An extra post in the whisky onslaught of the Blind Tasting Competition to get some booze sent out before the new year!

In good tradition I’m doing another Bottle-share of American stuff. I wanted to say whiskey, but in this case there is whiskey, gin and white dog (I refuse to call White Dog whiskey…). Unfortunately their grappa was sold out, because I wanted to get that too.

Now, we ‘only’ get the Spirit (of the bourbon recipe), the Single Malt, the Rye Whiskey, the Bourbon both at regular and cask strength, their Standard Issue, Barrel Aged, and regular American gins. Eight spirits in total, with an option for a ninth (more on that later in this post).

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The list of stuff we’re going to try, if you decide to participate is the following:

• FEW White Dog, 40%
• FEW Standard Issue Gin, 57%
• FEW Barrel Aged Gin, 46.5%
• FEW American Gin, 40%
• FEW Single Malt Whiskey, 46.5%
• FEW Rye Whiskey, 46.5%
• FEW Bourbon Whiskey, 46.5%
• FEW Bourbon Whiskey, Cask Strength batch 14-62, 58.7%

A share of all these bottles consist of 10 cl of each of the above eight. It’ll set you back € 75, excluding shipping of course. Unless I can drop things off, which would be handy for both of us.

Why FEW? Mostly because I have tried their Cask Strength Bourbon last year and while I wasn’t raving about it back then (I still loved it), the thought of getting a bottle never left my mind. Even stranger, I wanted a bottle of this more than I wanted a bottle of things that I was more positive about.

FEW produces things with an eye for quality and also lots of guys I trust that have tried more of their stuff are ridiculously enthusiastic about it. Reason enough for me to want a part of the action.

FEW Distillery is located in Evanston, Illinois, a ‘suburb’ of Chicago and tries to recreate the drinks that were popular there before prohibition hit in 1920. FEW stands for Frances Elizabeth Willard, who was a key figure in the Temperance Movement that got the Volstead Act in place in the first place. Kind of cruel to taint the woman’s legacy by sticking her name to hard likker. I love it.

Generally I did bottle-shares of 5 cl, but since there are quite some gins, and also whiskeys that work well in cocktails, and Christmas is a season for sharing (even if it is from samples) I’m upping the game to 10 cl. Also, I am lazy and don’t want to have to ship a bazillion packages.

Let me know if you want in. First come first serve. There are only six spots available so it might go quick. On the other hand, American booze isn’t overly popular in The Low Lands, so it might be longer than 40 minutes before it fills up.

Oh, and then the ninth bottling. Master of Malt/Maverick Drinks released their That Boutique-y Whisky Company FEW bourbon today (at the moment of typing). This is a fun one since it’s a wheated bourbon while their regular recipe is different.

Of this bottling you can add a 5cl sample to the above for € 8. There are only 67 bottles of this stuff produced, so there isn’t much to go around. Why is this separate? Because the bottle is only 50cl instead of 75, so I’m kind of short on booze to do the same size samples for this.