Workhorse Rye Customary & Unusual is a whisky that comes with a complete lot of backstory. It’s a one-time launch from the indie Californian distiller, and is known as after a West Coast males’s retailer whose companions performed a hand in bringing it to market.
Made to the tune of simply 280 bottles and accessible to buy on-line, it’s distilled from a proprietary mix of heritage grains constituting 50% malt, 25% rye, and 25% barley. Following the distillation, the juice is aged in a mix of 80% mizunara casks and 20% ex-bourbon barrels, and eventually bottled at cask energy, a heady 121 proof.
The nostril is heat, buttery, and toasty, not not like a great piece of toasted and buttered darkish rye. There’s additionally a little bit of oak and a touch of leather-based. It’s luscious and thick on the tongue, with fats and wealthy flavors of malt and grain to match. The start is earthy, bready, and malty earlier than entering into orchard fruits on the middle, significantly candy apple and pear.
Towards the again of the palate it will get sweeter however stays darkish with a taste much like cola. Then we really feel the warmth, which is scorching, although not precisely 121 proof scorching, based mostly on its really feel. The end layers oak, leather-based, and a type of dry, nutty taste that jogs my memory of toasted cashews. Its equal components woody, leathery, and nutty end feels eternal however not overwhelming.
We’re seeing extra whiskies that concern themselves with the grain themselves slightly than cask finishes or age statements, and Customary & Unusual is squarely in that camp. This can be a whisky that makes you’re feeling near the earth and its elements, at the same time as they catapult your palate into the stratosphere by the constructing depth of the flavors it yields.
Sure, Customary & Unusual is intense. It’s an depth I loved, although I additionally found that pouring it over a single dice of ice—a transfer I’m often loath to contemplate—lengthened the expertise and introduced out its spices in a manner I discovered satisfying, too.
★★★
Stats:
–60.5% ABV
–$140
