I love a good cask-finished whiskey, but one question always nagged at me. Is there any real difference between cask finishing in say, ex-port barrels, and just… putting a little bit of port into the whiskey itself?

“Ah, child. My sweet, sweet, confused child. It’s okay to have those thoughts. Heck, I used to have similar thoughts! But what’s important is that we don’t act on them. You see, whiskey is whiskey, and whiskey is flavored by barrels. Only barrels. If it was flavored by something that’s not a barrel, then it wouldn’t be whiskey, would it?”

“Would it not?”

“Of course not! It would be a cocktail! You wouldn’t put a good whiskey in a cocktail, would you? There’s a special place in dry county Utah for people like that. Now suppress those impure thoughts, sit down, and as penance drink five Bloody Mary’s.”

***

Friends, I’ve tried to suppress these thoughts for a long time, but no longer. Why do we insist on cask finishing as the only acceptable method of infusing unique flavors into whiskey? I’ll admit that a cask finish sounds much more appealing than the idea that the whiskey was flavored with Port Flavor Extract #23. I won’t deny that. But it really does feel like we’re insisting on a middleman for no better reason than because he’s a sweet talking sexy hunk of a salesman.

For purposes of this experiment, I’m cutting the middleman and tasting the source. Then I’m tasting the middleman again. Then maybe I’ll blindfold myself and taste both. Then I’m comparing sizes–I mean flavors. I meant flavors.

Methodology

Midwinter Night’s Dram is High West’s Rendezvous Rye that they’ve finished in a combination of ruby and tawny port barrels. So I went and bought bottles of ruby and tawny port, and a bottle of High West’s Rendezvous Rye. I started out by putting a drop of each port into my glass of Rendezvous Rye, tasting the resulting mixture in comparison to a glass of Midwinter Night’s Dram, and adding drops until it got as close as possible to the Midwinter Night’s Dram. It only took a few drops.

I got three uniform glasses, poured some of the bootleg in one, some Midwinter Night’s Dram in the other, and some Rendezvous Rye in the third as a control (this is a highly scientific experiment you know). My wife mixed the glasses up, and I tried them one by one.

Nose

I could tell the difference, but just barely. Basically, the Bootleg still smelled a bit like the Rendezvous Rye, whereas the Midwinter Night’s Dram doesn’t. The Rendezvous Rye smells almost like earl gray tea to me and the bootleg carried that through on the nose. Otherwise they were extremely similar, they both had that sweet rich syrupy quality to the nose.

Palate

Again, I could tell the difference. They were similar, but easier to distinguish in taste than smell. The Midwinter Night’s Dram just tasted more like its own thing whereas the bootleg still had the tea elements of the Rendezvous Rye to it.

Finish

Both long, both sweet, no difference here, but it’s not like there’s a way to blind test for this alone.

Bottom Line

I could tell the difference between the two, but the difference was (1) minimal, and (2) only in kind and not in quality. To put in perspective how small the difference was, during each blind test, I could only pinpoint which was which after trying both. Meaning, if I were to try the bootleg standing alone, without being able to immediately compare it to the Midwinter Night’s Dram, I couldn’t accurately tell which it was.

But here’s what’s interesting: both tasted great, and if I’m being totally honest with myself, I probably prefer the bootleg by a hair. It felt like the bootleg preserved more of what I really like about the Rendezvous Rye (the earl gray taste) while still having that rich sweetness which makes Midwinter Night’s Dram great. But I could see people going the other way on this.

In terms of a rating, I’ve already reviewed Midwinter Night’s Dram and given it an 8/10. That review can be found here. I’d rate the bootleg the same.

Final Thoughts:

Currently, if you want uniquely flavored whiskies, the market is generally divided in two: on the one hand, there are the whiskies which are flavored through cask finishes, like Midwinter Night’s Dram, Seagrass, Angel’s Envy. These skew heavily toward wine/port/sherry finishes and there isn’t a whole lot of variety going on (with the exception of a few distilleries).

On the other hand, there are those sickly sweet liqueur whiskeys with so much artificial flavoring that it smacks you in the face and covers up any hint of the base liquor. Think Fireball, Tennessee Honey, Crown Royal Apple.

Why is a middle ground so hard to find? Give me a quality whiskey, that isn’t jacked with sugar, but is subtly infused with something natural. I think if the market could overcome the initial negative gut reaction to flavored whiskies and just appreciate the drink for its taste alone, we’d be on a one way ticket to flavortown.

I’ll end on this note. I went through this entire writeup without making a joke out of the fact that the port I’m using is called Cockburns. It’s literally called Cockburns. It’s on the label, you can see it in the picture. I’ve made it this far, so I’m not going to make a joke about it now, but I just want you all to know that I know it’s there, but I’ve chosen to exercise self-restraint so as to be taken seriously by the academic journals I expect to soon publish my findings.