A Midwinter Nights Dream Act 7, Scene 6
High West A Midwinter Nights Dram Act 7 Scene 6 hanging out in early Spring
Our next review is High West’s A Midwinter Nights Dram Act 7, Scene 6. As evidenced by the Forsythia in the picture, I am a bit late to review this one as the Forsythia is the harbinger of Spring for my area, but then again, I have never been one to limit my whiskey intake based on the season.
For those of you that are unfamiliar with this particular release, A Midwinter Nights Dram is a limited annual release from HighWest which is a blend of straight rye whiskeys. High West doesn’t explicitly state what the blend is, but they seemed to have made a statement upon the release of Act 6 that they were incorporating their owned distilled ryes into the blend beginning with that release. Traditionally, High West’s products were either all or mostly MGPI distilled products. That said, unlike others in the market, High West has always been pretty transparent that they source their whiskey.
A Midwinter Nights Dram is essentially High West’s Rendezvous Rye which is then finished in French oak port barrels.
ABV: 49.3%
How it smells…got that big old rye scent with cinnamon, raisins and light oak.
How it tastes….spicy rye up front with sweet fruits of plums and raisins in the middle, ending in caramel and honey. The finish brings up the spice again, but this time cinnamon and allspice with some pepper on the linger.
Price..$90
Rating….🥃🥃🥃🥃
Final thoughts….this is a really nice cask finished rye. It’s hard to not like a port finished rye that has a true high rye content (not a 51% barely legal rye). You get all of the wonderful rye flavors with a bit of added fruity sweetness to the sip as well. This one tastes like a nice rye with a bit more depth than you might get with a 95%/5% rye mash bill (according to the internet, it’s a blend of 95% Rye / 5% Malted Barley and 80% Rye / 20% Malted Rye). “Depth” is probably the right word to use to describe this. Instead of stages of flavor you get layers of flavor–an underlying sweetness with rye spice and baking spices hovering on top of the sweetness. It’s a very easy sipper but it also has a lot going on. I feel good about this at a 4x 🥃 rating, especially given the non-inflated price I paid.
The big issue many will have with this is that it is a limited release that has only increased in popularity as the years have progressed. I am lucky enough to have a few of these bottles. This review is based on the Act 7 Scene 6 release but I also have two unopened bottles that I may have to review at a later date including the Act 5 Scene 8, which is the last release that was 100% sourced whiskey, and Act 9 Scene 1, this past year’s release. For the Act 5 and Act 7, I was able to pick both of these up for the normal retail price without much, if any, markup. For the Act 9, however, I had to “bundle” this purchase with 1-2 store picks from the place where I purchased it. This particular store is BIG into the bundling….which is OK…not ideal…but not the worst….as long as they actually have a good selection of store picks that they are forcing me to buy. Sometimes though, they not only make you buy 2-3 store picks for the privilege or purchasing a limited bottle that you really want, but they then jack up the price of the limited release bottle. That is a bridge too far for me and I won’t play that game. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
