Spending a few hundred dollars on a bottle of rye whiskey feels a tad absurd. Yet, it’s not out of the ordinary for rye lovers with cash to burn. Expensive and rare whiskeys have been around for ages. Today, you pay a hefty price for one-of-a-kind rarities that you may never see again. And that’s exactly what Chicken Cock Cotton Club Rye Whiskey Aged 20 Years is.
Chicken Cock — which, let’s face it, is a hilarious name for anything, let alone a whiskey — has dug deep into select stocks of a Canadian distillery and found a few barrels of 20-year-old rye whiskey to build a bespoke and very rare expression around. That’s pretty much Chicken Cock’s whole vibe. They have standard releases of both rye and bourbon in their throwback 1920s apothecary bottles and then a long list of very limited and rare releases of barrels that we will never see again.
The release I’m reviewing below dropped at the very end of last year and kind of flew under the radar. Part of that is that Chicken Cock is fairly new, even though it’s a revival brand. Another part is that Canadian whiskey hasn’t caught on in the U.S. quite as much as it should have… yet. For now, it’s mostly being built into American brands — Barrell, WhistlePig, Cotton Club — and not finding its own footing outside of those labels really. That’s a shame but, hey, at least we still get to drink the tipple from Canada even if it is under a U.S. company’s branding.
Okay, enough preamble, let’s jump into what’s in this bottle.
Also Read: The Top Five Rye Whiskey from the Last Six Months on UPROXX
Chicken Cock Cotton Club Rye Whiskey Aged 20 Years
ABV: 50%
Average Price: $616
The Whiskey:
The juice in this bottle is made with a 90 percent rye and ten percent malted barley mash bill, which is a standard you see with other big-name Canadian brands (cough, cough, Crown Royal Northern Harvest Rye, cough, cough). In this case, that hot juice was left to mellow in ex-bourbon barrels for 20 long years somewhere in Canada (cough, cough, Manitoba, cough, cough). The barrels are then vatted and proofed down to 100 proof before bottling.
Tasting Notes:
Green and wet grass mingle with a stack of pine firewood on the nose as a pink bubble gum sweetness leads to a vanilla-heavy cream soda with a whiff of Orange Julius. The palate leans into the orange with a zesty vibe as a lemon meringue pie tartness and creaminess kicks in next to dried ginger, floral honey, and a sweet pine resin. The mid-palate really leans into the honey while adding in candied orange peels with a hint of allspice and anise leading toward a dry white pepper and old cinnamon sticks soaked in tart apple cider before a final rush of old cellar beams and dry black soil round out the end.
The Bottle:
Chicken Cock chose a throwback bottle design with a slightly lifted glass ridging in a large flask, reminiscent of an old medicine bottle. The bottle comes in a tin box, which is a nod to the old Cotton Club in Harlem in the 1920s where Chicken Cock whiskey was widely drunk savored out of tin cans (due to smuggling practices during Prohibition).
Then there’s the label which is pretty minimalist all things considered. The most important information is listed and there’s an old-school “cock” crowing away. That’s it. It’s simple but distinct.
Is It Worth The Price?
This is a very even-keeled sip of whiskey. It’s deeply layered, takes you on a journey (from bright sweetness and fresh grass to moldy cellars), and has a good balance of sweet, sharp, and lush.
But $500 to $600 (depending on where you find the bottle) is a big ask. I’m going to drink mine on special occasions because I had to open it. Otherwise, this might be more of an investment bottle than a sipping one.
That said, this is worth tasting at a high-end whiskey bar or tasting if you do come across it. It’s a totally different rye than the standard 95/5 American ryes that have dominated the conversation over the last decade with their “spicy” nature. This feels subtler than those and leaves you with a bit of a warming yet familiar feeling of comfort. It’s a nice feeling.
