Whisky and Words Number 74: Hudson Whiskey Baby Bourbon

Hudson Baby, a craft Bourbon style from New York.

And now I come to the end of my short stint on American Whiskies. I have a backlog of Scotch I’ll get to work on next. But meanwhile, in their American survey, the Whisky Wafflers tried a Hudson single malt (which did not impress but intrigued anyway). This time we’ve got a more typical American-styled spirit from Hudson. I received this ‘Baby Bourbon’ as a gift and thought we’d put it through its paces. Along the way I’ll compare to the other whiskies tried in this series. I don’t have a lot of craft whiskeys to compare yet so we’ll use the Rogue Dead Guy, recently reviewed, as a benchmark as well as the Knob Creek, which has a more traditional mashbill.

The Hudson Baby Bourbon is a product of Tuthilltown Spirits Distillery, which, as they explain on their website, was founded in 2003 by Ralph Erenzo. Ralph is a pioneering distiller (he predated Rogue’s distillation efforts by about a decade) who helped push through legislation to establish craft distilleries as a legal concerns in New York. So you could say he’s an OG craft distiller. The Hudson brand was sold to William Grant and Sons in 2010. Tuthilltown makes the whiskey, Grant distributes it. This is the Grant of Glenfiddich and Balvenie, among other brands, and have proven to be good stewards of their product.

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Whisky and Words Number 72: Rogue ‘Dead Guy’ Whiskey

Rogue’s Dead Guy: nice amber color, sturdy and old-timey bottle…

Way back in the long ago (2015), the Whisky Waffle lads down in Tasmania put on cowboy hats took a swing through American whiskies. They did a nice job and gave the US of A a fair shake, tasting a few old standards (which failed to impress) followed by some truly interesting and innovative whiskies. Along the same vein, I’m going to look at a couple interesting whiskies available now and compare them to the standards. I’m starting with Dead Guy Whiskey, from Oregon’s Rogue Distillery. To show the difference between a craft-distilled whiskey vs. a standard industrial scale dram, I’ve got Jim Beam bourbon lined up. And Beam are industrial at 52M liters per year! In contrast, Rogue has a single tiny 550 gallon still and probably produces thousands of liters a year.

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