Mark your calendars. October 18th, 2016.

It’s the day that I stopped receiving samples from Diageo. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe they won’t read this, maybe they won’t care. I no longer care if they care, or the others who send me samples. Maybe I care. Maybe no one cares even if I care. Anyway…

Back when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth (also known as 2014), I began blogging and receiving samples. Back then I was a little more generous in my scoring and in my reviews than I should have been. As a blogger, you want the samples to keep coming, and there is probably an underlying assumption that if you destroy a product in reviews, the samples will stop. These days I’m not as concerned.

Whoop and Holler is an absolutely terrible whiskey. I’ll get to that later. The part that annoys the shit out of me is not how bad it is, but how this review ultimately makes no difference. You may be reading this because someone posted it on a secondary site when someone asked if they had tried Whoop and Holler. You may read this because of the catchy title. Regardless of why you are here and what I say below, people are going to buy this up at a price of $179 and more. And they aren’t going to buy it because they heard it was great, they are going to buy it to finish their nice sealed bottle collections. They are going to buy it because it says 28 years on the front. They are going to buy it because these days it’s not about what’s inside the bottle, it’s about the bottle itself.

Truth be told, I actually really like some of the earlier Orphan releases. Rhetoric 21 is a fantastic bourbon, one that I like to keep a nice stock of. I am also a fan of Forged Oak, Barterhouse, Lost Prophet, and Old Blowhard. Diageo gets a LOT of hate for their releases, but by and large most of them are actually very good and very well priced.

And then there is Whoop and Holler.

The press release tells us very little except that it is 28 year old whiskey that was distilled at the George Dickel Distillery in Tennessee. Before being barreled, it was chilled and mellowed with sugar maple charcoal. It’s an American Whiskey, not a bourbon and not a Tennessee Whiskey. As far as I know, “whiskey” only has to be aged in wooden barrels, but I don’t believe it has to be for any specified time period. Either way, it spent probably 18+ years more than it should have in any container.

Forget every other review you see out there, they are probably lying.

It smells like you just ran through a field of pesticide.

It tastes like you just slid into second base and got some dirt and someone else’s sweat in your mouth.

It finishes like you just drank from your dog’s water bowl after he ate an entire rawhide bone and you forced yourself to not wash it down with Cheetos.

Seriously, this is garbage. Not that it matters. Enjoy your wonderful sealed bottle collection.

“Man, I went over to [you or someone you know]’s house and he has a sealed collection of [any series of bourbon] and it was amazing!”…..said NO ONE EVER.

It’s more like….”Man, I went over to [hopefully you or someone you know]’s house and got to try all sorts of stuff and it was amazing!”….says EVERYONE.