Tastes

No brand seems to have more enthusiasm for no-age-statement, hard-to-pronounce whiskies than Highland Park. Pretty soon, the distillery will exhaust the canon of Norse mythology and have to move onto Hindu deities, where they will not run out of new names for young scotch anytime soon. Valkyrie is a good, peaty, young scotch, kind of in line with a young Benromach I recently tried. Apple, smoke, a distinct boozy edge, and buttered toast defined the nose for me. It tastes like a classic Highland Park, with a well-balanced mixture of sweet, spicy, and salty, with more sherry expressed in the palate and finish. A Highland peat, pine-like smoke complements these flavors at the end. For an $80 single malt, it’s too young for my tastes and isn’t as good as Highland Park 12 or 15.

Here's an interesting experiment, the first new permanent Ardbeg expression in years and years. The result is . . . something that smells and tastes a lot like Ardbeg 10: smoke, peat, hay, citrus, seasalt, gravel, and some faint sherry. It finishes with a really nice coda of peat and malt. The resemblance was so strong that I poured a glass of Ardbeg 10 to compare them head-to-head. An Oa has an oilier nose and is moderately richer on the palate and finish. I’m a little unnerved — the fact that this product is so similar to 10 suggests that Ardbeg may get out of the age statement game altogether and just have An Oa, Uigeadail, and Corryvreckan as their unpronounceable, triple-threat permanent range. Perhaps that's not the worst thing in the world. An Oa is a respectable substitute for 10, albeit a more expensive one, but I'll give it the same rating that I gave the 10. I hope that, if the distillery gets rid of 10, they drop the price of this expression just a little bit to make up for it. But, since Ardbeg presumably is run by capitalists, that is not going to happen. Thanks to Telex for the sample!

Bourbon’s exploding popularity has created a radically unequal distribution of interest and demand. In the bourbon world, the rich got richer, and then even richer, and the gap between the most coveted brands (Pappy, for instance) and other high-quality bourbons has grown into a chasm. Elmer T. Lee is one of the minor robber barons of this era — putatively a $40 bottle, I’ve only seen it at one liquor store in Miami for a whopping $200 a bottle. Is it worth the hype? It’s a good bourbon, but $40-50 is about right. The nose unveils pronounced caramel, vanilla, and Werther’s candies, but with a bit more ethanol than expected. In contrast, the palate is smooth and mellow, with sweet notes of corn and caramel dominant. The finish is not particularly short or long and tastes like buttered, charred corn and caramel. This bourbon does not have much fruitiness or oak, those sweet corn and dessert notes really dominate here, which reminds me of Russell’s Reserve. In other words, it’s good, but hasn’t quite earned the vaunted status that it currently enjoys.

Sometimes, it seems as if everyone who's serious about the whiskey hobby has to be a Springbank fan. In my view, people tend to love it because of the romantic image of a non-corporate distillery, and the fact that Springbank makes a number of different styles helps them find purchase among a few different niches in the scotch world (I personally prefer their more heavily peated Longrow line). Springbank's signature feature to me is minerality, meaning a slightly bitter, medicinal, metallic, effervescent feature that's kind of like what I imagine most whiskies would taste like if watered down with Badoit or San Pellegrino. Aside from the minerality present, if not dominant, in all three phases, the core flavor here is a well-composed apple-honey body and a curl of smoke at the end. My wife, who was not feeling in a generous mood to these whiskies, described it as "fish scales in apple juice." Well, there you go. There are not many whiskies that taste exactly like Springbank, so I highly recommend trying it to see if its unique flavor profile hits the spot for you.

There's not much information out there concerning its aging or what types of barrel the distillery uses, but this is not just stronger Talisker 10. It is quite different in flavor. On the nose, the overwhelming trio of flavors are brine, herbal and ginger tea, and farmhouse mustiness. My wife picked up on the maritime notes more and described it as "fish scales." There's definitely something to that. The palate is sweeter than the nose and picks up a grapefruit note, but the herbal, ginger, maritime, and peppery kick of Talisker continued barreling ahead at full steam. The finish emphasizes that ginger tea aspect to it and has a tinge of cough syrup flavor that did not thrill me. With a little water, more of the oak and wood tannins assert themselves. This is an expensive bottle, pushing $100, and strikes me as similar to what a cask-strength Ballechin would taste like.

What a stunningly beautiful whiskey in the glass. Weller is a deep, rich copper tone with hints of auburn. Breathe in the scents of late summer, autumn and the harvest season, and conclude with winter in a delightful progression: cherries and ripe fruit first, followed by rich brown sugar and buttered corn, with maple syrup and vanilla emerging after several minutes. Then back to fall with the powerful, slightly boozy palate, to savor the taste of apple turnovers, caramel, and orchard fruits. Weller finishes with notes of sweet caramel, traces of banana, leather, oil, cinnamon, and oak. I don't like adding water to whiskey, but with a barrel-proof beast, it's sometimes worth a shot. Here, oak, leather, and brown sugar emerge more prominently in the nose. The palate and finish were similar, with reduced heat (of course) and an increased spiciness. Like Cousin Pappy and other wheated bourbons in general, Weller offers an intriguing, sweeter take on American bourbon. I haven't had Pappy in a long time, but it is hard to believe a wheater gets much better than this Weller. I hate to keep giving these Buffalo Trace Antique Collection bottles such high marks, which doesn't tell you guys anything new, but they are superb bourbons. I was looking for flaws but couldn't find any. Like any other barrel-proof bourbon, you have to be prepared for that high heat, but Weller's aging -- in excess of 12 years -- makes it a smooth sipper given its strength. A no-brainer if you see it anywhere for $150 or less, but most people's only hope is the secondary market, where this bottle can fetch an intolerable (for me, anyways) $600+.

While on vacation, we had dinner with an old friend from college, who I hadn't seen in more than 8 years! Not only did he and his girlfriend cook us a delicious meal, they also introduced us to a great but underappreciated scotch (at least here in the U.S., where it's not widely available). Tomintoul is located in the Highlands, actually within the bounds of Cairngorms National Park. It bills itself as "the gentle dram," which is similar to the branding of Dalwhinnie, a fellow Highland scotch. Tomintoul's nose greets you with caramel macchiato, malt, and apple. With a sip, I detect light vanilla cream, apple, and confectioners sugar. The sherry emerges on the finish. Wow, the distillery needs to bottle this scotch at 46% to 48%. It would be a stunner in that ABV range. Where it’s available, it’s priced reasonably around $45, which represents great value.

The Bowmore core line features a wide range of flavor profiles due to different finishing techniques, rather than merely relying on age to alter the nature of their scotches. Islay single malts invariably mellow out as they age, and this Bowmore is no exception. But, in addition to that effect from aging, the 15- and 18-year drams both feature longer sherry-cask aging. The unsherried 12-year old dram leans heavily on minerality and coppery notes, with minimal sweetness. The 18's combination of higher age and sherry finishing mellows out the peat smoke considerably. This may be the fruitiest Islay scotch I've tasted, with a nose full of berries and zesty melon. There is smoke, of course, but it's a distant or peripheral effect rather than front and center. The palate and finish continue playing with fruit flavors, including berries and perhaps even passion fruit or other tropical fruits at times, with the smoke giving the sensation of a Hawaiian barbecue. I'm missing some of the intensity I like from Islay scotches here. For those who like a gentler, fruitier scotch, but with a substantial smoke backbone, Bowmore 18 may be an ideal scotch for them. At $100-125, it's priced in the same range as most other 18-year old Islay scotches.

Lore is somewhat controversial among longtime lovers of the distillery who see it as a harbinger of an uncertain future. Laphroaig has gradually eliminated its age statement offers besides the flagship 10-year offering. The 15 went the way of the dinosaur, came back as a special release in 2015, and now is gone again. The 18 followed last year, so it’s still available in some places but no longer being produced. The successor to Laphroaig 18, in price at least, is Lore, which has no age statement but commands a hefty $100-125. Happily, it does a credible job of justifying that bill, although I’d advise real fans to stick to the cheaper and punchier Laphroaig 10 Cask Strength. Lore is an example of no-age-statement whisky done right. The heavy smoke and brine that wafts of the glass is enticing. While that powerful peat likely comes from young liquid, Laphroaig has selected or balanced the other components to mask any of the downside of that less refined scotch. The richness of the palate, which has a pecan pie quality combined with caramel or toffee notes that reminded me of a bourbon, is first-rate. Blackberries and other dark fruits delight the tongue while that smoke prevents it from becoming saccharine. Strong kick at the finish: smoke, brine, cocoa nibs. The marriage of different woods here produces a best-of-both-worlds effect rather than the master-of-none mediocrity of Select. If you purchased and blended together Laphroaig 10 Cask Strength and PX Cask, I suspect you'd get something close to Lore.

A highly-rated Kentucky-made bourbon that can't even be purchased here in the States? Now you see why we had to try this rare (for an American) dram while in Paris. In some respects, this is going to be a familiar pour for someone who's had Blanton's Single Barrel. The additional ABV, however, reveals some surprising shifts in the Blanton's profile. I found the rye spice to be dialed down, and the woody, cedar notes to be amped up. The difference between 93 proof and 103 proof adds an extra level of intensity to this bourbon. It is a well-composed, well-balanced bourbon that captures the wide spectrum of bourbon flavors without any one of them being overstated. But the price difference between this and regular Blanton's is much higher than the price difference between this and Straight from the Barrel, which is a cask-strength bruiser. At $85, I would lean toward alternatives, or pony up the extra $10 for Straight from the Barrel.