Thursday, October 10, 2019

Rare Whiskeys

So, we've all heard of Jack Daniels ad Old Charter, and Jim Beam.  Not rare at all, with great distribution.  Basically, those bourbons, ryes, or malts that can be found at any liquor store and many grocers shelves.  We know about those.  Some of them are great whiskey, and deserve our attention.

Bourbon, (over the last several years) has undergone an explosion in demand.  Many of the huge producers are struggling to keep up with demand, because bourbon requires a long lead time.  At least two years in the barrel.  And, because of the bourbon explosion, it's driven many more whiskeys to be in demand.  As a result, others are getting into the game, and that's good for whiskey drinkers.  We're getting to try a bunch of very interesting whiskey that wasn't available ten or twenty years ago.

For example, when we talked about bourbon the other day.  Dave, in comments, pointed me to two that I had never heard of.  Leadslingers, and Horse Soldier.  I've never heard of them.  Believe me, as both a retired Cavalry officer and a hobby gunfighter, if I had ever seen either of these brands on the shelf, I'd have picked them up simply out of curiosity.  They are not locally available and their distribution is limited.  That's not a bad thing, necessarily.  If they are selling all the whiskey that they can produce, they're doing fine.

But, when someone mentions a whiskey I've never heard of, or tired, I simply go to Google and dive down the rabbit hole.  Evidently, both of these companies are veteran owned the making really nice whiskey.  One source that I always click on is The Whisk(e)y Vault.

Here's the review for Leadslingers:


And here is the review for Horse Soldier:


If you guys can find these bourbons, give them a try.  Evidently, they're doing some really interesting things .

Here's to fighting, stealing,and drinking.

1 comment:

Dave said...

FWIW, my regiment's (6th Infantry) regimental punch included at least 3 types of whiskey:

Canadian whisky - War of 1812 (the regiment's first battle streamer reads simply "Canada", and they earned their name, The Regulars, as part of Winfield Scott's brigade at the Battle of Chippewa)

Corn Whiskey - Indian Wars. Plenty of those.

Rye Whiskey - Civil War. Part of the Army of the Potomac, fought their last battle of the war just south of the Wheatfield at Gettysburg. Not enough left to put in the line after that.

I don't recall the whole recipe - due the number of times I was summoned to the grog bowl, my memories of the dining in are a bit hazy. I know there was also both tequila (Mexican War; Gen. Scott again) and mescal (Punitive Expedition), plus rum (Cuba), champagne (France, WWI), and red wine (Italy, WWII), and at the time finished off with some Balkan paint stripper called rakia.