Sazerac 18 (2016)

Making my obligatory way through the BTAC bottles which were on hand at The Gresham. Hard to say exactly what I was expecting from this. I tasted the standard Sazerac blind, and didn’t pick it as a rye at all. So it’ll be interesting to see what happens with age.

Source: Poured at The Gresham, Brisbane, Australia.
Setup: Unblind
Drank: Neat, in a Glencairn-style stemmed glass. Rested 5-10 minutes.

---

Nose: Fresh toast, pungent dill & fennel, some cherry pit, apricot.
Palate: Milky consistency, tannic with green pepper, sweet leatheriness, deepens into…
Finish: Cherry, cut fennel root, tannic leather, shortcake.
Overall: In my notes I wrote “amazing complexity”, and I remember that I struggled to come up with words for all the things I was tasting.

Rating: 9

Thoughts: I was really kind of blown away by this. I had it side by side with THH 2016 and the Saz was the one I kept going back to. I guess high rye, age and tannins are things that I dig when they’re together. That said, I feel a little bad giving it the score that I did, it makes me feel like I’ve been subconciously influenced by the hype around BTAC. Definitely a possibility, but at least know that I’m aware of it and I tried to be a bit objective. It would have been better blind, but that’s logisitically pretty difficult to do correctly when you don’t have access to samples or a bottle.