DGC Blind Tasting Session
Documented evidence of 400+ blind tastings across 100+ formal lineup sessions
Every tasting in the DGC archive was conducted blind — labels covered, bottles wrapped. These photographs are the proof of methodology behind the cipher. This is where the knowledge was built.
The DGC Tasting Cipher isn't a theory. It's an empirical system developed over 15 years of real practice with real bottles, documented with photo evidence at every step. The window to build this knowledge firsthand has largely closed — these bottles are gone or priced beyond casual tasting range.
Anyone can taste a known bottle and describe it. Blind identification is the hard thing. Every session in this archive was conducted without labels — bottles wrapped or decanted — so that the sensory observations were uncontaminated by expectation. The cipher is built on what the bourbon actually tastes like, not what the label says it should.
As Tripp explains in Bourbon Brothers: the cipher works by elimination as much as identification. What is absent from a pour is as important as what is present. No peanut + no rye heat + dark cherry = Stitzel-Weller. Zero funk + zero peanut + focused = Four Roses. The absence clues are the expert layer that separates a knowledgeable taster from a casual one.
John McKillop, M.D. is the MWC Official Whiskey Historian. The Medicinal Whiskey Charity has raised over $2 million for children's charities across the Carolinas. The tasting archive you're viewing is the documented body of work that makes the cipher's claims credible — not whiskey writing, but actual practice sessions captured over years.
Bourbon Brothers tells the story of the DGC — the Distinguished Gentleman's Club — and a high-stakes blind tasting challenge called Twenty-One Guns. The cipher methodology is embedded in the novel through Tripp LaRue's approach to identification, particularly in the Chapter 20 Compass sessions. Every tasting note in the book came from John's personal collection, tasted and documented in sessions like the ones photographed here.
The archive is the evidence. The cipher is the tool. The book is the experience. Together they're a complete bourbon culture ecosystem built around one man's 15 years of documented blind tastings.
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