The Wigle Monongahela 3.5 Year Old Organic Straight Rye Whiskey

750 ml center of the stud bottle

Tasting notes:
This is the kind of dram that really brings the rye to the ryefight.  Really delicious on the nose.  There’s the kind of spice happening here that could unite the warring Penzey family factions.  You’ve got fermented flower basket with marigolds in it.  A tiny cornichon connected to a keychain as an arch commentary of the lucky rabbit’s foot that would normally be there.  Then there is an Elf on the Shelf made to pose in Downward Facing Dog in ways that Darryl, the youngest of the children, found “winsome.”

The mouth tastes young, perhaps, but it isn’t jagged or splintery like so many other craft ryes.  On the contrary, it has the kind of thickness of a nerve-jangled dog’s anxiety vest.  It also has the creamy intensity you’d find in a blintz filled with Nutella and Marmite.  I really thought I’d get so much devastation and surliness after the spiced up nose.  But really it’s understated and well-mannered, reminding me, in fact, of a young Mike Tyson in a post-fight interview.  This speaks to the exceptional balance of a whiskey that is punching above its weight.

The finish is more of an ebbing. In fact, it’s like a tidal estuary gradually coming into view after the high tide recedes.  Or maybe it’s more like removing an exceptionally long screw that was drilled carefully into the center of the stud.  The creaks and squeaks as the screwdriver turns are best thought of as cheers for craftsmanship and work done well.
 
 
Rating:
On the scale of influential theories of art–
The Wigle Monogahela 3.5 Year Old Organic Straight Rye Whiskey is that of R. G. Collingwood–He thought that art was, in essence, the imaginative expression of emotion.  I might say that the good people at Wigle have carried out the imaginative distillation of emotion.
 
 
 
                                                                           –John
 
 
 
–Our thanks to Wigle for the sample!
 
 

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