Drink the Bottles

We love deliciously unusual collaborations and unique products.  This collaboration is a marriage of Bourbon Whiskey and Armagnac from Raj Peter Bhakta.   Why do you know that name?  Bhakta revolutionized rye whiskey with the WhistlePig  brand before discovering a literal treasure trove of Armagnac.  The Armagnac lead to the popular BHAKTA Spirits  brand, which eventually lead to this union that is now Hogsworth .   This non-distilling producer is expertly crafting really tasty and fun-to-drink bottles and this is the  Hogsworth Blend #9 Bourbon Whiskey & Armagnac .  This bottle has an average age of 9.3 years and is made up of the following impressively aged spirits: 2009 Bourbon (42%) - Aged 4 years, 9 months - Tennessee 2009 Bourbon (18%) - Aged 5 years, 4 months - Minnesota 2013 Armagnac (17%) - Aged 11 Years - France 2011 Armagnac (18%) - Aged 13 Years - France 1982 Armagnac (5%) - Aged 42 Years - France The result?  B...

  Do you ever have one of those incredibly unique bottles that comes your way that is so exciting you don't even know where to begin?  We are going to be completely transparent when we say that we were skeptical about this brand at first, only to be proven wrong on so many levels.  Founder Raj Peter Bhakta is just creating a footprint in the spirits world.  He is planting a flag - a BIG one - and is generating excitement for what most consider a completely new category that we call Vintage Rare Blended Whskey. If Bhakta's name sounds familiar, it is because he is the founder of WhistlePig Whiskey, a top tier luxury rye whiskey brand that helped lay the foundation of this venture.  In 2019, he sold his stake in WhistlePig and he eventually landed in Condom, France, discovering and purchasing an ancient cellar of Armagnac dating back to 1868.  The rest?  Well, that's history. In order to truly appreciate what Bhakta is doing with this brand, you have to ...

Have you ever picked up a cheap bottle of wine ($20 or under) and found that it nearly blew your socks off?  No, it wasn't the 18% alcohol or high octane fuel smell coming from the cork....er, make that bottle cap....but an actual LOVE for a bargain bottle of vino?  A couple of months ago while we were all hunkered down during the Coronavirus pandemic, we received a bottle of this 2018 King Rabbit Rosé as a gift.  I'm not normally a rosé wine fan, but I immediately fell in love with the cantaloupe-colored juice and gorgeous package.   While we had planned to save this bottle for Easter dinner, it didn't work out that way and we popped this open on a whim one late afternoon.  This bottle had been in the refrigerator chilling (the best way to drink a rosé in my opinion) so we filled up a couple of glasses and headed to the back deck.   The nose presented with lemon, lime and stone fruits with some flowery undertones.  This wasn't an intense aro...