Kings County Chocolate Whiskey
Note to anyone who found this blog through a web search: this is NOT a whiskey reviewing blog.
Okay, why am I reviewing alcohol? Answer: why not? It's a review page, and there's no reason to limit it to whatever I just saw on Netflix. I need to review something that I have an interest in and hope that the audience finds it interesting as well, at least enough to read to the end. That's one of the reasons I'll generally keep book reviews to my other blog: who is going to get excited about an obscure book from the 90s (or earlier?) that you might not find a copy of or some new freebie, self-published ebook, which you're not going to like.
I'm an amateur when it comes to alcohol, and I drink it sparingly. My tastes are a bit pedestrian. Beyond beer at the ball park or concert, it's basically a Seagram's blend in my 7 & 7, or the occasional (more likely "seldom") shot of Jameson's, that I'll sip. Basically, I don't foresee many similar reviews in the near future.
Some time ago, I got an invite to sit in with a group of friends (I was friends, basically, with the one who invited me), to a tasting party for single malt Scotch and other interesting whiskeys and spirits. This group travels around a bit, but I don't, so when they last met near me, they were interested in "local flavor". Being local, I picked up an "interesting" bottle from Kings County Distillery, their Chocolate Whiskey.
It was immediately labeled "heresy" by the Scotch purists.
That being said, the room was filled with heretics, because by the end of the evening, half the bottle was gone.
If you like whiskey and you like dark chocolate, this is not a bad combo. If I were to give it a letter grade for enjoyment, I'd give it a solid B, which you can modify up or down depending upon how much you like dark chocolate.
The tasting went like this: you smell the chocolate (pleasant), you taste the whiskey going down (not bad at all, as a casual drinker) and then there was the dark chocolate aftertaste that I get when eating a bar of the stuff (a weakness of mine).
Careful deliberation was that even though it was "heresy", it wasn't a horrible abomination. They even discussed pairing it with vanilla ice cream, which isn't a bad thought. In fact, that evening, one of the group members even produced a bottle of a vanilla liquor (I won't attempt to remember what it was). Unfortunately, it was near empty -- I'm talking eye-dropper levels, so it couldn't be tested thoroughly.
If there was a drawback to the bottle, it would be the price: this was technically the most expensive bottle of alcohol I've ever bought. As a novice, I stick to "basic expressions" generally in the $40-55 range, so far, for 750 ml. This bottle cost about $40, but for 375 ml, making it really an $80 bottle of whisky. However, it was nice that I brought something that was appreciated by the group (even as it was denounced), and half a bottle is enough for me, as I still have half of that half bottle remaining.
Summer's coming. I'll be stocking up on vanilla ice cream.
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