Kentucky at last: Knob Creek Hollywood Barrel

It’s a grotesque oversight that I have not gotten to my fair home state’s glorious produce until now.  I apologize, and expiate:

Intending to avail myself of the positively silly current post-off on Eagle Rare 10 year, I stopped in at one of my regular haunts, Hollywood Liquor Store, to survey their new digs.  They’ve moved a few blocks west of their erstwhile location, into a gigantic old carpet warehouse that, so far, gives the unfortunate impression of shopping for one’s sippin’ corn in an airport terminal.  Snarkiness aside, they remain among the best two or three locations for whisk(e)y on the east side of Portland.

It was either testament to this or clever marketing (both?) that they offered a “private selection” made by Knob Creek to their specifications; apparently they were given the choice between several different blends, and chose the one they preferred, which they offered in an attractive flip-top tin.  Unlike the regular bottling, this selection is finished in a plastic screw-cap.

It’s good!  Brash, bright, and unabashedly Kentuckian, accurately described by the staff at Hollywood as a bit smoother than the standard Knob 9-year, this is an excellent value at under $35.  It’s got that trademark Knob heat- you know you’re drinking whiskey here- with all the big flavors that that entails, but wrapped round with a compelling complexity and multilayered sweetness, without ever straying into the realm of the cloying.  

Further, Knob occupies a special place in my heart: before I fully embraced spirits, I would usually have a bottle of Hendrick's Gin and Knob Creek on top of my fridge.  Though I rarely partake, gin is still my white spirit of choice, and Hendrick's, with their lovely rosepetaled iteration, have a winner.  But I fell hard for the amber elixir, and it's nice to see that the whiskey that I considered top-notch before I knew a damn thing is still pleasing to me now.  Knob is big, and hot, and not for everyone- I might call it the Laphroaig of bourbon, for that reason.  That's almost certainly also why I like it so well.

Knob Creek 9-Year (Hollywood Barrel)

nose:  Tropical and green, like the freshly-torn outer flesh of a ripe coconut; 1980s-era elementary school textbook;  potpourri of dried rose and lavender, salty red-hots

palate:  Hits the tongue like a molten yellow gummi bear and immediately gives the lie to the notion that whiskey need ever be flavored.  The midpalate is lush with crushed peppermint leaves, caramel apple, and sweet, sophisticated maraschino cherries, with a long finish, warm as woodstove, of candied orange peel, savory herbs (bay leaf, thyme), cinnamon, white pepper, and cedarwood.

Laphroaig Triple Wood, 2012 ed.

Laphroaig Triple Wood 2012

Another salvo from the good people of Laphroaig, the Triple Wood is released without statement of age; I’d suppose it to be relatively young.  Basically an extra-matured iteration of their Quarter Cask, the whisky first ages in used Bourbon barrels, then in smaller, 18^th-century-style European oak casks, before finishing in Oloroso Sherry butts.  I was really excited to try this when first I read about it, but when I finally got my hands on a bottle, I was initially left a bit nonplussed.

I had expected an olfactory hybrid of Speyside and Islay, but this dram was something altogether different.  My first impression was that it was a little oddly put together, almost jangly in the mouth, like an awkward teenager, all knees and elbows.  The Quarter Cask is not my favorite Laphroaig, and upon opening, the Triple Wood clearly showed the same ashy, almost industrial smoke. 

That said, as I worked through the bottle, and it saw more and more air, it knit together and became quite delicious, just as the Quarter Cask eventually did.  The more overtly petroleate smoke notes faded to a cleaner ash, and the Sherried sweetness came to the fore, wrapping its silky texture around the whole.  All in all, a fine single malt, if a bit spendier than I’d like it to be, at around $75, and certainly not something to which I’ll return again and again like their paradigmatic 10-year.

nose: Ashy, mossy smoke, spicy maritime pierwood; banana peel, pumice, and sweet lemon caramel; smoked salmon and tart green apples; a hint of nutty chess pie at the finish

palate: Hits the tongue sweet and lithe, with coursing flavors of saddle leather, Meyer lemon, green papaya, blood, ashy heather, and salty flesh, with a long, ringing outro of bright citron, butterscotch, and seawater.  The muscular angularity of the 4er cask all done up in lemons and lace; a basket of apples and roasted nuts next an old campfire by the seaside