For the third year running, Matt and I like to pick our favorite whiskey that we tasted during the year, picking from our whiskeys of the month for the year. This year we had twelve excellent candidates. Any one of them would make a great pour of whiskey. We tasted all twelve in four rounds of blind tastings with four of the whiskeys in each tasting and picking our favorite from each tasting for the final tasting. We also picked one extra whiskey that was close to winning a tasting to make the final whiskey for the four whiskey final. The whiskeys we tasted were:
Maker’s Mark Cellar Aged Bourbon 2024
Old Grand Dad 16 Year Old Bourbon
Shenk’s Sour Mash Whiskey 2024
Kentucky Peerless Toasted Barrel Bourbon
Michter’s Toasted Barrel Bourbon 2024
Leopold Brothers Three Chamber Pot Still Rye
From these twelve whiskeys, we chose for the final four:
Lythgoe Four Grain Bourbon
Shenk’s Sour Mash whiskey 2024
Peerless Toasted Barrel Bourbon
Michter’s Toasted Barrel Bourbon
It was a tough decision. We went back and forth between three of the whiskeys and after some repeated tastings, we finally agreed upon one of the whiskeys. This was a first for us as in the past two years, we ended up picking a whiskey each as our “Whiskey of the Year”. This year, we both picked the Michter’s Toasted Barrel Bourbon as our favorite whiskey of the year 2024. This is an excellent whiskey with a rich caramel taste and deserves it place as Whiskey of the Year.
Photos Courtesy of Rosemary Miller