Last Night's Tipple

There's a practice in Bourbon country (and in Tennessee Whiskey country, too) called squeezing the barrel. Temperature variations during aging forces a surprising amount of whiskey into the barrel, and distillers want some of it back. They will typically pour a few gallons of water into a recently-dumped barrel, slosh it around, and let it sit for a while. A decent amount of whiskey will have filtered back into the water, and the distilleries will use the resultant liquid to dilute their whiskey down to bottle proof. A variant of this is practiced by Kentucky teenagers, who somehow manage to get their hands on an empty whiskey barrel, which they fill with a few gallons of water and roll up and down a hill for about an hour.

Why do I mention this when what I had to drink last night was Lustau Solera Reserva Brandy? Because it tastes like Lustau squeezed an empty oloroso sherry butt with brandy and sold the result under this label. The nose is all nutty oloroso sherry. The palate is exceptionally sweet and sherry-like. It's sherry, sherry, sherry. That's not a bad thing: Lustau is one of the best producers of sherry, so something that tastes like their wines is something good indeed. The sherry influences also make this brandy exceptionally smooth. The only down side to it that I can see is that it smells and tastes so much like sherry that one might be tempted to drink it like sherry, which is not a good thing for 80 proof liquor. I bought this bottle several years ago, and I didn't remember it being so pleasant. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Spec's carries it (or any similar brandy) anymore, so I'll be out of luck when the bottle is gone.