Not really about respect or agreeing or disagreeing. I'm not giving you my opinion, I'm telling you a fact. It's like listening to techno and trying to argue the drums are being played on an acoustic kit.
Q - Does JD Single Barrel taste identical year in year out? A - Yes. Explanation - because it did not come from one barrel. Fact.
Therefore saying "single barrel" is not a literal statement, and is made-up marketing statement because the US doesn't have legal requirements for using it. You could not call a scotch single barrel, without it literally coming from one barrel. JD, of any variety, is therefore a blend, 'single barrel' is of fewer barrels than the other expressions, for sure, but it is not a "single barrel", if you cannot taste (not you per se, but if one cannot taste) the difference between the same whisky/whiskey over several years (hell, regular US barrel (ASB) is about 200L, if theres no flavour difference in more than that volume, then it did not come from one barrel and is therefore blended or "married" as the Scotch would put it, if from one distillery.
If it came from one barrel then that barrel will wear out, like a tea bag, and a new one must be used for the next batch of however many bottles. Every barrel is unique, and you cannot have an identical flavour year in year out from a single barrel.
This doesn't even start to take into account vintage of grains, with each year and each harvest having its own nuances of the crops, or chemical variations in the water over time from various factors like rainfall or human influence.
So as I said, Jack Daniels Single Barrel, is a perfect example of "Single Barrel" being a meaningless statement.
What's in the bottle did not get aged in a single barrel. It could just as well be "JD premium" or "JD blue label" or "JD fancy bottle". The name is just a marketing name, not an indicator of its implication, that's all I was saying about it. I like it more than regular JD, sure, however, I find its branding dishonest and I don't approve of such dishonesty from producers of what I drink.
Sorry, my former comment was pure sarcasm, I just mean there is no "I have tried them all," it's like saying "I can play all the drum beats." There is no finite number, every distillery has different expressions, they're launching more all the time, new distilleries open all the time, different breeds of oak (quercus alba (US), quercus robur (most of Europe), etc etc) different former inhabitant of said oak (wine, bourbon etc etc), different peat treatment of malt (generally about 0-50ppm or so in scotch although Octomore takes it to another level and varies each year with about 310 being the top I believe), etc etc etc
So I stand by my "You haven't tried the right one yet," - spirit has personality and sometimes it even takes the right situation to get on with a personality, like people. My ex used to swear she hated smokey whisky but we got the ferry to Islay (the famously smokey whisky island) and at the prow of the boat in the lashing wind and rain she smelled mine and suddenly understood and made friends with the spirit in a way she'd never thought she would.
However, I appreciate if your dry the time to find the right one has gone, and sure maybe you do prefer bourbons on the whole, although I've converted many a bourbon drinker with a virgin oak scotch (as being one of the key factors in bourbon that you can't reuse barrels so most other spirits are in reused bourbon barrels, but occasionally/expensively you get brand new unused 'virgin' oak used).
And a more generally, my latest
whisky purchase - never had a Manuka Wood Smoked malt before, incredible, such a sweet smoke but more floral and less sticky and lingering in the pallet than say cherry wood smoke which I don't think works in a whisky particularly well at all.
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I feel like I might just be a whisky geek....