Blind Battle – Independents

Feb 19, 2022

A lesser known group produced clear winners and losers!

Thanks again to Lundeen’s for hosting the event! We had some new people and some of our founding club members at the event and battled hard through some tasty (and not so tasty) whiskies. The theme of “independent” distillers was a challenging one since we couldn’t dive into the well-known products. I tried to pick ones that had some accolades to their name, but as we all know, awards aren’t the end all be all.

In most previous bourbon battles, we had a nice spread of votes, but there was a VERY clear line between the good and the bad in this one. But like many people said at the battle, “I’d rather pay $10 to save me $50 or $75 down the line.”

Also, THANK YOU to Mark Cerny for donating a bottle of the Driftless Glen Port Finished, which ended up taking top honors!

Here are some stat highlights:

– All samples received some first-place votes except the bottom two.
– People liked the top three whiskeys – First place = 6 top votes; Second place = 8 top votes; Third place = 5 top votes. Interestingly, the second-place whiskey got more top votes than the first place whiskey. This happened last battle too! Interesting…
– The bottom three whiskeys were clearly the losers. There was 50 points separating fourth place and fifth place and over 70 points separating first and last place. We’ve never seen this discrepancy before!
– The bottom whiskey was so terrible it demanded a new category on the tasting wheel called “Ass” (thanks to Ron Hargrove and his tablemates). I actually didn’t mind it too much (I ranked it 4th place), but clearly, we are not a club that likes smokiness in their whiskey. It has been duly noted.

We had a great time and did a lot of laughing, talking, and debating. I always love seeing how people’s tastes differ. You can have one table say “this is the s**tiest whiskey ever” and the next table say “We really like the buttery-ness of this one”. Goes to show you that the only correct palate is your own.

**THE RESULTS**

NOTE: There were more than a few people who did not adhere to the ranking system and did some wonky voting, so these tallies have a bit of an *asterisk* by them. You know who you are people!! Haha.

Anyway, the lower the score, the better the whisky.

7th place – Corsair Triple Smoke American Single Malt – $35 (123 points)
6th place – Kirkland Blended Scotch Whiskey – $10? (122 points)
5th place – Laws Four Grain Bourbon – $74 (120 points)
4th place – Redwood Empire, Lost Monarch Blended American Whiskey – $39 (70 points)

3rd place – Blaum Bros Straight Bourbon – $50 (69 points)
2nd place – New Riff Straight Bourbon – $50 (64 points)
1st place – Driftless Glen Port finished – $60 (49 points)

For all of the stat nerds … here’s more on the whiskeys and the final scoring.