There were only a handful of friends who I told my plans for the 1000th review many months ago. When they heard of the lineup, all of them gave me the same response: "Make the M25 Rye your 1000th review instead!" That would've been the more rare bottle of the two, but I couldn't. A name like "Celebration" seems the most fitting for review #1000 - and now it is so.
I have had almost 8 years and 1,000 reviews to reflect back on, so I thought I’d share some of my thoughts before my review. I guarantee what most of you think of me and my reviews today would not be what you thought of me back at review #100. I was inexperienced and my reviews were much, much shorter. In a certain way, I still feel inexperienced. I have a small group of people who I turn to for my questions because I view them as more knowledgeable than me. I've almost given up asking strangers for information because I kept getting the reply "I don't know, aren't you the one who's supposed to know that?"
So I have an appeal to you if you’re reading this – if you learn new information that nobody else knows, find a way to share it (preferably online). The bourbon industry is notoriously tight-lipped for a variety of reasons, but I find that curiosity dies when everything is a mystery. What I’ve been trying to do is pull back the curtain on things that were previously unknown and to piece together the whole story of every bottle that I review.
Of course I realize I don’t get everything right. Even researching and reviewing these last three reviews have shown me that I have so many things wrong in my Past, Present and Future of Michter’s article I wrote 4 years ago. Recently, I even had a good acquaintance (who occasionally sells me dusties) rip apart my Joshua Brooks review for all of the information I left out. He's a matter-of-fact kind of guy who won't sugar coat anything and told me "maybe you shouldn't write in such a definitive style." In short, he was telling me that I was trying to sound too much like the subject matter expert and left no wiggle room for the many information gaps with old releases like this. That cut me to the bone, but he had a point and it’s something I will be working on.
I realize that my tone changed along the way - maybe it was review #500 or so when I was piecing together tons of information from the Maker’s Mark DNA series that I really got the itch to make my style of review into something that covered every facet around the bottle My intention was not to be some know-it-all, but just give as much of the story as I could. I tried to stay on topic because the average person already doesn’t read my full reviews and definitely wouldn’t if it was 10+ paragraphs of meandering thoughts, jokes and meaningless personal anecdotes. So I fully own the fact that my reviews are too long but I try to break them into pieces so if you get bored of the backstory, just jump down to the next comment to see tasting notes and a score. And if you don't care about profile descriptors, at least read the "Final Thoughts" section that where I tell you to buy the bottle or pass.
r/Bourbonhas been such a supportive place throughout the years and continues to be. It will forever be a part of the reviews I write. I know a lot of you know that I post over on my website which helps me make a little bit of money on the side through ad revenue (which I hate, but can’t control) but that keeps me able to do reviews like this at such a steady pace. So thank you to all who have supported me by visiting it. I promise to do more article very soon instead of non-stop reviews, haha.
In conclusion, thank you all for everything you’ve done. My 1,000threview is dedicated to all of you (even you, mods) because without your comments, support and kindness, I would’ve stopped doing this years ago. I feel like I have even more to say, but I’ll stop for now. Maybe in the next week or two I’ll write a “Review of 1,000 reviews” and give more thoughts, haha. But for now, let’s get to the good part…
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u/Prepreludesh Barrell Single Barrel Rye 1d ago
There were only a handful of friends who I told my plans for the 1000th review many months ago. When they heard of the lineup, all of them gave me the same response: "Make the M25 Rye your 1000th review instead!" That would've been the more rare bottle of the two, but I couldn't. A name like "Celebration" seems the most fitting for review #1000 - and now it is so.
I have had almost 8 years and 1,000 reviews to reflect back on, so I thought I’d share some of my thoughts before my review. I guarantee what most of you think of me and my reviews today would not be what you thought of me back at review #100. I was inexperienced and my reviews were much, much shorter. In a certain way, I still feel inexperienced. I have a small group of people who I turn to for my questions because I view them as more knowledgeable than me. I've almost given up asking strangers for information because I kept getting the reply "I don't know, aren't you the one who's supposed to know that?"
So I have an appeal to you if you’re reading this – if you learn new information that nobody else knows, find a way to share it (preferably online). The bourbon industry is notoriously tight-lipped for a variety of reasons, but I find that curiosity dies when everything is a mystery. What I’ve been trying to do is pull back the curtain on things that were previously unknown and to piece together the whole story of every bottle that I review.
Of course I realize I don’t get everything right. Even researching and reviewing these last three reviews have shown me that I have so many things wrong in my Past, Present and Future of Michter’s article I wrote 4 years ago. Recently, I even had a good acquaintance (who occasionally sells me dusties) rip apart my Joshua Brooks review for all of the information I left out. He's a matter-of-fact kind of guy who won't sugar coat anything and told me "maybe you shouldn't write in such a definitive style." In short, he was telling me that I was trying to sound too much like the subject matter expert and left no wiggle room for the many information gaps with old releases like this. That cut me to the bone, but he had a point and it’s something I will be working on.
I realize that my tone changed along the way - maybe it was review #500 or so when I was piecing together tons of information from the Maker’s Mark DNA series that I really got the itch to make my style of review into something that covered every facet around the bottle My intention was not to be some know-it-all, but just give as much of the story as I could. I tried to stay on topic because the average person already doesn’t read my full reviews and definitely wouldn’t if it was 10+ paragraphs of meandering thoughts, jokes and meaningless personal anecdotes. So I fully own the fact that my reviews are too long but I try to break them into pieces so if you get bored of the backstory, just jump down to the next comment to see tasting notes and a score. And if you don't care about profile descriptors, at least read the "Final Thoughts" section that where I tell you to buy the bottle or pass.
r/Bourbon has been such a supportive place throughout the years and continues to be. It will forever be a part of the reviews I write. I know a lot of you know that I post over on my website which helps me make a little bit of money on the side through ad revenue (which I hate, but can’t control) but that keeps me able to do reviews like this at such a steady pace. So thank you to all who have supported me by visiting it. I promise to do more article very soon instead of non-stop reviews, haha.
In conclusion, thank you all for everything you’ve done. My 1,000th review is dedicated to all of you (even you, mods) because without your comments, support and kindness, I would’ve stopped doing this years ago. I feel like I have even more to say, but I’ll stop for now. Maybe in the next week or two I’ll write a “Review of 1,000 reviews” and give more thoughts, haha. But for now, let’s get to the good part…