Tastes

A duty-free exclusive, about which very little information is available. But let's be honest: this is essentially JD Single Barrel, plus a few extra ABV percentage points, and *arguably* pulled from better barrels. I've been told this may only exist to fulfill requirements from some duty-free companies that they have an "exclusive" product. Tawny in colour, almost reddish. Smell is milk chocolate and cooked bananas, banana-flavoured medicine (Amoixicillin? I'm allergic to it, but I distinctly recall it from my youth), pine, maple/maple syrup, tree sap. Rich caramel and vanilla. Dark cherries and maybe some other berry flavours. Light wood-smoke. Honey. Cinnamon. Custard. Hints of apple and fresh flowers and cereal. Taste is soft and creamy and smooth. Sweet vanilla, custard, and caramel. Grape flavours. Simple syrup. Those bananas, some tree sap. Saltwater taffy. Cocoa. Crab-apples. Maple syrup, hints of the maple charcoal used in filtering. Barrel char. Light nuttiness and sweet orange. All good. And then it . . . completely falls apart on the finish, which is pure sour, soggy, cardboard-y woodiness with a faint garbage-juice kick. A potentially great whiskey absolutely ruined by that borderline-poisonous finish. A considerable improvement on both standard JD and the regular Single Barrel, . . . but that finish. Ick.

A real odd-ball--Basil Hayden's Dark Rye builds on the success of Aberta Premium Dark Horse (rebranded as Alberta Rye Dark Batch in the US) by flipping the formula. Where the original was mostly Canadian rye with a dollop of high rye bourbon and a splash of sherry, this fellow leads with an American rye and throws in a measure of Canadian rye and a splash of port. Okay, sure. A dark, almost ruby-ish colour. Nice--if light--nose: leads with red fruits (lots of berry), clove, vanilla, a tiny bit of Beam peanut funk, some baking spice and green herbs. Sourdough bread. Yeasty--it actually reminds me of the way my hometown smelled when the Hiram Walker distillery was in the process of fermenting. A little bit of ginger, some pickle juice. Gravel. Taste is light and again leads sweet--the red fruits from the port, followed by a bit of vanilla and butterscotch, and the spicy, herbacious rye coming through just a bit at the end. The finish is strangely sour and tangy: vinous, a whiff of vanilla, and then it's gone. Aside from that finish, this whisky is nice enough (if maybe leaning a bit too sweet), but it's hamstrung by two fatal flaws: a super-low ABV (baseline 40% for, *sigh*, "smoothness"), and a pretty unreasonable price ($69 Cdn. out here Alberta-ways). Drop the price and raise the ABV and you've got a winner here. Which, come to think of it, is exactly what I say about everything carrying the Basil Hayden name.

A lesson for Canadian whiskymakers that joining the "new breed" of Canadian whiskies means more than upping the ABV a bit, adding a half-hearted age statement (complete with poorly affixed sticker, no less), and a bold-sounding name. Like . . . "Bold," for example (. . . sigh.). I was cautiously optimistic, owing to a nice bit of pickle juice on the nose when I first cracked the bottle, but it quickly dissapates, and afterward--things are pretty much paint by numbers. A bit of dill on the nose, some vanilla and butterscotch, a flinty minerality, lemon-cake, maple syrup and . . . that's it. Tastes likewise: a bit of dill pickle juice, some vanilla, butterscotch, a bit of wood tannin. Owing to the higher ABV, it does have a bit more depth and body than your average Canadian whisky, and there is just a bit of an interesting spicy punchiness. But on the whole . . . maybe back to the drawing board, Gibson's folks?

A curious find at an out-of-the-way liquor store--side-by-side with Macallan's new non-age-stated entry level Gold. And for $15 less, to boot! I've never been a particular partisan for the Macallan (it's always seemed more like a status symbol than a scotch to be drunk), but felt like it was a sign from above. And the whisky is itself nice, if not setting the world on fire. Smell is honey, melon, lemon, heather/lavender, vanilla. Faint red fruits, spongecake. Taste arrives soft--no kick to speak of--and delivers lots of melon (cantaloupe! honeydew!), lemon, honey, and a slightly indistinct floral character. The dry, woodsy finish is blink-and-you-miss-it short, but the overall experience is quite pleasant. Not mad at the purchase, though I'm not particular mad that it's gone from the shelves either.

The crown jewel of Canadian whisky, full-stop. I am not going to go overboard on the ejaculatory adjectives, because this is not a perfect whisky (for my money, the younger, original release of Lot 40 was at a perfect age, and a cask strength version of THAT whisky was always the dream for me--at 12 years, this bottle leans a bit into bitterness on the finish). But it *is* absolutely the best Canadian whisky I've had. Needs time to open, but the smell is rich caraway, icing sugar, some dill, vanilla, sawdust, clove. Cinnamon, maple syrup. Mellower than an American straight rye, with a rounded sweetness and a sourdough bread base. Much less heat than you'd expect at 55% ABV. Fiery at first, leading with spice--caraway, clove, cinnamon. Then sweet bread or dough, dill, vanilla, some leather and rubber (not in a bad way). Sweet, but not quite "Canadian whisky" sweet--just a soft maple undercurrent. Finishes dry, vanilla, a bit tannic and slightly medicinal. Not perfect, but lovely. Limited to a few thousand bottles--if you can get your hands on one, please do so. (On the other hand, eww, it's gross; leave it all for me)

Generously rounding this one up to three. The smell here is surprisingly evocative for 40% ABV, though not tremendously varied or complex: fairly intense sharp lemon rind, with mint, eucalyptus, bitter root vegetable (?), Wine Gum candies, and a backbone of candied banana/banana bread. Slight orchard fruit (pear, apple), hints of throat lozenge, some slight butterscotch as it sits in the glass. Taste is light but initially sharp, with some real heat. Once the fire recedes, however, there's frankly not a lot here--a very light malt that neither offends nor impresses. Hell, one might not even notice. Light mint, light lemon, light vanilla, lightly herbal--light, light, light. Faint banana, even fainter apple. Finish is almost non-existent, disappearing like that guy on Tinder who ghosted you. I can see why this whiskey is widely liked--because it in no way calls me to reflect on anything, ever (which I suppose can be a good quality). On the other hand, it's so mild it's basically an existential crisis in a glass. Nice enough with a beer back, but why bother when so many bottom-shelf options are just *as* nice with a beer back?

There's something faintly synthetic about Larceny. Not in the sense that it tastes like plastic or anything like that, just the fact that it hits so many of the classic "bourbon" flavours without actually bringing those flavours together. Like someone created a wheated bourbon in a lab. Hot nose dominated by corn and fuzzy marker. A bit of cherry and grape drink, some almond over time. Hints of vanilla and chocolate, and certainly the banana bread a lot of people mention. Soft taste at first, building in heat and sharpness, with some unusual (almost Jim Beam-ish) peanut flavour. A touch of vanilla, just a hint of oak, something vaguely reminiscent of a Speyside scotch. Finish leads with peanuts, then a bit of chalky vanilla and gritty corn, and then there's just a touch of that wheat-y kind of flavour I generally get from wheated bourbons, which I would describe as almost like the unsweetened side of a Mini Wheat (go figure). The refrain I usually hear is, "when it comes to wheaters, at least it's better than Maker's," but I'm not sure I can abide that judgment; I think I'd happily take Maker's. But I'd *certainly* take a lower price offering like Weller Special Reserve over both.

Smell is a mild, dead at first, gradually opening up a bit to offer mere hints of rich, sweet caramel and vanilla, with cinnamon and wood-spice backbone. Cherry syrup as well, and some waves of alcohol heat. Taste is mellow at first, building to a surprising burn for a comparatively old spirit--and the finish is actually quite numbing. Leads with the lumber, the slightly sweet toasted wood. A bit of milk chocolate, vanilla, cherry syrup, wood sap gradually opening into slight maple syrup. Cinnamon and clove. Some bitterness. Adding water smooths out some of the rough edges, adds some citrus--orange peel, maybe--but also thins out some of the flavour. Leans a bit into over-oaked dryness on the (relatively short) finish, which is mostly bitter tannins. A fine whiskey, but nothing exceptional, and certainly not worth the premium price you're paying in some markets ($75+ in Alberta, Canada).