A Nut Roast That Bites Back

Pour it and the nuts arrive first, toasted walnuts and pecans and Brazil nuts crowding the glass, until an atypical spice steps forward that is honestly lovely. Smoked hatch chiles thread through rounded cinnamon, créme brûlée, Bananas Foster, orange, canned peaches, caramel chew and toffee, and then the pepper comes back for a long, warming close. It is a bourbon that keeps turning on you in the best way.

It is $83 for members at Dan Murphy's this week, and it usually sells around $84, inside a run we've seen stretch from $78 to $90. Across the roughly 28 standard drinks in the bottle that works out to about $2.99 a pour at home, against the $6.28 a standard drink you'd pay for a $13 pint at the pub.

Ask the drinker of the bottle sitting closest to it what they would give for 1792 Small Batch, each starting from what they pay for their own, and the figure lands right alongside its own price. Widen that out across the bottles nearest it and the answers run from $67 to $84, so at $83 for members it sits inside what the drinkers of the bottles nearest it would pay. Every one of those drinkers who shares its flavours puts it at nine-tenths or more of their own bottle.

Eagle Rare 10 usually sells around $94 and is $90 for members this week, with a span we've seen from $85 to $104. It drinks older than its label, sweet maple syrup and toffee giving way quickly to firm mint and dried fruits, then polished leather, roasted nuts and dry resinous oak, finishing long and spicy on cinnamon, mint and oak. For a 1792 Small Batch drinker it offers about 93% of what the 1792 does, for 108% of its price, and it leans to anyone who likes their bourbon bold with plenty of oak.

Wild Turkey 101 is $73 for members this week, the same as it usually sells for, and we've only ever seen it between $70 and $75. Cotton candy, campfire smoke, cinnamon, pilsner beer, butterscotch and vanilla open the conversation, a plateful of baking spices charms the middle, clove and nutmeg and vanilla and cinnamon and allspice, then the whole thing softens to a muted brown sugar at the end. For a 1792 Small Batch drinker it gives about 89% of what the 1792 does, for 88% of its price, and it doubles happily as a sipper and a cocktail mixer.

If 1792 Small Batch is already your pour, nothing here is asking you to move; you know that toasted-nut start and the pepper that closes it, and at $83 for members this week it costs about what it always does. If you want a change of direction, there are two easy ones. The drinker after a bigger, oakier glass with a longer finish has Eagle Rare 10 waiting across the aisle. The drinker chasing baking spice who wants something to sip now and mix later has Wild Turkey 101 for a few dollars less. And if you have never met 1792 at all, that turn from toasted walnuts to smoked hatch chiles and back to pepper is an easy yes to make this week.