If you look through the history of my reviews, you’ll see that I am big fan of High West. I love their Rendezvous Rye and have even bigger affection for its port finished sibling, A Midwinter Nights Dram. Having said that, I don’t love all of their products and Double Rye is one that I just cannot get into. While I really enjoy the blend of 6+ year old ryes in Rendezvous, the 2 year old component in Double Rye really shines through with lots of young untamed raw distillate notes that kill it for me. So here we enter Yippee Ki-Yay, a blend that started its life as Double Rye that was then finished in Vermouth and Qupé Syra barrels. I love vermouth and typically enjoy wine finishes but with Double Rye being the base, I had some hesitancy. I trust High West enough though that I was willing to give them the benefit of a doubt and took a chance on this one.
No Age Statement; 46% ABV; $70
Nose: Smells like a really boozy manhattan. Lots of vermouth and fruity wine notes with some young whisky and anise spice.
Taste: Overwhelming vermouth and fruity wine flavors. Boozed soaked raisins. The fruit notes are so strong they pretty much dominate everything. And yet under all that, I still get some of the things I don’t like about Double Rye - young, raw distillate with some rough rye notes of pine and spice.
Thoughts: As a whiskey, this is pretty rough. As an aperitif, it has some merits but I still don’t like it from that perspective either. It’s more like an off ratio cocktail than anything, with the alcohol component being too strong for me to get my head around. My brain and taste buds are just totally confused by this. I even went the extra mile in trying to like this and made a manhattan with it that was perfectly okay but nothing extraordinary.
Rating: I just can’t score this. I don’t hate it but really don’t like it.
Value: This one could be pretty polarizing as I could see some people liking it. I highly suggest you try it before you plunk down $70 on a bottle.
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