The Templeton 4 Year Old Rye Whiskey

Tasting notes:
The nose is a nose. Specifically, it’s a marzipan carrot snowman nose kept cool in a refrigerated display case. I sense bright green rye notes, as if I was peeling corn only to find dense rows of rye inside the husks. Yes, there’s some adventure here. Consider Mr. Green Jeans taking the ceremonial first slide down the little league world series outfield hill. Or a cross between spearmint and sensimilla.

My first impression of the mouth is that it answered a cocktail casting call. In this way, it’s kind of a Rilke rye. It seeks loving union, to be sure, but not Aristophantic merging. Simple and classic like a worsted wool blue blazer paired with gray gabardine slacks. It’s the brother-in-law you trust more than your sister.

The finish is a basketball net woven out of reeds and grass that Steph Curry just shot 50 half court swishes through. One after another, the mounting friction singes the reeds, giving them a toasty aspect. The reeds are then used to make a basket into which a young Moses is placed and sent down the river. It’s a timeline twist we can’t explain, nor do we care to. We are too busy listening to the southern Spanish farmhands on the banks of the river refer to the child as “Mosthesth.” We too feel the profundity of this moment as the finish reaches down to our toes and swaddles us in safety.

   

Rating:
On the scale of fanciful explanations of the distinctive coronal fricatives in Castilian Spanish—-

The Templeton Rye is the theory that King Felipe II lisped and others in the court imitated him–The theory, known as “prestige borrowing,” has been discredited for lack of evidence.  But I’m gonna prestige borrow a bit more of this rye from Stephen’s glass while he’s distracted by his research into this question.

   

   

                                                                         —John

   

   

–Our thanks to Templeton for the sample!