WhistlePig — the distillery that by no means met a gimmick too outlandish to show right into a transport product (together with ending whiskey with David Ortiz’s baseball bats) — has one other whopper on faucet for drinkers. With this third version within the PiggyBack Legends Sequence (following the Ortiz bottling and an version made with nation stars the Brothers Osborne), it’s taking whiskey followers to the world of System 1 and Alfa Romeo — and a wild, out-there ending course of.
The Restricted Version PiggyBack Legends Sequence: Alfa Romeo F1® Crew Stake Barrel is a excessive Rye Whiskey chosen by the Alfa Romeo F1 Crew Stake drivers, with barrels trialed of their wind tunnel to make sure an exhilarating style in each sip.
The third iteration in WhistlePig’s Single Barrel PiggyBack Legends Sequence, the Alfa Romeo F1 Crew Stake Barrel is bottled at 96.77 proof, a nod to Valtteri Bottas’ racing quantity, 77, and the precision of racing. Impressed by Zhou Guanyu, the primary Chinese language F1 driver, this Rye Whiskey is completed with lychee and oolong tea. Natural and floral notes of the oolong tea complement the herbaceous notes of WhistlePig’s signature PiggyBack 100% Rye, rounded out with a juicy tropical fruit end and a contact of spice.
Like Alfa Romeo F1 Crew Stake’s signature C43 racing autos, trial barrels had been examined within the group’s wind tunnel in Switzerland earlier than hitting the observe. Choose barrels then endured various ranges of G-Forces on the WhistlePig farm and distillery for the of entirety, accelerating the interplay between the whiskey and the wooden, staying true to the bodily nature of System 1.
Did you catch all that? The quick model: It’s rye whiskey, completed with lychee and oolong tea, with barrels subjected to “various ranges of G-Forces” on the distillery to maximise the interplay of wooden. (Not like the Huge Papi version, this can be a single barrel launch and doesn’t carry a 6 12 months outdated age assertion.)
Discuss a barn-burner. Instantly paying homage to final 12 months’s Boss Hog version, Siren’s Tune, it’s the ending that does the heavy lifting within the glass right here. The daring aroma of lychees promptly wafts from the glass, providing that indelible mixture of tropical fruit and floral notes, overpowering nearly every thing else within the combine. Give the whiskey a while and you may select notes of vanilla and cherries in syrup, however the lychee high quality is frankly overpowering to the purpose the place every thing else fades nicely into the background.
The excellent news: I like lychees. If you happen to aren’t 100% on board with them, cease studying now and keep away from this whiskey like Kentucky Gentleman.
Shifting on: The palate leads with lychee however is barely extra nuanced, making room in its very candy physique for a few of that oolong tea to emerge, plus notes of orange peel, extra vanilla, and a contact of pumpkin spice. Maraska cherry lingers on the again of the tongue, with a end that evokes Mexican chocolate and pineapple juice — in the very best means.
Once more, whiskey purists are going to hate these things. If you happen to labeled this as a flavored whiskey as an alternative of a rye, I wouldn’t argue within the slightest. And I believe it’s actually fairly refreshing — and a pleasant change of tempo towards a world of rye whiskey carbon copies which are invariably dominated by throat-charring dried-out herbs and burnt grass. It’s simply so exuberant it’s exhausting to place down — however WhistlePig Alfa Romeo is a whiskey I really take pleasure in nosing greater than consuming. Although that’s loads of enjoyable, too. Zoom zoom.
96.77 proof.
A- / $50 / whistlepigwhiskey.com
WhistlePig PiggyBack Single Barrel – Alfa Romeo F1 Crew Stake Version
$50
