The other day my wife and I were heading out to grocery shop at the local super center and she said "hey, we need to stop at the liquor store and get a gift card for our friend who is retiring". Okay, twist my arm! A trip to the liquor store means I get to pick up a new bottle of whiskey, so I am all for that!
The town near us that I grew up in has two major liquor stores. There are tons of "party" stores throughout the town that have a small selection of stuff, but the two main stores are where you go if you want some hard to find or special stuff. Oh, the super centers (Walmart, Meijer) often have a decent selection too, but still nothing like you would find at a dedicated store.
So anyway, about those two stores. The one is really fancy, to the point I feel like they are making sure I am not there to rob the place when I don't come in wearing a suit. I am used to this. Midland, MI is the town that Dow Chemical and Dow Corning built. It is dominantly white collar, so the rich entitled attitude runs deep there. Being the son of an autoworker I was never part of that world and I am okay with that.
The other liquor store on the other side of town used to be kind of a dump. I loved it. They had an awesome selection of stuff and you just felt like you belonged there. Blue collar, white collar, they didn't care. It was called Valley Produce and it was probably my favorite store. Now, it has been bought by a family called Opperman's. They are well known in the area and they own several other stores. It doesn't have quite the same feel as it used to. It is cleaner and they are trying to make it a bit more up-scale. Thankfully, the overall atmosphere is still welcoming and that is important to me.
So anyway, I walked in and I was immediately greeted by a display of various whiskeys right inside the door. They had a couple of the Barrel but those were sitting in the $120 USD range which is just a bit out of my comfort zone. Instead, I settled for this Old Pepper Distillery Single Barrel Rye.
The story of Old Pepper is pretty interesting. You should visit the site and check it out. It will be much easier than trying to read the bottle here:
One of the cool things about this rye is the fact that it is a barrel select offering. That means Opperman went to the distillery and hand picked a barrel that they wanted bottled to sell in their store. I think that is pretty cool and it adds a bit of uniqueness to the offering.
This is the second barrel select offering I have gotten from Opperman Cork & Ale. The first one was a Larceny Bourbon which is produced by Heaven Hill Distilleries. Neither have disappointed me so far, so I am pretty confident that the folks at Cork & Ale know good juice when they taste it.
I am a fan of bottles that have extra flourishes and things that make it unique. Basil Hayden is pretty well known for that. Old Pepper also has some flourishes that make it stand out. This wrapper on the cork is pretty cool. I like bottles that require me to slice some paper (usually with an age statement on it) before I imbibe.
Alight, you are probably wondering by now what it actually tastes like...
I really love ryes because they have a bit of spiciness to them. There is something that kind of gets you in the back of your cheeks. I really enjoy that. One of the big flavors I got from this was raisins, which is pretty funny because I pretty much can't stand raisins, but I really enjoyed this whiskey.
There are also the traditional caramel and wood flavors that you get with many whiskeys and bourbons in the US. At 110 proof it is fairly strong without melting your face off like some of the 53% alcohol barrel proofs can do. I had my first dram in a Glencairn glass with no ice and it was quite enjoyable. There was the burn that you expect, but again it wasn't overwhelming. I had my next glass with a large cube in it and that was quite perfect in my opinion.
I am going to take this bottle camping this weekend and share it with my friend. At $50 USD I feel the price is quite reasonable and I would totally get it again if I happened to be in Cork & Ale and I was looking for something reliably good. If you happen to see this in a store, I wouldn't hesitate to pick up a bottle.
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