Tastes

Another note I've been long overdue to write; damn work anyway :-\ For a 50% ABV, the nose isn't overly hot, and it's quite easy to pull aromas of vanilla, caramel, and brown sugar. Because it's bourbon, amiright? Get past the fluff, and keep your nose on the bottom of the angled lip and you can pull out bubble gum (actually not a bad thing here), leather, and macerated grapes very similar to fine cognac. Occasional flashes of freshly plucked mint leaves and sawdust sometimes appear depending on how I catch the alcohol stream, but they never drown out the sweet. Palate is bold, rich, spicy, neither overly nor overly sweet, but you know without question it's a traditional bourbon. The typical vanilla, honey, caramel blend is strong here, but it's high-quality. Like comparing Safeway brand vanilla ice cream from the bucket to Haagen-Daaz Organic Vanilla Bean. It just tastes classy and upscale. Mid-palate this turns slightly warm and then they rye influence arrives in the form of cinnamon. But yet again, it's more the top-shelf specialty spice store cinnamon that you grind at home than the jar of McCormick's from Walmart. Finish is middling long, with wood tannin lending a bit of astringency to cut the sweet flavors before yielding to a pleasant Novocaine numbness around the tongue and gums. While it might sound heavy on the sweet side, it isn't, and the flavors are quite refined and clean. A standard-bearer for bourbon, and an excellent whisky by any standard. My musical equivalent would be the Highwaymen singing (what else?) Highwayman. Deep, melodic, and with a soul-stirring story to convey; an exquisite mix of many different styles to create one cohesive sound that set the standard for many years.

The nose is very unobjectionable, as in I can't really find much of a nose at all. A few minutes in a covered glass and I can tease out honeysuckle and hay, but that's about it. The palate is better, with a smooth mouth-coating warmness that spreads from the middle of the tongue outward in all directions. Palate is very mild, mostly vanilla and marzipan, then a dash of cereal (think grape-nuts not cheerios), with a nice blast of anisette at the end. Finish is smooth and relatively brief, fading from the spice to a slightly sweetened breakfast tea, before cleanly vanishing. I don't know the proportion of each malt, but to me this strongly favors The Balvenie. Unfortunately, that's not my preferred flavor profile, and as such I'm not overly fond of this blended malt. For $35, it was worth the experiment, but unless I'm buying for a crowd of non-Scotch fans, I'll stick to drams with a bit more complexity.

This is good bourbon at a (sometimes) fair price. Nose is fairly mild, with moderate sugar, vanilla and oak predominant. A wisp of peppermint hides in the background, but is easier to find after a few minutes in the glass. Palate opens rich, smooth and warm, with tart apples most predominant, almost immediately giving way to caramelized brown sugar and vanilla. Rob's reference to apple crisp with vanilla ice cream is spot-on! The wood shows up leading into the finish, and while it's quite astringent, it's not objectionable in this setting. The finish itself is where that hidden mint comes out to play, but only briefly, before the wood and cinnamon heat close the show. Inexperienced whisky folk may find this part to be a bit hot, but experienced palates will find here that there's actually a distinction between wintergreen and peppermint, and maybe even a bit of eucalyptus like a cough drop. Very, very good bourbon. Sweet, but not overly sweet. Spicy but not too hot. Smooth, but you still know you're drinking whiskey. In a word: Balanced. Much more a 4.5 than a 4. Now for the elephant in the room...price. I bought 6 bottles of this more than a year ago for $32 each. Since then, I've seen them range from the same $32 in well-stocked stores for a short time before they're sold-out, to over $600 on sites like wine-finder. Whisky speculators seem to attach to liquid from Frankfort like wasps to carrion (an apt analogy if ever there was), and that might cause fear for those that have an unopened bottle. I know I thought twice before I opened my last one, and that makes me sad. Let me be perfectly clear; this is NOT $600 bourbon. It's not even $100 bourbon. Things get fuzzy around the $50 mark, as I believe that's where the regulars who inhabit that price range (any Col E.H. Taylor as an example) start to offer a better product. If you can find this for under $50, buy it. If you can find it for under $40, buy 6. If it was more reliably available, this would be my everyday bourbon because it does so much, so well. Until that day comes to pass, I'll keep looking for "dusters" on hidden shelves and bringing home EW Single Barrel or Beam 12yr.

Can't believe I never got around to writing a note for this! I'll just presume that every time I had a glass I was so at peace with myself, so relaxed in the moment, that it never occurred to put pen to paper (or 0's and 1's to code as it is). Time to right (or write) the wrong. (sorry...not sorry) Nose is all you've been led to believe; Peat leads the charge, but is strongly supported by iodine (band-aids) and brine. A quick sip coats your palate with a sweet, smooth, oily richness that is so intensely smoky that you can almost feel the campfire ash on your tongue. A few rolls around the mouth and the peat sweetness grows while the smoke diminishes, letting snippets of hay and kelp appear. The finish is long, slightly astringent, and profoundly smoky. From beginning to end it maintains the same smooth, eminently quaffable texture that belies a relatively young Islay single-malt. Most excellent, and a permanent resident on my liquor rack. Put to music, this would be Kashmir by Led Zeppelin; easy enough that anyone can enjoy it, but with enough depth and nuance that it appeals to the purists among us.

My initial "3" rating was based on a very young palate. A palate that was woefully inexperienced with regard to good bourbon as a whole, and so enamored with the boldness of peaty Scotch that little else failed to impress. Now, four years and probably 20 different bourbons later, I can confidently say my palate has grown, and a whisky doesn't have to be sherry-casked or peated for me to appreciate what it offers. I also recognize my 2013 rating definitely didn't do this bottle justice. This is bottling 49-2R, still at 50% ABV. Nose is sweet, with vanilla and caramel leading the way before an undercurrent of alcohol heat takes over and obscures pretty much everything else. A few minutes in the glass and pushing past the vanilla I can discern vegetals that remind me strongly of dried English breakfast tea, and then the smell of my high school shop class after working on wood; a whiff of fine sawdust, glue, hot oily machinery and faintly burned wood from the friction of the blades. After a moment, that too fades to demerara sugar and vanilla again. Very nice, and a pretty good blast of nostalgia for me as well! Palate is smooth and creamy, and leads with heat, but it's a slow, smooth heat that coats your tongue from front to back before it gets hot. Sweet and tart follow, arriving in the form of toffee and dark bitter chocolate. As the chocolate fades, I recognize quite a bit of oak, and then I realize it's actually been there in the background all along, as if tying things together. The finish falls apart just slightly when the wood overpowers the sweet, syrupy flavors, and gives a flash of bitter that diminishes the otherwise smooth and sweet fade . Were it not for the woodiness popping out to scream "HELLO!!" in the finish, this would be on the edge of a 5. As it is, it's still a 4.5, and something that will be a regular member of whisky rack. Paired to music, this would be Midnight Rider, by Greg Allman; lively and upbeat, but with depth, character and passion.

Another score in a surprise 25% off sale, because there's no way I'm going to spend the asking $65 for bottle of unknown-quality rye! Nose is rather muted, and time doesn't do much for it either. Just as I think I start to get a bit of cherry and chocolate, I find my nose too far into the glass and then I've once again gone nose-blind from the alcohol. After a few minutes (and from a safe distance) I get fresh-cooked caramel and vanilla, with a chaser of powdered cacao. The palate is nicer, and a pleasant change of pace for a rye. It doesn't clobber you in the face with mint and cinnamon, instead leading with what I can best describe as grown-up sweet tea: It's got a bite to it, but it's sooo smooth and sweet that you'll keep going back for more. The middle turns dry and the mint finally arrives, but it's more along the lines of a compliment to a nice fruit compote than the typical rye experience of chewing a stick of Wrigley's Spearmint gum. The finish lets a bit of heat appear before dropping a medium-fade and leaving a vanilla goodness behind that lasts a few minutes. This is a pretty good drink. Totally different than CR Northern Harvest Rye, and much better than Sazerac. It's even slightly better than my favored rye, the Beam Pre-Prohibition. Unfortunately, that very slight improvement of flavor comes at three times the price of the Beam, and that's all that keeps this from being my new favorite rye.

I'll damn by faint praise and say it's not all bad. The nose starts with rubbing alcohol before it transitions to cherries and chocolate. Palate is much better than regular Jameson's, but that's more faint praise, really. Spats of fig, chocolate, herbs, and coffee augment the normal light and mild Jameson profile, but they are intertwined with an unshakable alcohol presence that is all too common in cheap blends and tend to ruin the whole drink. There is really no finish to speak of, but at least when it's finally gone, it's gone cleanly. Mostly unobjectionable, but also completely unmemorable. Much, much better than the standard fare, but not nearly as good as the equally-priced Jameson Black Barrel. And neither of them do Irish as well as the Standard Tyrconnel. Put to music, this would be the B-side to any popular artist that people listen to because they don't know there are better options.

Going green for St Paddy's Day! Nose is predominately peat, but not like us Islay fans recognize it; here it's earthen and dirty, closer to a 5-year old compost pile than a 1000-year old peat bog. A little time in the glass and it's possible to find some salt-spray and honeysuckle, with just the faintest whiff of something metallic, as though you're nosing from a raw tin cup. And while all that may sound possibly objectionable, it's not terribly so. It does however, set you up honestly for the palate. Smoke leads the way, but a brief pause on the tongue gives just a bit of sweetness before the vegetals take over and lead to a muddled, salty, dirty finish that has no discernible end, leaving a rubber-smoke taste that lingers for several minutes. While this isn't resigned to strictly Irish Coffee drinks (which it makes phenomenally well!) it's also not going to be high on my list of recommended malts. Having had three different Connemara offerings, (12yr, Cask Strength and this Peated Single Malt) I can say that they share a very strong family resemblance, and also that this will be my last. For the price, there are just too many other Irish (and Scotch) offerings that suit my palate and desired flavor profile. Put to music, this would be London Calling by The Clash. It's memorable because it does something repetitively different than most others; you're just not sure that you like the path it's taken.

Beautiful dark color, with long, syrupy legs that fall somewhat erratically back to the bottom. Nose starts rich with raisin and plumb, and then goes even sweeter, presenting dried sugared dates. After the nose I was eagerly anticipating the palate, but it was not to be...Palate is smooth, sweet and heavily sherried. Sherried to the point that it masks the other flavors that I can almost discern hiding in the background. In what should be a cacophony of rich, sweet fruits, I instead find only a stale bowl of dried nuts and a lot of grainy notes; almost like eating a box of grape nuts without any milk. The finish is moderately spicy, with just a hint of liveliness popping in to save the whole thing from irredeemable flatness before it dries to a slight linger of wooded sherry. Macallan and I have a longstanding non-symbiotic relationship. It makes me spend my money for the promise of great things, only to be repeatedly let down by the all-too-similar flavors. And sadly, that's a flavor that I find not all that appealing. For my money, I'd rather have a bottle of top-shelf Irish, and another of top-shelf bourbon, with a little remaining for a good 22oz IPA...........................This is the musical equivalent of Hoobastank's "The Reason". A post-grunge band that capitalized on all the experimental wonders of the original grunge, but when signed to an album took away all the even slightly out-of-the-norm in their music, to become the bland, middle of the road, "good enough" for pre-pubescent teens that really don't understand that real music is designed to make you think, not just be numbed into nothingness.