Review #252: George Dickel Collaboration Blend: A Blend of Column Still Rye Whiskey with Leopold Bros Three Chamber Rye Whiskey
Review #252: George Dickel Collaboration Blend: A Blend of Column Still Rye Whiskey with Leopold Bros Three Chamber Rye Whiskey
AGE:
NAS
PROOF: 100
COST: $110 SRP for 750mL bottle, (I picked this up for $25 from a
Blackwells online sale)
Believe
it or not, long before bourbon became the poster child for American whiskey, rye
whiskey was the number one spirit produced in the United States. While rye
whiskey is having a bit of a resurgence today, it came close to being lost
altogether after Prohibition. Today, a lot of modern rye whiskey is produced on
a column still because it’s efficient. But that isn’t how rye whiskey was
traditionally produced. The pre-Prohibition way to make rye whiskey was by
blending heavy bodied pot or chamber distilled rye whiskey with lighter,
cleaner column-distilled rye whiskey. This blending achieved a balanced,
layered, complex whiskey that is tough to achieve with a column still alone,
albeit requires more work.
This
collaboration tries to bring back that pre-Prohibition style rye whiskey
profile that has rarely been seen for over a century. It features a blend of a
full-bodied rye whiskey coming off the custom (and previously extinct design) Three
Chamber Still used by Leopold Bros and a never before released clean rye
whiskey produced on the column stills at Cascade Hollow. (Dickel has
traditionally always used MGP whiskey for their rye whiskey and has not
produced their own, so this is a first.) If you really want to nerd out, stick
around for the Behind the Bottle segment of this review as it’s chock full of
interesting tidbits, but for now, let’s get to the review!
Reviewed
neat in a Glencairn.
APPEARANCE: Russet chestnut color (1.4) with a thick, syrupy
appearance.
NOSE: Bright and florally. There’s a bright sweetness with light herbal
notes that create some warmth. Honey comb, orange creamsicle, bergamot, and
chamomile. I get a touch of maraschino cherry and a nice rye spice on the
backend of the nose.
PALATE: The mouthfeel is what I was hoping it would be.
It’s dense, oily, and chewy. As far as flavors, this really leans into the
spice cabinet on the palate. Ginger, clove, chamomile, spearmint, and freshly
grated cardamom. Orange extract and vanilla cream enter at mid-palate along
with honey baked apples. Cocoa powder shows up late but lasts well into the
finish. Chewing provides a burst of sweet honey and cherries.
FINISH: A long finish with savory notes to dominate. The
coca powder and cardamom from the palate transfer over nicely. There are occasional
notes of honey and orange peel. As the cardamom dies off it’s replaced with
mint and vanilla joins in. This leaves a sort of mint chocolate vanilla cream
note that lingers for minutes after the swallow.
RATING: 7.9/10
OVERALL: I love the body on this for 100 proof. It’s
thick and oily with intense flavors while being bright and nimble enough to
dance around on your palate. I feel like 100 proof is an excellent proof for
this, but at the same time, I really wish I knew what this tasted like at cask
strength. This is a spice forward whiskey, but on the brighter, lighter end of
the spice spectrum making it come across almost floral and herbal tea like.
There are a few hints of peppery, rye spice throughout, but they’re fleeting.
The subtle sweetness of honey, maraschino cherry, and vanilla cream help
emphasize the brightness of the spice. It’s a very well executed rye whiskey
blend! Value wise, I got this for a complete and utter steal at $25! It’s a
10/10 value wise at that price. But even at SRP this would be worth picking up.
It is a unique rye, tastes great, and has an excellent story behind it.
Behind the Bottle
Prohibition
all but killed the rye whiskey industry. It’s an interesting rise and fall story
really, but one to share for another review. One thing that I’ll touch on
though is that coming out of prohibition, there was a desire to make whiskey fast,
and LOTS of it. This required efficiency, and rye is considered a finicky grain
in the distillation world – anything that is difficult to work with is contrary
to efficient and fast. This (along with corn being subsidized after Prohibition
ended) resulted in many distillers opting to make bourbon exclusively and turn
a blind eye to rye whiskey.
Let’s
look at why rye is so difficult to work with. This comes from a high
concentration of non-starch polysaccharides found in the grain’s cell walls,
primarily beta-glucans. (Interestingly enough, beta-glucans have a lot of
health benefits to them. While I’m not certain a lot of those benefits survive
the distillation process, one could argue rye whiskey is better for you than
bourbon…) These polysaccharides don’t dissolve cleanly into water like the
starches in corn or barley do. Instead, they absorb water. This creates a very gelatinous-like
consistency for the mash, almost like porridge with the grain husks thrown in.
This creates a few operational headaches:
1. During fermentation, the thick mash
traps the carbon dioxide gas being produced by the yeast since the mash can’t
vent cleanly. This results in a lot of foaming and potential overflowing of the
fermentation tanks.
2. The density of the high-rye mash can
cause more strain and wear on distillation equipment. Pumps must work harder to
move the denser mash, column still plates and heat exchangers must go through
more frequent cleaning due to the mash baking onto them, and low-flow,
non-turbulent areas of the piping and stills tend to build up crud quicker.
3. The higher concentration of
unfermentable solids have the potential to scorch as they settle to the bottom
of a direct-fired pot still or on steam coils. While this can create some good
flavors through the Maillard reaction, it more commonly adds bitter, acrid
notes to the distillate.
While
there have been various techniques and additives that can help mitigate some of
these issues, it still stands that rye is high maintenance and requires more
effort than distilling corn or barley.
Abruzzi
Rye
Todd
Leopold at Leopold Bros. Distillery believed that the modern age of whiskey has
tried to produce higher alcohol yields with faster throughput which has
resulted in the loss of the full-body soul that was once found in all rye
whiskeys. Through his research, he believed that the secret to great rye
whiskey lay in two things: a lost relic, the Three Chamber Still and a specific
heirloom grain, Abruzzi rye.
Todd
worked with Vendome to resurrect the Three Chamber Still. Together, they
constructed the first one in over a century. There’s enough out there now that
a Google search can tell you a lot about this type of still and how it works,
but perhaps in a future review after I can get my hands on a bottle of Leopold
Bros. three chamber rye whiskey, I’ll dive into it a bit more. But for this
review, I want to continue focusing on the rye grain. Lew Bryson’s American
Whiskey Master Class has a fantastic section specifically on Abruzzi rye. Let
me hit the highlights while I expand on it slightly and let’s see why it makes a
subjectively better whiskey.
Todd’s
research suggested that Abruzzi rye was once a favored grain for most
Pennsylvania and Maryland rye whiskey production. In pre-Prohibition times, I’m
not certain they had the science to support why Abruzzi rye made such good
whiskey, but today, we do. Abruzzi rye contains far less starch content than
modern rye varietals, approximately 18% less in fact. While lower starch
content means less alcohol (accountants = not happy), Todd Leopold looked at
18% less flavorless starch as 18% more of something else that can provide
flavor (consumers = happy). It turns out he wasn’t wrong.
Abruzzi
rye is loaded with Ferulic acid – nearly 20% more than other modern ryes (looks
like we found that 18% starch replacement above…). If the right yeast strain is
used in fermentation, Ferulic acid can be converted into 4-vinyl-guaiacol
(4VG). 4VG is one of the most important flavor and aroma chemicals in alcoholic
beverages. It’s what gives rye whiskey and wheat beers their powerful spice and
clove notes. (Oh yeah, wheat is also high in Ferulic acid. So, if you find
clove notes in your wheated bourbon or hefeweizen, Ferulic acid is a likely
culprit.)
The
key is in the yeast though. Without getting too nerdy…fuck it, I think we’re
just about at the bottom of that hole already… Only Phenolic Off
Flavor-positive (POF+) yeast strains can convert Ferulic acid into 4VG. POF-
yeast strains cannot perform this feat. Ferulic acid itself is largely
flavorless, so by not taking advantage of a POF+ yeast strain, you aren’t
unlocking all that flavor that is bound up in the Ferulic acid. While that
seems like an obvious choice to just use a POF+ yeast strain, it isn’t that
simple. The name itself, Phenolic OFF Flavor, is because phenols are
generally considered undesirable flavors. Phenols don’t just include clove and
spice, but also smoky, barnyard…plastic……band-aids………. you see where I’m going
with this. It can get progressively worse. So, while your POF+ yeast strain may
add some clove notes, depending on what else is in your whiskey you might get a
band-aid flavor along with it. In the brewing world, brewers have experimented with blends of yeast strains. This
can help them dial in exactly how much of that clove profile they want in their
Hefe. While I’m not aware of any distillers using multiple yeast strains in the
same mash bill, I could certainly see this as something experimented with in
the future.
1 | Disgusting | see my 1/10 ratings
2 | Poor | see my 2/10 ratings
3 | Bad | see my 3/10 ratings
4 | Sub-par | see my 4/10 ratings
5 | Good | see my 5/10 ratings
6 | Very Good | see my 6/10 ratings
7 | Great | see my 7/10 ratings
8 | Excellent | see my 8/10 ratings
9 | Incredible | see my 9/10 ratings
10 | Perfect | see my 10/10 ratings
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