Whiskeys Of The Year 2023

It is that time of the year when Matt and I pick our favorite whiskeys from the past year. Once again, we disagreed on the best whiskey we have tasted this year. We started by blind tasting all twelve of our whiskeys of the month for 2023. They are:

Matt and I had Rosemary set up the blind tastings. We started with six – Rosemary picked the six so we had no idea of what we were tasting. I picked the Michter’s Toasted Rye as my favorite and Matt picked the Bardstown Bourbon Company Wheat Recipe Bourbon. We then had Rosemary set up a blind tasting of the last six whiskeys. I picked the Leiper’s Fork Rye and Matt picked the Southern Star Paragon Rye as his favorite. We each picked one other Whiskey that we thought should get another chance and I picked the Michter’s 10 year old Rye and Matt picked the Maker’s Mark Cellar Aged Bourbon. We agreed to do the final tasting the next day with fresh palates.

We met the next day for the final tasting. Rosemary set up the blind tasting for us and we tasted. For me, it was a clear choice – I picked the Leiper’s Fork Rye. It has a distinctive fruitiness that I really like and for me it was the whiskey of the year. My second choice was the Michter’s 10 year old Rye. On any other day it would have won for me, but the Leiper’s Fork Rye just could not be beaten.

For Matt, it was not as clear a victory. He spent several minutes with each one of the whiskey glasses, tasting and re-tasting their contents. In the end, he chose the Michter’s Toasted Rye as his favorite and the Maker’s Mark Cellar Aged as his second.

We both agreed that this year was an excellent year for whiskey. Any of the twelve whiskeys deserve the honor and due to the ephemeral nature of tasting, on different days, we may have chosen different whiskeys as our winner. However, this year, as Matt called it, “The Year of the Rye Whiskeys” , we picked these two fine products as our “Whiskey of the Year 2023”.