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The final night of an Advent Calendar is always a time to look back in celebration over the wonderful bottles we all had the chance to partake. I find myself waiting in anticipation over what the reveal will be because I always think it’s going to be some incredible bottle placed at the very end of the calendar so we can go out with a bang. But in reality, the Advent organizer should make an effort to shuffle the blinds up as sporadically as possible. If there is any amount of predictability, it ruins the suspense and might skew the results.
With that being said, I still let my emotions play tricks with my mind when I poured it. My mind raced to tell me of flavors and scents that I swore I was picking up on. I kept thinking “if this is a surprise unicorn bottle, I better not be the one rating it poorly or saying it fell flat in the tasting notes.” I wonder if any of the other guys feel that way too?
As the guesses started to come in, there were some consistent themes I noticed. The first is that there were a lot of Buffalo Trace guesses – seven in total. Out of those seven, three believed it to be the wheated bourbon mash bill used for Weller. I was right there with ’em by thinking it was a Buffalo Trace product – albeit their rye whiskey (I went with THH because I was finding lots of fruit but not much oak).
But there was one common link among the participants’ notes that was flashing like a bright red beacon. Among half of the people in our group, there were comments about how it tasted or smelled like it was finished in a wine/fortified wine or brandy spirit cask. Most of them ended up ignoring their intuition and placed safe guesses. The two participants that guessed it was a Knob Creek 18yr LE both openly wondered if there was a finishing cask before deciding it wasn’t worth pursuing.
If you look above, you’ll see that two members guessed they were tasting Angel’s Envy Cask Strength bourbon (which has typically used a finishing cask), one member guessed they were tasting Wild Turkey Master’s Keep Revival (Oloroso Cask finish) and one guessed they were tasting this year’s (but I’m sure he meant last year’s because he said it tasted “finished” to him) Parker’s Heritage Collection. That one was a 14yr malt whiskey finished in toasted Cognac Casks.
Another note that drives this home is when we look in the fruit tasting notes section and see just how many people picked up on notes like “raisins,” “(stewed) fruits” or even “Cognac/Armagnac/Yak/Wine/Port/Sherry.” Take a look for yourself:
While I didn’t pick up on the finishing notes as well as others did, I think most people would read this and agree that what we’re tasting is probably a finished whiskey of some sort. But what was it? Let’s dive into the reveal!
December 23rd Reveal
Before I get to the reveal, I should let it be known that everyone already knew this bottle would be Scott’s. And the one thing we know about Scott is his affinity towards George T. Stagg. I think that this was throwing off a lot of people’s guesses because four of his last five submissions to the Slacker’s Advent have been Buffalo Trace products. Here’s the quick rundown: 2024 – Lot B, 2023 – Heaven Hill Heritage Collection 20yr Old Corn Whiskey, 2022 – EH Taylor Barrel Proof Bourbon, 2021 – a 2017 George T. Stagg and 2020 – a 2019 Thomas H. Handy.
…but all of that is the long way of telling you that those of us trying to read the tea leaves were wrong. It was definitely a finished bourbon…
This is the 2014 Angel’s Envy Cask Strength Limited Release. This was only the third year that Angel’s Envy had released a Cask Strength version and it was still very much an experimental thing to see if enthusiasts were willing to spend big bucks ($170 in 2014) on a relatively unknown brand. The concept succeeded and it’s still popular to this day.
While many of us were shocked at the reveal, I think more of us were shocked with how much we liked it. This bottle placed fourth amongst the 16 bottles we submitted for this year’s Advent. Also of note, Jamie is credited with the “Best Guess!” for this day but that’s only because Henry submitted his AECS guess after him. Congratulations to both on nailing it.
This ends the last day of the 2025 Slacker’s Advent, but I’ll still release one more wrap-up article with a full sheet that breaks down cumulative scores and a whole heap of numbers for you to pour over. Stay tuned!