El Toro
Innocent Bystander
The traditional sources of rye whisky are the Canadians and the Irish. I like rye whisky. I think its mighty hard to beat Tullamore Dew for general sipping (or guzzling).
All of the Bourbon history I've seen indicates that Elijah Craig was the first to make it, of corn, and in Bourbon county. I used to take groups of Swedish business men on trips through the distilleries in that neck of the woods.
Wikipedia isn't always that accurate, but the stuff in this article (today) is consistent with what I've remembered for many decades.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourbon_whiskey
There are specific rules, of course. But the rules aren't enough. Good Bourbon takes more time and needs more corn than the rules require.
My favorite is probably Old Charter Classic 90. Its not stupidly expensive, but its got some good age on it (maybe 12 years), and its 90 proof, which in my book is better than the 80 proof standard that we've been stuck with for a good while now.
I don't care about single barrel bourbons. I've got a pretty good collection, including some single digit batch numbers from some prominent makers. They're inconsistent from batch to batch, and while one might be exceptional, the next will disappoint. I've gone through enough of them to consider them a waste of money.
Evan Williams used to be pretty good for its price point, but they've replaced the age with charcoal filtering after a huge fire at their storage facilities several years back, and its no the same anymore. Elijah Craig was quite good when it was first introduced in the modern era too, but its not so clean anymore.
I often think that it would be a good life to drop back and make potato vodka as a livlihood. Vodka needs no age - just 5+ stages of distillation.
