Crow 86

John: Here’s a drinking tip.

Adam: We all need one of those.

John: So there’s a product out there. Jim Beam has bought up most of the distilleries — a lot of these big brands — and they’re putting them out again with new labels. They’re trying to beef up the line of what’s called “the olds.”

Adam: The olds, like vintage olds?

John: Well, olds like Old Granddad, Old Overholt, Old Crow. And I’m bringing in this one that just came out called Crow 86, which is a bourbon. It’s $11.90 — so it’s a cheap bourbon — and it is excellent. The label is dynamite because it just says “Crow” in big letters — Crow 86. You can get it almost anywhere. The problem I have with what Beam is doing is that they brought out something called Old Crow Reserve about six months ago, which was a stunner. I was going to mention it, it was on the market for just one month. So if you see Old Crow Reserve, get that. But Crow 86 is quite good for the 11 bucks. This is a cheap bourbon.

Adam: Another cheap alcohol tip

John: I’m trying to keep the price down for people so they can give us better donations. It’s just a practical thing.

Now, I want to mention something. I’m watching some of these characters that are doing… this is for people who ever want to look like they know how to taste professionally — because I got scolded for making the same mistake I’m going to describe. When you’re tasting in a competition with professionals…

Adam: Now, is this for wine or anything?

John: It’s for spirits. It’s harder to do spirits than it is wine. But with wine, you’ll see professionals swirling the glass and slurping — which is kind of gauche, but they do it to aerate the wine in the mouth.

But with spirits, I swirled, and I just got the glares. These are professionals in the industry, distillers from Scotland and elsewhere. You do not swirl when you’re professionally tasting a spirit. You don’t swirl spirits. If you do, you’re an idiot. When you swirl spirits, it just brings up straight alcohol. You don’t really get to smell what’s going on with the product.

Adam: You get hammered.

John: You don’t get hammered — you spit the stuff out anyway. The point is, you can’t evaluate properly if you’re swirling spirits because that’s what you do with wine. So I’m watching some videos of guys tasting Crow 86, and there’s two of them — they seem very knowledgeable about all the flavors — but they’ve both got the little glasses and they’re swirling away like crazy. Stop it. Stop swirling your spirits.

[Serve your Crow 86 in a Glencairn Whiskey Glass]