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Staff Favorites - Mahon McGrath
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Reviews
Jade "Nouvelle-Orléans" Absinthe Supérieure (750ml)
Review Date: 10-26-2016
It took me a long time to get around to this, but it was always in back of mind. I knew I wanted to check this out when I first heard about it, well before absinthe had even been declared once more legal on our shores. While I have never found anise to be a flavor I crave, I really did enjoy tasting my way through the absinthes that washed up on our shores after the ban was lifted, unlike, it seems, the vast majority of people in the US of A. The Nouvelle Orleans is a wonderful example of why I do find absinthe so much more appealing than anisette: it is like a cocktail in its mixture of a variety of flavors, albeit one that has been pre-mixed and bottled for you... in the nicest possible way, of course. In this particular example, no one flavor gains the upper hand, nor does it hit you fortissimo; it blends into a complex but seamless whole. Total elegance, no sugar needed. While I probably shouldn't have waited so long to sample this, I can at least take comfort in the fact that I haven't waited in vain.
Charles Baur "Emotion" Cremant d'Alsace Brut
Review Date: 06-17-2016
The golden apple and lemon tart nose pick up a prominent dried ginger spiciness. The evocation of softer flavors like pastry crust on the palate are firmed up by a greater degree of acidity than one typically finds in a Cremant, which creates the impression of the wine leaning in more of a Champagne-esque direction. Even if it doesn’t muster quite that degree of verve, layering, or richness, it is one of the best alternatives we've got!
Mas Codina Brut Reserva Cava Penedès
Review Date: 03-02-2015
The Mas Codina cleaves more to the doughy-yeasty side of things, but has a light, delicate fruit character, in a citrus, tart apple vein. This definitely comes across on the dry side, and finishes clean, with a suggestion of green apple. Absolutely affordable, and well balanced, this is a great pick when you need good, inexpensive fizz!
Price:
$13.99
Franck Bonville Grand Cru Brut Blanc de Blancs Champagne
Review Date: 04-16-2014
Fresh and racy, showing crisp apple and citrus, with hints of mineral and brioche rounding out the palate, this focused and elegant Champagne is as good as--or better than--its previous incarnations, and remains a steal for the price.
2010 Freemark Abbey Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon (Winery Direct Library Release)
Review Date: 03-31-2014
Freemark Abbey hits its mark! Dusty cassis, graphite, balsam-cedar notes on the nose lead to a palate that shows moderately sweet, plummy fruit, before veering in a more dry, woodsy-spicy direction. The wine makes a solid impact in a more restrained California style. The tannins rally a bit on the finish, enough to give the wine shape, but without taking over the show.
Lot 40 Copper Pot Still Canadian Rye Whisky (750ml)
Review Date: 01-20-2014
Unctuous and rich, this Canadian Rye packs in an intriguing array of flavors that stays true to the character of the grain. Style-wise, it skews to the sweeter side of things, with a fat mid-palate, and a supple, seamless texture. This is definitely the best new addition to the--of recent days--rather un-crowded field of contemplative, sipping Rye Whiskeys that I've had occasion to sample.
Plymouth Navy Strength English Gin (750ml)
Review Date: 11-04-2012
It had been bruited about that such a creature as “navy strength” Plymouth gin existed, or once had, and here in the midst of the great cocktail revival, where many a long-lost dream comes true, it once more graces these shores. If you’re familiar with Plymouth gin, there are no great surprises in store for you here; which is just fine. Why mess with success? The Navy Strength bottling is simply a brawnier version of the classic Plymouth taste. When this is, for instance, mixed up simply 1:1 gin to vermouth(Noilly Prat), no garnish, as a Wondrich reprint of an early 1850's San Francisco Gibson recipe suggests, this is a fabulous drink, and one in which a standard proof just wouldn't cut it. With the Navy Stength, you can taste the gin’s presence clearly and distinctly. An excellent addition to the canon!
Price:
$33.99
Byrrh Grand Quinquina Aperitif Wine (750ml)
Review Date: 09-04-2012
What sort of aperitif is this? I'd liken it more to Dubonnet than sweet Vermouth, though it has a brighter, fresher berry-fruit character to Dubonnet's plush, bass heavy profile, and a more pronounced bitterness as a counterpoint. Note, though, that this is skewed more towards the sweet than the bitter, and therefore seems to me to suggest it wants dilution of some sort, whether passively by serving it over ice, or through mixing: dust off your copy of the Savoy Cocktail book for a few suggestions on how to get started if that latter course strikes your fancy.
Ferrand "1840 Formula" 90 Proof Cognac (700ml)
Review Date: 05-31-2012
There aren’t a bevy of Cognacs out there built for mixing. This one has two things going for it: 45% abv, and a formulation that is an attempt to recreate the flavor profile of a pre-phylloxera Cognac. So, does it fly? Yes, it does. That little bit extra strength combined with the robust flavor profile gives this the power to really sing out in mixed drinks where other Cognacs might just fade into the background. The flavor is mostly in the dry fruit and new leather vein, with a papery vanilla, and some citron and bergamot, in the background in this plump, round, reasonably sweet brandy. Try a sidecar with it and see for yourself!
Redbreast 12 Year Old Cask Strength Single Pot Still Irish Whiskey
Review Date: 04-15-2012
This cask strength bottling of Red Breast certainly ratchets up the drama. There is more oomph, more richness and intensity, on both nose and palate. It remains, however, an Irish pure pot still whiskey foremost, and as such bears closer kinship to its more familiar version lower proof bottling than to the untamed ferocity of something like a George T Stagg. You ain’t toying with no pipsqueak, though; you will want ice or water or a bit of both to round the edge off. You get a wonderful range of baked banana, dried fruits, butterscotch and sweet grain, enlivened by a citric note that keeps things from seeming cloying or fatty. The finish here rolls on like thunder—well, civilized thunder, anyway.
I’d note, too, that if you’re mixing a Manhattan-style cocktail with Irish whiskey, this is probably the best one for the job I’ve come across to date. The cask strength really keeps the whiskey from getting lost amidst the other ingredients.
Rare Wine Company "Historic Series - Charleston" Sercial Madeira
Review Date: 11-27-2011
The dominant character here is a subdued toasted nuttiness, not specifically almond or walnut, with undercurrents of dried fruit. The palate is another thing altogether. This is one a wine that succeeds more on texture than nuance of flavor. While it is a sweet wine, it doesn’t put itself across the way a sauterne or even a sweet sherry would. It is as though you’d put the proverbial “spoon full of sugar” in your mouth-though for the purposes of this analogy we’d better make sure you’re visualizing raw sugar-and then sucked a fat wedge of lime. The tremendous acidity doesn’t just balance out the sweetness, but actually overcompensates for it, making it seem to finish much drier than it started and lip-smacking, too. Singular stuff. Works pretty nice with a slice of pumpkin pie and I’d wager you would get good mileage out of it with well-seasoned meaty bites, say dumplings of some sort.
El Dorado 15 Year Old Demerara Guyana Rum (750ml)
Review Date: 07-01-2011
Demerara-rah; that’s the spirit! The El Dorado 15 year certainly shows the benefits of the time that the spirit spent in barrel in the initial intensity of the nose and palate. What is better still is it pulls back a bit towards the finish and finds a little reserve, avoiding the bombast of certain other “too much isn’t nearly enough” long-aged spirits. Toasted chestnuts, antique woodsy vanilla and candied pear, papaya and pineapple ornament a core of lush, sweet sugar cane that switches about between the continuum of sugar-brown sugar-molasses without ever settling on just one, a sort of olfactory iridescence. Pull up an evening and a chair and settle in; you’ll want to linger long—in the same way that the finish does—with this rum.
La Cigarrera Manzanilla Sanlucar de Barrameda (375ml)
Review Date: 05-30-2011
This manzanilla plays down the toasted almond dimension of sherry, and offers instead clean, vibrant, salty aromas coupled with golden apple and a little sprinkling of parsley, even. Take a sip, and you’ll find a smooth texture and a pleasantly plump middle palate, finishing with a citric pucker and a lingering evocation of wet stone. Well worth trying where you’d normally reach for muscadet, say.
Price:
$18.99
Dudognon "Vieille Reserve" Grand Champagne Cognac (750ml)
Review Date: 01-29-2011
The Dudognon Vieille Reserve puts me in mind of golden, late afternoon sunshine. It isn’t the spirit’s color, but rather the gentle, relaxed warmth this spirit seems to contain. If only we all had such refinement and grace in our twenties! The Vieille Reserve is a slight notch up in amplitude from its younger sibling, the Reserve, taking on a weightier texture and greater length while retaining an obvious stylistic kinship in its purity and delicacy. Powdery, dusty vanilla and warm spice joins light caramel, citron and dried apple notes, which then fades longer than the diminuendo on a seventies rock track outro. You'd have to be something of a curmudgeon not to feel this.
Buffalo Trace White Dog Mash #1 (375ml)
Review Date: 09-30-2010
This is a White Dog you’re going to want to adopt. Don’t let the ferocious ABV deter you. Add about 1 part water to 2 parts whiskey and voila; you’ve got a surprisingly smooth and flavorful tipple that will put to rest any notion that an un-aged whiskey might be long on heat and short on flavor. The flavors are, however, quite different from those of aged bourbon. There are notes of citrus pith, grain, banana and a fresh minty-herbaceous quality that picks up a floral dimension on the finish. What’s more, it “shows up” when mixed, unlike vodka. There’s lots of room for experimentation and discovery here. Intriguing stuff!
Price:
$16.99
Lustau "Los Arcos" Amontillado Jerez
Review Date: 07-26-2010
If you’re looking for a good dry Amontillado, you’ve found your bottle here; this is a lot of sherry for the money! The Los Arcos offers expansive and intense flavors on a well balanced frame. Toasted almond and dried fruit aromas are followed by flavors of salty, toasted nuts juxtaposed nicely against a mellow sweetness. The finish is crisp and dry. What it might lack in nuance when compared to some pricier bottlings it more than makes up for in overall harmony and depth of flavor. Lovely stuff.
Incidentally, if you’re making atavistic cocktail recipes such as the Bamboo or the Tuxedo that call for dry sherry, the Los Arcos shows to good effect in them. It doesn’t get lost in the mix the way pretty much any Manzanillas or Finos I’ve used to date seem to.
Highland Park 18 Year Old Isle of Orkney Single Malt Scotch Whisky (750ml)
Review Date: 03-30-2010
The nose gives up nutty, toffee, honeyed heather and baked bread aromas with a subdued smokiness. The smoke comes out more distinctly on the palate, balanced by full, sweet flavors of honey, caramel and spiced baked apple. This is a spirit that seems wild at first encounter, but is really surprisingly gentle at heart, with a sweet generous nature lurking behind the not entirely slick exterior. I should also note that the finish reverberates for a goodly span.
Dudognon "Reserve" Grand Champagne Cognac (750ml)
Review Date: 01-18-2010
Soft, silky smooth and voluptuous, refined and delicate, this Cognac is sheer pleasure. The flavors are a pleasing accord of pear, apple, warm spice and caramel. If you're thinking sidecars and such, you probably want to go for the Deret VSOP. The Dudognon's charms are pretty much obliterated in cocktails. This is hardly a defect. I'd wager you won't want to mix it with anything once you've tried it. The one exception I found to this was when one-quarter to one-half ounce was added to a Champagne cocktail. That makes for a sensational drink.
Hayman's Old Tom Gin (750ml)
Review Date: 11-28-2009
Once upon a time, the cocktail that became THE cocktail, the Martini, was a lot less dry. And before that, even, its progenitors, the first gin & vermouth based drinks, the Turf Club-Martinez-Martini family, were made with Italian vermouth and a lightly sweetened style of gin called Old Tom. When the John Collins crossed over from England, it was eventually re-christened a Tom Collins, in part because it was generally made with Old Tom gin. The spirit got around. Of course, up until very recent times, there was no good substitute for this category of gin. Old Tom had long since sunk into oblivion - and for that matter, up until recently, no one had much missed it. With the current efflorescence of classic cocktails, however, all that changed and Hayman's is a welcome addition for those who want to drink in a bit of history. Resurrected from a family recipe from the time of the spirits heyday, Hayman's is a delightful and authentic version of an Old Tom gin. This is a less aggressive style of gin than a London Dry; while juniper is in the foreground it quickly yields to a more generally perfumed nose, with a softer, rounder, gentler taste and mouthfeel. The sweetness here is not on the order of a liqueur, more like off-dry. The fascinating thing is how many of the antique cocktail recipes that call for an Old Tom gin are good as drinks in their own right and not merely of interest as retrospective curiosities. If you haven't yet tried this, the recipe given above is not a bad place to start, though I'd say go with a twist of lemon peel, as opposed to a slice. And, if you've got this far and you don't already own books by Ted "Dr Cocktail" Haigh or David Wondrich, they are good resources for further recipes and elucidation.
Lustau Almacenista "José Luis Gonzalez Obregon 1/143" Fino del Puerto Jerez (500ml)
Review Date: 05-03-2009
Strongly redolent of smoky, toasted nuts with a brisk, saline edge this Fino Sherry is a joy. The concentration and breadth of the wine's nose clearly reveal why Lustau chose to offer this Sherry unblended as part of its Almacenista line - to preserve its distinctive character. The palate offers a gentle texture with spicy, tangy, savory flavors of surprising length and delicacy that will leave your mouth watering. This can do double duty as either a killer aperitif wine or a dry white for the dinner table when paired with seafood.
Incidentally, you may well wonder what the 1/143 on the bottom of the wine's label denotes. Clearing up that little bit of arcana is this, from Lustau's website: "The number of butts forming a Solera, or fully mature wine, of each individual Almacenista Sherry is also indicated on the label i.e.1/10 means that the wine originates from a Solera of ten butts."