This story appears in the December 14, 2014 issue of ForbesLife. Subscribe
It's not just the thought that counts when you bestow a gift--sometimes it's the backstory, too. Here are six holiday drinks, each with a tale that adds an extra dimension to the pleasure of giving. Or provides a contemplative grace note to your own enjoyment should you just give in and crack the bottle yourself.
LECLERC BRIANT LES CHEVRES PIERREUSES 1ER CRU, SINGLE VINEYARD CHAMPAGNE ($65)
As French Champagne lovers have long known, there is a full color range of life-enhancing flavors out there beyond the big brands. LeClerc Briant, founded in 1872 but recently absent from the U.S. market, plunges back in with a rare biodynamic Champagne sourced from a single Premier Cru vineyard. It is on the dry side of brut, with contrasting savory aromas and sweet notes of blackberry preserves and baked yellow apple.
ANGEL'S ENVY CASK-STRENGTH BOURBON ($169)
Only about 540 cases of this 119-proof, powerhouse whiskey came onto the market this fall. Like its less full-throttle stablemates, it is a crowd-pleaser, big, soft and creamy with confectionary cocoa, caramel and dark berry fruit notes (from the Port-barrel finishing, presumably), mingled with suggestions of sawn oak, oatmeal and milled grain. These whiskies have developed a following, so grab yours fast--and do go ahead and add some water.
GREENHOOK GINSMITHS OLD TOM GIN ($45)
Brooklyn's artisan-distilling DeAngelo brothers recapture the spirit of Dickensian England--literally--with this throwback gin, typically an intermediate style between heavier, richer Dutch genever and the more familiar crisp, dry London gin. Greenhook's flavor-forward version of Old Tom cleaves closer to the London style in its palate-enlivening crispness but adds a holiday cake array of baking spices to the mix, with high-note clove and cinnamon and a centerpiece of intense, purely translated juniper.
PENNY BLUE XO RUM ($70)
A collaboration between London's venerable wine and spirits merchant Berry Bros. & Rudd and Mauritius' nearly 90-year-old Medine Distillery, this rum is produced in very small batches, selected barrel by barrel from Medine's top stocks, aged in Cognac, whisky and bourbon casks and bottled naturally with no chill-filtering. In a marketplace rife with flashy, big-flavor-knockout rums, this is a gem of sophistication: subtle, smoothly knit, long-sipping stuff with aromas of creamy vanilla, citrus, shaved oak and toffee.
HIGHLAND PARK "DARK ORIGINS" SCOTCH ($80)
You've got to love Magnus Eunson, a worldly 18th-century cleric who ministered to his Orkney Island flock's souls by day and their thirst by night as a moonshiner (the term was invented in Scotland, after all). Eunson's figurative descendants at Orkney's Highland Park have made its rounded, sweet-smoke single malts a kind of common ground for fans of different Scotch styles, and in this homage to the old dodger, the distillery doubles down on its sherry-cask finishing without losing the whisky's essential dry, earthy smokiness or generous midpalate. It is a graceful improvement all around.
TEARS OF LLORONA TEQUILA ($250)
German Gonzalez, scion of many generations of tequileros, works with deep roots in the traditions of his forebears. And this tiny-batch, five-year-old añejo employs time-tested techniques, like harvesting long-matured, high-elevation agaves, as a springboard to a multiple-distilled level of refinement. Concentrated and almost magically persistent on the palate, this tequila sets shades of wild herb against a background of mildly syrupy stone fruit and an underlying flavor of crème caramel.
