Rhetoric
22 Year
Bourbon
42.2%

I am going to let y'all into a secret into the world of modern day whiskey. The story is usually more important than the whiskey itself. Rhetoric is a prime example of a story over liquid, which is why I picked it. The story goes that a distillery, which has hundreds of thousands of barrels filled with whiskey, lost some barrels during inventory and later found them after 22 years. They had no product line they could put them in and so these barrels are bottled and the story of the orphan barrels is born. Barrels with no home or family, all on their own to be bottled as a separate offering to the world.

Great story, must be great whiskey, well I will leave that for you to decide. Most bourbon doesn’t need to be in a barrel for 22 years because the wood takes over. Over oaked as we call it, you may not know what oak in whiskey tastes like but I promise you do now. Some folks live for this overly woody note and will pay top dollar for hyper aged whiskey. The low proof of 42.2% leads me to believe when these barrels were bottled they put extra water in them to bring the proof down and maximize their profits.

Now maybe one day I will find an old whiskey recipe that my moonshining dead relatives used to make to stick it to the big man. Maybe one day I will take that recipe and recreate the great Robinson whiskey of my ancestors. But probably not, but it makes for a great tale. Story vs. Whiskey you decide. Cheers