Whiskey Tasting: Basil Hayden Dark Rye

Welcome back to more whiskey. While the advent calendar is done, I have a few whiskeys open that I used during a recent guided tasting that I organized and led (I can organize and lead these for your friends or co-workers as well!). I made some notes for them way back then, but wanted to revisit them and see if I think differently of them after having the recent set of whiskeys back to back. I normally don't drink 24 different whiskeys in 24 days.

This isn't going to be a whiskey blog, but I do like the act of tasting whiskey, thinking about what makes it up, what works and what doesn't, so this is easy early content as I try to fall into the habit of writing about other things. I have some ideas, that are not whiskey related, that I'm letting mature and I hope to have them ready by the time I run out of open bottles. So here goes.

Whiskey Tasting: Basil Hayden's Dark Rye

The distillery

So Basil Hayden's came up when I talked about Knob Creek as it is another Jim Beam small batch collection whiskey. Jim Beam came up with Legent as well. There's a lot of good info in those. Basil Hayden's specifically was introduced in 1992 as a high-rye bourbon. It's named after Basil Hayden Sr., a distiller of some repute. He is the "Old Grand-Dad" in Old Grand-Dad bourbon.

The whiskey

You get a stock photo for today's post because my improvised light box was only big enough for the sample bottles. I'm not going to build anything big enough for 750ml bottles right now and just a picture of the glass is boring (or is it?).

So this whiskey is a Kentucky straight rye whiskey what's been aged normally and then blended with Canadian rye whiskey and port. So this isn't aged in port barrels, it actually has port in it. The website mentions the Canadian whiskey comes from "our award-winning Alberta distillery". I assume this is Alberta Distiller's Limited, which makes Alberta Springs and Alberta Premium, since they're also owned by Beam Suntory.

Look

Our port-laced rye is ruddy brown and somewhat murky. Not cloudy, just harder to see through. It has ruby highlights in the light. When swirled it coats with thick sheets that resist running for some time, though it will ultimately make some thick, slow moving legs.

Nose

No surprise, the nose is fruity, with lots of dark berry jam smells, cooked strawberry, raisins, currents, dates, pick your dark fleshed dried fruit and it's hanging out in here. If you're familiar with port, you know it's pretty much that small saying hello. Inhale deeply and you'll catch a little rye spice just before you run out of room to breath in. This is a very port forward drink.

Taste

This tastes very much like it smells, which is to say it tastes like port. It's full of dark fruit flavors tempered by a middle swell of black-pepper-y rye spice and a little burn of alcohol. The finish goes on forever with flavors of honey and raisins. The finish is just a touch... muddy? funky? It's not clean like a lot of ryes or bourbons would be. This isn't a ding, exactly, but it stands out among other whiskeys.

This whiskey is very very sweet, much like port, and extremely viscous. I normally don't talk about the "body" of whiskey because they're all roughtly the same. This one is not. It's almost syrupy in quality.

After water

A little water brings the rye to the forefront, and you get fresh grass on top of your fruit. The fruit really does sit back, and we start getting a very rye forward whiskey smell.

Similarly the tastes gets a little more whiskey-like. It's brighter and dryer and, while it still coats the mouth, it's not as viscous feeling. The finish is still honey and dried dark fruit. The front is more rye, some oak, and the same dark fruit/port tasts, of course, they're just muted now. The middle doesn't really swell up anymore, so we lose a lot of the black pepper from our alcohol and rye punch.

Sitting here typing this up the finish is still going and I'm starting to get vanilla out of it.

Summary

I like this whiskey a lot for drinking neat and in certain situation. This is a terrible example of a rye whiskey, but it's almost like a cocktail in a bottle. I would drink this whenever I might have otherwise had port. It's absolutely an after-dinner whiskey. If you like port, you will love this whiskey. If you like rye cocktails, you will like this whiskey. If you want basil hayden bourbon but as a rye expression, that's not this, you might still be able to find a bottle of the previously released Basil Hayden's Rye, but don't confuse the dark rye for it.