Well, I really enjoy a cup of whiskey with three cubes of ice. I have tried a few whiskies and whiskeys. I hate Johnie Walker Red Label. It tastes like an old, dirty wooden floor for me. Black label is more palatable, but still feels too sharp. I found out that I really like Jack Daniels - please, don’t hate me for that!
I want to try something new. Would I notice a real difference between Jack Daniels and Gentleman’s Jack? What about… Jamerson? Or maybe a Ballantine´s 12 Years?
I live in Brazil, so whiskeys are not that cheap. 100 reais (50 dollars) a bottle for Jack Daniels. So… any ideas of what I should try next?
I drink kind of a lot of whiskey. Mid range bourbon, high-end bourbon, rye, scotch, you name it. I’m maybe a bit of a snob. And Jack Daniel’s is perfectly respectable. I often enjoy it. (But $50? Yikes!) For no very good reason, I’ve never tried Gentleman Jack.
When I went to the local purveyor of mind numbing intoxicants this weekend, I wanted to spend a bit less than I normally do, so I went for my go-to modest-
priced bourbon, Jim Beam. I think it’s quite good for the price. If I’m making a cocktail (generally an Old Fashioned), Jack or Beam is just the ticket.
If I want something a couple notches above either of them, but I don’t feel like getting something new, I’ll often go with Knob Creek.
As far as less mass-produced bourbon, I recently really enjoyed a bottle of Larceny bourbon (which was slightly sweet and which my wife also liked). I also recently had a fine bottle of Dark Horse Reserve Bourbon, from a fairly new distillery near Kansas City. But it sounds like you might have trouble finding stuff from the smaller distilleries.
You mentioned Jameson, which I also like. Its competitor Bushmill’s is good as well. Jameson seems smoother to me. Not necessarily better, it just seems to go down a little easer. Around here, neither of them is too expensive, but if your local shops are getting $50 for Jack, I shudder to think how much they’re getting for decent Irish whiskey.
Don’t give up on Scotch whisky, especially if you’re basing your opinion of it on the Johnie Walker series.
I’ve always felt that for the price, the 12-year-old single malt Glenlivet is about as good as they come. I can almost guarantee that you’ll like it and, if nothing else, it is most definitely not “sharp”.
Of the ones listed on those sites, I’d probably grab Maker’s Mark first. Though, at $87USD/bottle, I wouldn’t go through it like I do now. That’s 3x what it costs here. Liquor’s main purpose in life is that it doesn’t go bad and can be transported easily, so I don’t understand why the price skyrockets. Why is whiskey so expensive in Brazil?
Because Brazilians are stupid. They don’t care about prices. The prices for cars here in Brazil is scary - a honda civic costs more than R$ 70.000 . We have a lot of import taxes as well…
I agree. I’d personally try another type of Scotch whisky before I gave up on it.
As far as bourbon goes, I saw Maker’s Mark at one of the sites you listed- that’s a pretty decent mass-market bourbon that’s made with wheat instead of rye, and has a less… assertive and spicy taste as a result. You might dig it.
I skimmed the first couple of pages in your first link. A litre of Jameson for $49 is a lot more than you’d spend in my area (Missouri), but I could see myself doing it. Jameson is decent stuff. But some of those other prices… wow.
Is beer and wine also expensive? What about rum? I’m not a fan of rum, but I could develop a taste for it…
Beer is cheap… but Brazilian beers are crap. I usually pay around one dollar for a 250 ml bottle of imported heineken. and a whooping 5 dollars for a Brooklin Lager.
Wine is cheaper… we can get some great wines from South America (REALLY good ones!) for less than 20 dollars. And Rum… Bacardi - 15 dollars. Cheapest drink you can get is Cachaça - which is similar to rum. It actually has a huge price range - from 1 dollar a for a 1 litre bottle to 100 dollars +.
Johnnie Walker Swingis pretty nice, actually. I’m more of a Cognac gal, and this bridges the gap.
If you like good old Jack Daniels. Jim Beam **Rye **is serviceable and ultra-cheap. Makes decent old-fashioned cocktails and the like (even a decent Sazerac, shhh).
I wouldn’t recommend Lagavulin, personally; we just finished some, and to me it tastes like an old chain-smoking perfumed granny after a day on the seashore. Sorry, that’s just my thoughts. Oban is a bit nicer.
Templeton is rich and smooth and also mixes well, opens up nicely with just a cube and a twist, if that’s your thing.
I’m no expert and I don’t like any bourbons I’ve tried so take this with a grain of salt, but I really like Glenmorangie, Jameson and The Glenlivet. In that order.
I was also going to suggest Jim Beam as a lower-cost alternative to Jack Daniels. And if you want to save a few more pennies, and don’t insist on bourbon-style booze, you might switch to Canadian Mist (if they have it by you) - a nice and smooth but budget-friendly Canadian blended whiskey.
I tried today a shot (the guy actually gave me a glorious shot) of Gentleman’s Jack. It tastes quite… soft. Almost too soft, actually. It is delicious, but not 12,50 dollars more delicious than straight Jack.
My first thought was, “Brazil is a big country with plenty of industry and grain production, don’t they distill any whiskey there themselves?”
Some internet searching turned up this from a British expatriate blogger:
“A number of Scottish manufacturers are well represented in Brazil in the putting together of these blends, including Bell’s and Wm Teacher’s, and fully imported scotches are also readily available – at a higher price of course … I would heartily recommend you try some of the “Brazilian” brands, a number of which are available, including Old Eight, Drury’s and Wall Street …”
Yeah, I did a search for Brazilian whiskey too. I saw the Old Eight, but I can’t vouch for it, and didn’t see it or the other Brazilian brands on the sites that Atremis_Tardis linked to.