Welcome to Taste Test, where every week our critic Jonah Flicker explores the most buzzworthy and interesting whiskeys in the world. Check back each Sunday for his latest whiskey review.
What’s in a barrel? (I mean that philosophically, of course, not literally—it’s whiskey, whiskey is what’s in the barrel.) Some distillers claim that as much as 80 percent of the flavor of any whiskey comes from the wood it’s aged in, although you certainly cannot dismiss the fact that the un-aged white dog must also be well made in order for it to succeed. Texas blending house Koopers Whiskey seems to have made sure that every step from still to barrel was carefully considered when it came to its new 10-year-old rye, sourcing high-quality distillate from Illinois and aging it in used Buffalo Trace bourbon barrels—and the result is a deep and flavorful rye whiskey worth trying.
Koopers was founded by husband and wife team Troy and Michelle Kooper in 2012 as a blending house, not a distillery. That means that they source whiskey from different distilleries across several states, and then try to show that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts via blending. In this case, it seems they have succeeded. This new rye whiskey started its life in Illinois, specifically at Chicago craft distillery Koval, which makes some very… interesting spirits (the Koopers trained there as distillers). Look, I like that distilleries like this exist because it furthers the craft movement and by proxy pushes the bigger distilleries to innovate. It’s been a while since I’ve tried anything from Koval, but in the past the whiskeys just haven’t done it for me. Maybe I’d feel differently now, but that’s been my historical take.
