Dueling in the Mashbills 2.0: A Blind Tasting of the Buffalo Trace Wheated verticals - Van Winkle and Weller

Alternate Title: Stumbling through the mashbills with blind Pappy Weller

This then is a blind tasting of the famous and much sought after Buffalo Trace wheated mashbill. Last weekend I started this tasting, which I'd promised myself way back last fall when I scored a few nice finds and decided to complete the family. In addition to 5 Van Winkle products and 3 Weller products, I added a sample of the 60/40 poor man's pappy that /u/wiggleywig sent me for the /r/ScotchSwap secret santa

Phase One: I opened all of these bottles for swaps in the last 2 months, but the first pour always went into a sample bottle for me. I labeled each bottle secretly under a piece of black electrical tape and stashed it in a box for the blind tasting. Every once and a while I'd pull out the box and give the bottles a good jumble for science. Last weekend, I began my tasting by pulling bottles at random from the box and labeling them #1, #2, etc. The first step was to pour approximately half of each 2 oz sample and write up tasting notes, along with a score. Here they are:


Blind Pappy #1

  • Nose: a nice sweet nose, with a bare hint of sour mash. Caramel is the only distinct note, but it's a lovely and sweet vanilla caramel. Oak is represented only briefly as a suggestion of cardboard. A faint hint of acetone, and not a lot of ABV burn.

  • Taste: flat initial entry (again cardboard, I think from the oak), turning brown sugar/caramel sweet pretty quickly. Nice and mild and just really nice.

  • Finish: toasted caramel, minimal burn, and lingering vanilla aftertaste finally dropping a hint of oak at the very end.

Score: 93/100


Blind Pappy #2

  • Nose: a decent punch here, some sour mash and some alcohol burn. Oak. Oak. And... Oak. A very slight hint of wheater sweetness, but also sour lemon.

  • Taste:petty smooth on entry, but it turns to citrus (orange, lemon) after a few seconds. Mild to medium burn. Oak, honey, and a spice - nutmeg, or a different strain of cinnamon than what I've had before.

  • Finish: tannic aftertaste, some burn into the belly but nothing drastic.

It's nice enough after a while, but takes a bit of effort to get into it, unlike sample #1 which would be dangerously easy to chug.

Score: 89/100


Blind Pappy #3

  • Nose: right between samples 1 and 2 - a good stiff alcohol punch, but vanilla and just a touch of caramel instead of the oak oak oak. A touch of acetone, and fresh cut oak sawdust.

  • Taste:really smooth entry given the alcohol punch from the nose, and just sits with sugary sweetness for a full ten seconds. Then comes alcohol burn finally, with cinnamon, but not too strong. Followed by fresh oak (like a wet toothpick or twig), pepper, and orange zest.

  • Finish: nice cinnamon pepper burn on the breath. Aftertaste is a bit on the sour side - metallic oranges?

Spicy, but pleasant enough

Score: 89/100


Blind Pappy #4

  • Nose: reminds me of #3 with a decently stout alcohol burn, a touch of acetone, all atop that sweet vanilla caramel. Oak, like a broken stick. Maintains its alcohol punch even as it airs, pretty sure this is a 107

  • Taste:another smooth entry. Briefly floral, but turns to that sugary sweet taste quickly where it sits for a good ten seconds before a brief alcohol burn. Then: pepper, floral, sugar, turning metallic late. Some meat too.

  • Finish: minimal burn, a bit of oak, metal, and flowers on the aftertaste. Fades out bitterly.

It's only bitter compared to the samples before it... In the overall world of bourbon it's still a sweet wheater.

Score: 88/100


Blind Pappy #5

  • Nose: only sour mash with none of the expected wheater sweetness at first. After a bit, it opens up to a rather harsh dry bitter oak. Now, even later, if I work at it hard enough, I can get some of that honey/sugar sweet scent.

  • Taste:right away with the burn of alcohol and it never really lets up. Pepper and oak and that's about all I can get from it. Once again, maybe just a bare hint of sweetness.

  • Finish: bitter/tannic oak aftertaste

Eh.... 

Score: 83/100


Blind Pappy #6

  • Nose: alcohol and caramel up front, this is one of the higher ABV I think. As it opens up, it turns towards oak and standard sour mash scents. A hint of acetone

  • Taste:Cardboard entry, not as much burn as the nose suggested, harsh oak, caramel sweetness, pepper.

  • Finish: a bit of burn, nice and pleasing. Caramel turns tannic in the aftertaste.

Subtly different than #2, #3, and #4 but easy to compare to them.

Score: 89/100


Blind Pappy #7

  • Nose: Coming after #6, this nose is really subtle. Starts out with a bit of vanilla caramel, and as it opens up oak, alcohol, something floral

  • Taste:really gentle entry. Super and minimal burn. A hint of sourness.

  • Finish: a faint burn and gone. Metal and sugar on the aftertaste.

Glad I am doing two passes, this needs a redo. Redo says it's virtually indistinguishable from #1, maybe slightly more bitter

Score: 92/100


Blind Pappy #8

  • Nose: N alcohol and caramel, slightly less sweet than many other caramels. A touch of sour mash and some oak. Reminds me very much of #6

  • Taste:super sweet entry, sits for a full 8 seconds before burning a little bit. Sugar, oak, caramel, vanilla, and a dash of black pepper, and a splash of citrus

  • Finish: a flash of oak, a mild burn, a beautiful splash of caramel. Lingering aftertaste turns somewhat bitter, tannic and metallic

Ding for the aftertaste, wanted to give 93 based on taste

Score: 91/100


Blind Pappy #9

  • Nose: started as just alcohol, then faded to cardboard/oak. A touch of acetone, but I'm having trouble finding the caramel I expected.

  • Taste:kinda harsh, this one, with a touch of sweetness on entry, but a quick and abrupt alcohol burn erupts without delay. Behind this is left a metallic oak sprinkled with pepper.

  • Finish: bitter metallic fades back to a sweet aftertaste. 

I was prepared to ding this one for the taste, but the finish kind of saved it.

Score: 89/100


This phase took me four or five sittings, but even so I really felt that the bourbons became indistinguishable from each other, especially sample 5 and above. I also felt like my scores were really hard to decide on – in truth I probably should have just averaged them all out and given the mashbill as a whole a 91.


Phase Two: This phase consisted of grouping the samples into what I thought were the proof families – 90, 107, etc – and tasting small samples of each side by side to see if I could decide on a guess for each. This was much harder than expected. I honestly felt like the harder I tried, the more impossible the task became. Before this project, the only ones I had tasted were the Poor Man's Pappy (this sample was the last from the 8 oz bottle) and the Weller 12, which repeatedly kicked my butt in blind tastings. In the end, I went back to my original tasting notes for some of the guesses:

  1. Van Winkle Special Reserve 12 Year

  2. Pappy Van Winkle 20 Year

  3. Poor Man's Pappy

  4. Pappy Van Winkle 15 Year

  5. Weller Special Reserve

  6. Old Weller Antique

  7. Weller 12

  8. Old Van Winkle 10 Year

  9. Pappy Van Winkle 23


Phase Three: Reveal!!

  1. Van Winkle Special Reserve 12 Year - My first ever bullseye!

  2. Weller 12

  3. Pappy Van Winkle 23

  4. Pappy Van Winkle 20 Year

  5. Old Weller Antique

  6. Old Van Winkle 10 Year

  7. Weller Special Reserve

  8. Pappy Van Winkle 15 Year

  9. Poor Man's Pappy


In Conclusion: I think two things threw my guesses off. Firstly, I'd heard that Pappy 23 was an "over-oaked mess." This brought to mind the Willett 25 Rye I have. Pappy 23 is nothing like that. It's some fine, fine, bourbon!. Secondly, I expected the Weller Special Reserve to be rougher than it was. Instead, the rough one was Old Rip 10. I think this influence my guess on the PMP as well (you'll notice PMP did very well on sample #9).

Would I buy it again? Yes, at retail. Probably not on secondary.


Previous Versions of this Series

/u/kdz13 over and out

/r/bourbon Thread Link - i.imgur.com