Whisky Advocate's Summer 2023 Best Values: Redwood Empire, The Deacon, and Powers
June 13, 2023 –––––– Whisky Advocate
Whisky Advocate's editors have selected three great value bottles from our most recent issue's Buying Guide. These are whiskies with solid scores, modest prices, and wide availability. The Summer 2023 issue's best values include a blend of straight whiskeys, a blended scotch, and an Irish rye. For all whiskies reviewed in the Summer 2023 issue, visit the Buying Guide.
90 Redwood Empire Lost Monarch Cask Strength blend of straights, 58.6%, $70
Buttered French toast and maple syrup, muted notes of strawberry ice cream, blueberry cobbler, and fragrant oak. The palate is smoothly textured but with plenty of bite, supple flavor integration, hints of milk chocolate and a bakery note of almond paste. Water tames its wilder side, bringing out black pepper, a hint of licorice, and more chocolate. Pleasantly rustic and earthy at its base, with sweeter notes playing atop an excellent finish.
89 The Deacon blended scotch, 40%, $40
A wide spectrum of aromas keeps this intriguingly attractive: floral and fruity—melon, orange, ripe apricot, and peach—plus malted barley, pencil erasers, and smokiness arriving by stealth in the form of smoke from sappy green logs on a fire. The flavors edge on the side of fresh fruit, keeping it from tasting too sweet, with orange, pear, toffee, vanilla, mocha, malt, smoke, and hints of tobacco.
89 Powers Irish Rye, 43.2%, $32
Distilled in column stills, this 100% rye brings green foliage, a distinct nuttiness, rye bread, red apple, peppercorn, ground ginger, dry earthiness, and a strand of caramel to the nose. Plenty of rye and Horlicks on first sip, with Ryvita crispbread, a slow crescendo of spice, then pepper, peppermint, brown sugar, oak, subtle orange notes, and crystalized ginger. Spicy heat, ginger root, and mint to finish.
