Whiskey Review: Tuthilltown Manhattan Rye

I love rye whiskey. I can appreciate a good scotch, and I love a well-made bourbon. But rye, in my mind, stands right in between the two as a perfect nighttime sipper. Rye lacks the sweetness of bourbon and the harshness of scotch; yet it has a spicy character. Not to mention, it is an essential spirit for making a proper Manhattan--one of my favorite cocktails. The spiciness of the rye beautifully offsets the sweetness of the vermouth.

In our house, the go-to rye for cocktails is typically Rittenhouse. At just over $20 a bottle, it can't be beat. However, when I haven't been able to get my hands on a bottle of Rittenhouse, Sazerac serves as a spicier backup (which works perfect in a Sazerac!).

However, when I want to sip on a rye for the evening, I usually turn to my two favorites: Van Winkle or Templeton.

I've wanted to try Tuthilltown Manhattan Rye for quite some time, and the folks there were kind enough to provide me with a sample to review.

Appearance: Light copper, burnt orange

Nose: Fabulous and unique nose. Floral, but with a bit of characteristic rye spice. More caramel, brown sugar, and maple syrup than expected. Vanilla. Almost leathery.

Taste: Initially light flavor, but thick and oily. Strong and spicy on the mid-palate with an almost scotch-like smokiness.

Finish: Spicy, long finish. Very smooth. Tastes a bit young (not in a bad way), but not harsh.

Other: Beautiful packaging. The small, apothecary-style bottles are attractive and vintage, and the labels speak "prohibition-era." A bit pricey at $50 for a 375ml bottle, but definitely worth a splurge for special occasions. Can't wait to try it out in a Manhattan next time I get a fresh bottle of Carpano Antica! Definitely unlike any rye I've tasted. Difficult to compare to anything else. An excellent product.

Score: 8.5/10

Tuthilltown Barrel Aged Negroni

You could probably tell by the name of this blog, but I'm really interested in barrel-aged cocktails. My fascination started early last year with a trip to The Aviary in Chicago where I was able to taste one. I had first heard about the process of barrel-aging cocktails in a video made by The Aviary’s Craig Schoettler, and I only later discovered that Jeffrey Morgenthaler had been aging cocktails at Clyde Common in Portland for quite some time (see his article on barrel-aging here and articles about him here and here). 

That night at The Aviary, I ordered an aged Martini flight. The first was a fresh-made 3:1 Martini of Plymouth gin, Noily Prat vermouth, and oranges bitters; the second was the same cocktail aged 2 months in an oak barrel; and the last was the same but aged 4 months. Each Martini was amazing. While the fresh Martini was elegantly balanced and made to perfection, its older brother and sister had a depth of flavor that was lacking from the traditional Martini. After that night, I was determined to learn more about aging cocktails, and I was insistent on trying to reproduce the efforts of The Aviary at home. In fact, that determination was the catalyst for starting this blog.

In August I used some of my birthday money to buy a small 2 liter oak barrel from Copper Fox Distillery. I was thrilled to let the included white Rye spirit season the unused barrel, and I looked forward to aging a Negroni in it once the barrel was ready. The problem I had, however, is that liters of Negroni is about 1 bottle each of gin, vermouth, and Campari, which would basically clean out my supply of all three of those liquors. I thought this was a bit risky for an experiment. Because of this, I’ve been hesitant to use the oak barrel for aging a cocktail since I don’t want to pour $50+ down the drain because of a mistake.

And that brings me to the purpose of this post. As I was putting together my Christmas wishlist, I came across a brilliant product from Tuthilltown Spirits: the barrel-aged cocktail kit. Anyone who has read about cocktail aging has doubtless come across Tuthilltown’s name, and anyone familiar with whiskey knows of their excellent, small-batch products. So, when I saw that I could spend $10 to get a Tuthilltown bottle with a piece of charred barrel stave inside of it, I was intrigued. Since the bottle included in the kit is only 375 ml (about 13 oz.), it would only take 4 oz. each of gin, vermouth, and Campari to experiment with an aged Negroni. I was sold. My wonderful wife purchased the kit for me at Christmas, and upon opening it, I almost immediately went to the liquor cabinet to put together a Negroni for again. I combined 4 oz. each of Beefeater gin, Dolin sweet vermouth, and Campari, and waited 10 days (this is another great feature of the small bottle; rather than having to wait 2 months for the cocktail to mature in the barrel, it was perfectly ready after a week and a half!). 

I decided that it was time to sample the Negroni this past week, and I was delighted with what I tasted. All of the descriptions of barrel-aged cocktails tasting smoother, more well-rounded, softer, and more integrated are spot on. The Campari was tamed, the vermouth a bit sweeter, and the gin softened. Put simply, it was the best Negroni that I’ve ever had.

After transferring the Negroni to another bottle to stop the aging process, I decided that I wanted to make another cocktail to age (that’s what’s so great about this kit! It allows small-scale experimentation). I was debating between a classic Martini and a Vesper and decided on the latter. So, the Vesper is currently undergoing a magical transformation, and I cannot wait to give it a try in a week or so.

I’m definitely going to order a few more of these barrel aging kits from Tuthilltown as well as some of their bottles (at $2 a piece!) in which to put the aged cocktails. Also, I’m thinking about asking the people there whether they’d be willing to sell the barrel stave pieces so that I could simply add a new one to the bottle when I wanted to age a new cocktail. This new product from Tuthilltown has received little press, but I’m sure that it is going to be a big hit in the cocktail world this year, as it allows one competently to enter the world of barrel-aging for a fraction of the price and a smidgen of the time as a traditional oak barrel.

Cheers!

Barrel Aged Blog

This blog is intended to be a resource for those who love and respect the craft and history of the cocktail. That's it. And I choose those words carefully. First, and foremost, this blog is a passion project. I'm a home-bartender. I have no formal training in any area of the food industry, but I love good food and good drink. David Embury said the following of the cocktail in his The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks (1948):

“It should stimulate the mind as well as the appetite. The well-made cocktail is one of the most gracious of drinks. It pleases the senses. The shared delight of those who partake in common of this refreshing nectar breaks the ice of formal reserve. Taut nerves relax, taut muscles relax, tired eyes brighten, tongues loosen, friendships deepen, the whole world becomes a better place in which to live.”

For all of these reasons, I want to make the best cocktails I can, and the Internet is a great resource for figuring out how to do so. However, over the past few months as I've been searching for information on making homemade bitters and tinctures and about barrel-aging cocktails, I've not been able to find one place that had all of the information that I desired. I ended up bookmarking dozens of sites and going from place to place in order to synthesize all of the data that I had come across. This blog is an attempt to answer and address that void. I will be sharing my findings, experiments, successes, and failures, and I'll be linking to helpful information that I find along the way. I have a lot of projects going right now (barrel-aging, tincture- and bitter-making, etc.), and I will write more about them in the coming weeks. In the meantime, follow my twitter account @BarrelAgedBlog and look for more in the near future.