Reply To: JoCo Cruise Crazy 3: All About the Ship

[autojim]

@Spooner & @mikesphar: I don’t pretend to be an authority, but there are several I enjoy. There’s a lot of “good luck finding it in the States” stuff on my list (I’m fortunate in having friends who travel to Scotland on business semi-regularly), but I’m a fan of Lagavulin 16 on the Islay peaty side, and Edradour 10 is milder and yet shockingly good and smooth for its age and price point. I confess that if I’m in a not-peaty mood, Macallan Fine Oak (the 10 is common and is a very good “introductory” Scotch, the 15 is less common and more spendy but still accessible — and has a much richer taste, the 12, the 17, and the 18 are not commonly stocked around here, and the 21, 25, and 30 are hard to come by and range from gives-one-pause expensive to frighteningly expensive) is my go-to dram. There’s a bottle of the 10 in the cabinet at home right now, in fact, though its replacement will be a 15 or 18.

I recently picked up a bottle of a Texas bourbon called 1835, which I was pleased enough by that I gave JoCo a bottle for the bus (and a bottle of Texas staple Tito’s Handmade Vodka) when he came through Houston. There’s some question online as to whether this is a true Texas bourbon, but origin is less important to me than how well it tastes.