up shop. San Francisco’s Anchor Steam beer was a micro-brewery before the word existed, so it’s appropriate that it would also be a pioneer of the craft distilling movement. Anchor’s Fritz Maytag founded Anchor Distilling way back in 1993 and started making rye whiskey.
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The world of brandy geeks is small; in fact, it’s microscopically small compared to the whiskey geek world, but few things cause that small world more excitement than new brandies from L’Encantada, the relatively new independent bottler which has been bringing out excellent Armagnacs.
To understand what makes this stuff special, you have to understand a little bit about Armagnac. French brandy production, especially in Armagnac, is much different than the American distilled spirits industry. There are a few large producers, but by in large, Armagnac is made by farmers and wine makers who distill some of their extra grapes in a travelling still that comes around to the farms. Many of them just stick the casks in their barns and basements, a little bit here, a little bit there. Eventually they will bottle them, maybe for family and friends, maybe for small markets, or sell them to a larger company that bottles brandy or even makes liqueur; it's sort of a Gascon retirement fund.
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Over the past few years, whiskey has transformed from an anyone/anytime drink to a thing to be treasured, consumed only neat in a glencairn glass in optimal conditions to best enjoy and note every passing scent and flavor. Add water – a travesty! Add ice – you’re out of my will! Add soda – may a curse descend upon you and your heirs! Now Aaron Goldfarb has come along to turn all of that on its head. In his new book Hacking Whiskey, he instructs you on how to mess with your whiskey, and I mean really mess with it.
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I saw this problem coming. Seven or eight years ago I had an idea to fix it. I would invite people over to drink all of these bottles. I threw a big party in the hopes that people would drink from these bottles. It would be like the song 100 Bottles of Beer – take one down pass it around – and the number of bottles slowly decreases, and before you know it you’ve completed your drive to Big Bear or at least to the In ‘n Out on the way to Big Bear and there are zero bottles of beer on the wall. It was a great party, and I’ve thrown one every year since, but it didn’t work.
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Since I frequently get asked for recommendations, I thought it might be fun to look through K&L’s spirits inventory and find what I would recommend at every price range for each of the major brown spirits. I especially like the idea of doing this during the summer before all the high-profile special release come out. What’s on the shelf now tends to be standard releases that can be acquired year-round.
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If you’re looking for a book for someone just getting into Scotch, it would be hard to find a better choice than Clay Risen’s Single Malt: A Guide to the Whiskies of Scotland, which includes reviews of more than 330 single malt Scotch whiskies. Risen, Deputy Op-Ed Editor at the New York Times often writes about whiskey for the Times and is the author of American Whiskey Bourbon & Rye.
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