Tullahoma-based Cascade Hollow Distilling Co. has premiered its latest special release under the Cascade Moon series, and this particular whiskey does indeed celebrate 150 years of the George A. Dickel brand. But when I first saw that, it reminded me of an old joke by Steven Wright: “I went down the street to the 24-hour grocery. When I got there, the guy was locking the front door. I said, 'Hey, the sign says you're open 24 hours.' He said, 'Yes, but not in a row.' "
You see, the George Dickel Distillery has a long and complex history, starting out as a spirits wholesaler and retailer before getting into the distilling biz. Over the decades, the distillery changed hands and even names a couple of times, and the latest ownership change came when international spirits powerhouse Diageo acquired Dickel as part of a series of purchases, mergers and brand swaps.
The late 1990s were a dark time at George Dickel, literally, as production ceased for a few years to deal with some modernization projects at the distillery. Diageo started up the stills again in 2003, and this special celebratory bottling celebrates both the history of the brand and the rebirth of the distillery.
Cascade Moon Edition No. 2 is an extremely small batch product blended from fewer than 20 barrels that were part of the first run after the distillery reopened. That means this is 17-year-old whiskey, and if you’re familiar with the “Angels’ Share” evaporation inherent in aging spirits for a long time, you can bet that there wasn’t a lot of juice left in those barrels. That explains the price of this special product at, brace yourself, $250 per bottle.
But as my friend and exceptional spirits writer Lew Bryson recently wrote for The Daily Beast, just because a whiskey is old doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s good. As opposed to the cooler climes of Scotland that reward decades of patience with smooth and complex Scotch whiskies, the variance between hot summers and frigid winters in Tennessee and Kentucky means that not every spirit can benefit from repeated tidal passage in and out of the charred oak of barrels.
George Dickel has released a 17-year-old product before, back around four or five years ago, which means it probably represented some of the last barrels produced before Diageo’s interregnum. You probably don’t want to buy a car that was built on Friday afternoon before a long weekend by a guy who just won the lottery and is quitting next week, right? That’s sort of how this whiskey tasted to me. While the color in the glass was remarkable from almost two decades sitting in a hot Tullahoma warehouse, the wood overpowered what was good about the charred oak staves in those barrels, leaving a whiskey that was thin on the palate with more of a tannic cedary flavor than the spice and vanilla I hoped for. That’s okay, though. It was still a sip of history, and I’m sure some folks will like it better than I did.
So why should you expect more from this particular aged Dickel? There are several reasons, the foremost of which is wrapped up in the abilities of the company's young distiller and blender Nicole Austin. When Austin first came on board as general manager and distiller at Cascade Hollow, I had no doubt that she was quite talented, having discovered some of her whiskey at her previous gig working at Kings County Distillery in Brooklyn, N.Y. But I wondered how they would employ her talents at this much larger operation where the youngest products age at least four years before release. Would we have to wait a half-decade to see what changes she brought to the staid operation?
The key to her success so far doesn’t come from the “distiller” part of her title. In fact, at Kings County, her job was master blender, a critical position at a young distillery that didn’t have the time or cash flow to wait to release its products. Her palate helped to find the best that these younger spirits had to offer and brought them together to create exceptional cohesive products.
Austin has been working on creating some new items off the still. She threw herself into the job with a taster’s and blender’s curiosity, requesting samples from hundreds of barrels of different ages of Dickel products distributed in multiple rickhouses. That’s where we’ve already seen her talents benefit the company and us consumers in the form of new products. I still contend that her first two releases of 100-proof Bottled in Bond George Dickel that she selected from specific distilling seasons in 2005 and 2008 weren’t only exceptional bargains for a higher proof whiskey, but they were each among my favorite pours of the year at any price. She discovered some 11-year old Dickel that reminded her of the flavor characteristics of a Gose-style beer. She blended them and released them as the first of the Cascade Moon series. That’s what you can do when you’re young and talented and confident that you have the support of a huge company behind you that is willing to look beyond more than a half-century of essentially trading on a single product.
Faced with the challenge of utilizing whiskey that she had no hand in distilling and also happened to be almost old enough to drink itself in Europe, the easy answer would have been to just add some of the barrels into the large batches of Dickel Superior No.12, the company’s flagship sour mash whisky (they spell it without the “e”), where it could have added some complexity and character to the blend without exposing any detriments from the long years in barrel.
Instead, Austin saw the opportunity to recognize the long history of the brand, the relaunching of the distillery under Diageo and the future of Cascade Hollow by coming up with an extraordinary blend under the Cascade Moon umbrella. As you’d expect, this old whiskey is gorgeous in a snifter, shiny as a copper penny. Another spirits writer friend of mine, local hero Jim Myers, once described the aroma of an extreme-aged whiskey we were sampling together: “Wow, that’ll give your nose splinters!” Cascade Moon No. 2 still exhibits the vanilla and baking spices that many Tennessee whiskey lovers have come to, well … love. But what’s that behind the buttery cornbread aromas? Plums or raisins? Maybe. Smoldering wet leaves? While your descriptions may vary, I promise you that this is an extraordinarily complex whiskey made by choosing barrels that each had something to sing on their own, but who come together as an elaborate chorus in some sort of Philip Glass composition. I know there’s only 12 notes in an octave on a piano, but is it possible to have 13-part harmony? (C’mon Spin, help a colleague out here!)
On the palate, there’s no doubting that this is a Tennessee whiskey, even though it is so unique. Bottled at 90 proof, mainly because I’m sure they needed to stretch those precious barrels a bit, the heavier wood overtones don’t assault the sides of your tongue like other more tannic barrel-strength whiskeys might. Since it’s clear that I hang out with a good class of people, yet another spirits expert and friend of mine, Cary Ann Fuller of Straight Up 615, helped me wrap my head around the complex flavors when she described Cascade Moon No. 2 as “liquid rancio.”
“Rancio” literally means “rancid” in Spanish, but not necessarily in a bad way. The same way that age and a little bit of decay can make some cheeses smell putrid but taste amazingly complex, rancio in wine is a descriptor of the unique characteristics that you’d encounter in madeira wine, port or sherry. The same way that you probably wouldn’t necessarily drink a whole bottle of madeira in a single sitting, Cascade Moon No. 2 is a whiskey to be sipped, to be considered. It won’t be everybody’s cup of tea, and the price is certainly prohibitive for most. However, with its striking sandblasted ceramic bottle and label hand-printed on a 130-year old press, it would be a dramatic addition to any top shelf. As a testament to the history and future of a proud Tennessee brand, it’s also quite notable. Unless you live in Tennessee, California or Texas, you’ll never see it on the shelf of a local liquor store anyway, so let’s just all appreciate it for what it is, a white whale of a Tennessee whiskey.
