01/09/24
By Rebecca Herman McBrayer

Wayne and I started doing whiskey tastings early in our journey.  It is certainly an art and an opinion.  There really is no right or wrong answer to what you personally smell or taste in a whiskey.

Over the last two+ years, we have read many tasting reviews and watched many videos.  While we haven’t always been in alignment with each one, we have learned so much in the process. When a review would mention that they tasted this or that, we would find the item (whenever possible) and proceed to smell it and taste it and then see if we could pick it out of what we were drinking.  Sometimes we do and sometimes we don’t. And we understand that this is okay too.

Our favorite mentors are Michael Veach and Matt Kohorst who can be found at bourbonveach.com and on the Bourbon Veach YouTube channel. We are always excited when they are tasing items that are in our collection so we can taste along with them! In fact, they recently recorded a video explaining this in detail.

Through watching Mike & Matt we have learned that it isn’t necessary to agree … sometimes you taste the same things and sometimes you don’t.  We have also been fascinated by their approach, which is: 1) neat tasting, 2) with a dried cranberry, 3) with a pecan, and 4) with dark chocolate.  It is quite interesting to see how other flavors and even textures can affect your whiskey experience. Thus, most often, we use their same approach with our tastings.

For now, we are going to be providing written notes and hope to add some video later in the year. Our goal is to share at least one tasting a month and perhaps name a monthly and/or yearly favorite for us, but that is yet to be determined. For reference, there is a high probability that some older, more simple written tasting notes might be shared over time to provide an historical reference for our journey.

At this time, the vast majority of whiskeys that we taste are those acquired along our bourbon journey via the distillery visits.  We also are fortunate that our Evansville Bourbon Society does several barrel picks each year and that has expanded our reach and experience. Of course, we have several very find liquor stores in our area that get some special picks as well.

We hope that our tasting journey will pique your interest to try something out of your comfort zone or perhaps even visit some of our favorite distilleries.

Cheers,
Rebecca