Crown Royal Reserve

@talexander, I wish I still had some of that first bottle of Alberta Premium of mine for you to taste. You would not believe how dry it was. That was the one I reviewed, the first review of Alberta Premium on Connosr. And yes, I tasted it side by side with another typical batch. Night and day different. What I wouldn't give for 10 more bottles from that first batch. None of that sweet cloying wine and caramel flavour so typical of every other batch of Alberta Premium I have tasted.

You already know the Crown Royal Reserve story well...I had a great bottle of it 3 years ago, then I tasted from your bottle, and from @JeffC's bottle, and heard about @maltster's bottle, etc...

My first sample of Forty Creek Port Wood Reserve tasted of nothing but Port wine...totally unbalanced. Since then I have had two very tasty and delicious samples nothing like that one.

Standard Crown Royal has always been tame, ok, and somewhat boring...except I bought half a dozen 50 ml minis of it which were fantastically spicy, much closer to the best of the Crown Royal Reserve, and could have been an entirely different whisky.

I have never cursed so much as after I paid $ 75 for a bottle of Wiser's 18 yo. Yuk! It might as well have been Jim Beam Red Stag, only much more chemical and artificial, and at 5 times the price. Terrible then. Terrible bottle now. And yet I did taste from a friend's bottle of Wiser's 18 which was not at all bad, pretty good in fact, and which I actually liked.

@JasonHambrey, greetings and welcome to Connosr! There is a very active group of Ontario members on Connosr. Did I brush by you at Spirit of Toronto May 3rd this year?

Certainly one has to be very careful not to be influenced by having recently consumed strongly flavoured foods and beverages before evaluating whisky. Mood and frame of mind can influence greatly how well we can appreciate a given whisky at a given time. When I find myself unable to accept a whisky on its own terms because of the frame of mind I am in, I routinely wait until I am in a very neutral peaceful frame of mind at a later time. That is not a common occurrence for me, but it does occasionally happen.

Also the quality and provenance of the sample being evaluated always needs to be taken into consideration. It is best, of course, if we could afford the luxury of evaluating all whiskies from our own full bottles, gradually and with a great deal of experience of those bottles over time. The whiskies do change a lot after the bottles are open, of course, but a leisurely observation with multiple observations will make it much easier to trace the whisky as it evolves through those patterns of change.

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Comment on @Megawatt's review

After reading the other reviews maybe my palate isn't refined enough but then again not everyone's taste is exactly the same, either way practice makes perfect.

Comment on @GotOak91's review

@maltster, yes, I was referencing you and your bottle in Austria in the review. I feel that I have already sampled your bottle, both in Toronto and in the DC area. My reviewed bottle was excellent from the git-go and there has been little shift over time in its flavours over about five months.

It is very much my purpose in doing this review to attempt to call attention to the huge variations possible from batch to batch in many whiskies, and to warn whisky drinkers that the whisky that they thought that they knew from their first taste of it might be a very different whisky the next time around. Having one, two, or ten tastes of any whisky doesn't nail the future of its flavours to the same profile that we have known and experienced.

@Victor - WOW,just popped the cork on Drew Mayville's (20 year man at Seagram's/Crown Royal) latest single barrel expression of Sazerac Caribou Crossing Canadian Whisky.

I am convinced that this recent release is not from the same batch, nor the same distillery, as the previous offering from late autumn of 2011 - that expression had a heavy rye nose and palate and was likely from Walkerville or Alberta. This one is slightly less fragrant and is somewhat mellow with the influence of aged corn whisky. I'm tasting this H2H with CR Reserve and I'm drinking the same whisky from two different glasses.

Me thinks that Mr. Mayville has sourced some well balanced barrels of "Crown Royal Reserve". I will set aside a sample of each for future tastings.

Victor, I believe you may find the world class sample of CR Reserve in a bottle of Caribou Crossing.

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@talexander, having sampled from your reviewed bottle, if I had known that there would be so much difference between your bottle and mine, I would have brought a sample from my bottle with me to Toronto for you to taste side by side. I think that you would be amazed at the differences. I have resampled my own bottle since I have been home and I have to say that I think that you got a bottle from an off batch. Mr. Murray wasn't nuts in liking the flavours in "my bottle". The differences between 'sharp and vivid' and 'dull and muffled' are pretty easy to spot. I have sampled the Crown Royal XR, but not the Special Edition. The sample of XR I had was very similar to my bottle of (Special) Reserve, but not anywhere near as good. I would, though, as you did, similarly describe the sample I had of Crown Royal XR as better than the sample I had from your bottle.

These batch variations can be maddening. I have had several crappy first samples from usually good whiskies, which put me off from those whiskies for a very long time. One of the things I really like about reading Jim Murray is that he is not the least bit shy about changing his numerical ratings on a whisky by as much as 15 points from one reviewed sample to the next of the same whisky. In my book that just reflects the variability that actually occurs. The samples of standard Crown Royal I have had over the years had never impressed me much. It always seems kind of blah to me...dull, and without much dimension. Lately, though, I have been buying cheap minis of standard Crown Royal for sample reuse purposes which have been much spicier and better than before, in fact, I would say, spicier than is your present bottle of Crown Royal Special Reserve. Most people want to know what they are getting and therefore want consistency in their whiskies. That only occurs for variable limited periods of time.

About the CR Reserve labeling: mine has a light brown bag, the identical outer box as those in Ontario, and a cap that does say Special Reserve. My bottle cap is a different colour than is yours--light brown to match the bag, whereas I remember yours to have been more silvery.

To conclude, having sampled from your reviewed bottle of the Crown Royal (Special) Reserve I would now be much more cautious about considering buying another bottle of it for myself.

It really is surprising how different they are in this case. I can understand more when the same single malt distillery bottlings are a little different, but a blend? Isn't part of the point to adjust the quantities of each whisky to ensure consistency? You would think they would be much more careful with this, ESPECIALLY with a brand as important (and which has so many devotees) as Crown Royal. Hmmmm. I wonder if something else is at work here - I wouldn't put it past Diageo to export a higher quality whisky than what is kept here within our borders, where brand loyalty is more assured. I smell a conspiracy!

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