Last Night's Tipple

I know I wrote about this yesterday when discussing Bulleit Bourbon, but it bears repeating: letting whiskey sit in the glass for several minutes (like a half hour) has a dramatic effect on its properties, especially its aromatic ones. When I poured my glass of Old Charter 12 last night, I immediately thought that it would not be a pleasant experience. All I got was wood, and not wood in a good way. I'd rather not suck on toasted oak cubes, thank you very much. So I let it sit in the glass for a while, and what a difference it made. No longer was it this awful, woody thing. It had metamorphosed into a caramel-laden desert drink that was quite pleasant. It still had some woody astringency on the finish, but time in the glass made it a Bourbon worth drinking.

So, the moral of the story is this: if you try a whiskey (or really, any spirit at all) and you don't like it at first, let it sit. It may just evolve into something good.