Tastes

It seems every time I get back into the swing of things, something else comes along to knock me off my stride. It’s been 2 weeks since my last review, no thanks to a cold, bedroom painting/remodeling and fresh ink on my arm that kept me from any alcohol for a few days. Well I’m back at it, going through my backlog of samples. Came across this port matured Kilchoman that @LeeEvolved sent me months ago, so I figured why not? Bottled at 50% ABV, non chill filtered and natural color of a dark orange with ruby red hues, almost pink at times. This is the 2018 release. The nose is all sweet smoky goodness. Sugary candy covered in dirt and ashes. Grilled plums and peaches, sweet BBQ sauce and BBQ chicken. Strawberry lemonade, lemon zest and sweet port wine notes. Slight medicinal/iodine notes, not un-Laphroaig like. Wine soaked oak and salty sea air. Peaches & cream, vanilla custard. Light mulling spices, salted chocolate with a pinch of cayenne pepper. Peat, dark honey, butter toffee and caramel. Buttery and a touch sulfuric but nothing to detract from the experience. A quick hit of maple at the bottom of the glass. Water tones down the smoky notes and brings up the fruitiness a bit and more vanilla. It’s a touch sour though and is better without water. The palate is sweet and smoky with plenty of power to it. More sweet than smoky. Peppered beef jerky, tangy BBQ sauce. Slightly tannic oak but still enjoyable. Sweet port wine, but not as thick as you might expect. Damp ashes, campfire smoke. Very salty, dark chocolate and toffee. Grilled plums and peaches. Quite good, if not a little simplistic. Water has the opposite effect as the nose. It was less sweet and the smoky notes seemed turned up a notch. Thinner overall though, best left at bottle strength. A medium to full bodied mouthfeel that is oily, mouthwatering and mouth coating. The finish is long with ashy peat, smoky BBQ sauce and lightly fruity. A pretty good port matured Islay. Nothing unpleasant about it to me. It falls a bit too heavy on the sugary sweet side for my liking (I prefer savory sweet), but it’s a minor fault. Definitely a fall/winter dessert dram. It’s about what I would expect from Kilchoman, which is quality at a slightly higher than expected price. I believe Lee paid around $90 and I think that’s about $10 too much. A solid 4, which is 2 full points higher than Lee scored it...what happened Lee? Cheers

I recently made a 3 bottle trade with a fellow Michigander I met on the Snupps app and he threw in a sample of the recent peated NAS, Fire & Cane from Glenfiddich. It’s a peated malt (rare for Glenfiddich) that was finished for several months in Caribbean rum casks. Bottled at 43% ABV, chill filtered and has colorant added making it an amber honey. The nose starts off fairly sweet with honey, lemon citrus and vanilla custard. A light peat (heavy for a ‘Fiddich), but it’s a welcome addition as it adds balance to the sweeter notes and also adds that much more depth. Slightly ashy/sooty with cereal malt, barley sugar and a bit of butterscotch, undoubtedly from the rum casks. Orchard and tropical fruits, apricots, peaches and grilled pineapple. Young and pretty simplistic, but bright enough to hold your attention long enough appreciated it. The palate begins with moderate peat, somewhere around the Highland Park level, enough to be considered worthy in my book. Ashy lemons, vanilla custard and malted barley. Apricots, pineapple and a little kiwi. Cinnamon & sugar, slightly floral, earthy and smoky. Again, a bit on the simplistic side, but not bad. A light to medium bodied mouthfeel that is creamy and a bit oily, mouth coating. The finish is medium long with peat smoke, light citrus and not much else. While this was nothing earth shattering as far as peated scotches go, I have to say it was a welcome variant on the otherwise traditional (and mostly boring) Speyside juggernaut that is Glenfiddich. Not complex and pretty much a 2 dimensional dram, but for the reasonable price of $50 you could do worse. However, for that much or $5 more I’d rather just buy a tried and true Islay 10 year old from Ardbeg or Laphroaig. Not a bad choice for someone still dipping their toes into the peated game. 3.5 and a thanks to Donald P. for the sample. Cheers

Picking through my mass of samples I decided to go with something light on ABV tonight. Great King Street Glasgow Blend from Compass Box at 43% ABV should fit the bill nicely. This is CBW’s budget scotch along with its sister bottle the Artist Blend. @LeeEvolved sent me this sample quite a while ago (along with many others) so it’s about time it got to it. There are many different components to this blend that I’m not going to list, but it’s 1/3 grain and 2/3 malt whiskies. As with all Compass Box expressions, this is non chill filtered and natural color, this one is pale straw. The nose is very light and delicate, not what I was expecting and not a good start. Faint smoke (Laphroaig is one of the malts being used) and lightly fruity. The grain components come through with vanilla and coconut, thankfully there is no harshness to it. A distant waxiness, and a just as distant sherry note. The whole profile is incredibly light and hard to pick anything out. Some berries and a bit of a rubbery/latex note. The Laphroaig becomes more dominant, but there wasn’t much there to dominate to begin with. Some of the classic Laphroaig medicinal notes and a bit of candy sweetness. A real disappointment of a nose. The palate begins with the classic Laphroaig signature peat and smoke along with the medicinal, bandaid, iodine and campfire ash notes. All those, but turned down to a 4 vs the real deal that’s at a 10. Faint oak and sawdust, vanilla, grain alcohol and coconut. Ever so soft sherry, raisins/grapes and nuttiness. Not as much of a letdown as the nose, but not far off. A light bodied mouthfeel that is thin and watery. The finish is short, almost nonexistent. Some smoke and vanilla but that’s it. This is by far the worst CBW I’ve ever had. Other than the Laphroaig peat smoke there is very little here of any substance. Almost no finish at all, the nose is too soft and subtle. The only saving grace is the peat on the palate. For $40 there are far better blends and even single malts out there. This might be ok in a cocktail as it should be easily hidden. 2.5 and I do not recommend buying it. Cheers

I’ve never heard of ginger infused bourbon before, but I knew that they went together because of how delicious a Kentucky mule is. Bourbon, ginger beer, mint and ice served in a copper mug, what’s not to like? So when I got a sample from @PBMichiganWolverine of this flavored whiskey (once you add anything other than water to a bourbon it’s no longer a bourbon) my interest was piqued. Bottled at 40% ABV, most certainly chill filtered and I would guess this is natural color (bourbon + ginger) of amber. The nose is super sweet candied ginger. Wow that’s a lot of ginger. So dominant and overpowering that it doesn’t leave room for much else. There are other flavors hidden in there like caramelized banana with sugar on top. The bourbon notes start to come through but it’s all so muddled that it’s nearly impossible to pick out anything else there. Then the cinnamon comes in. Spicy sweet cinnamon, like Red Hots candy. A small hit of oak but really this is a big pile of ginger with cinnamon and sugar piled on top of it. After a while some rye and corn come through, but it’s too little too late. The palate is incredibly sweet, saccharine even. Candied ginger with extra sugar. Cinnamon and sugar, Red Hots. Flat ginger beer and banana. Too sweet to enjoy neat for more than just a couple sips. A light bodied mouthfeel that is syrupy, oily, sugary and mouth coating. The finish is medium length, sugary ginger syrup and some cinnamon. This whisky is to ginger what Fireball is to cinnamon, even though there is plenty of cinnamon here. I can’t recommend this for anything other than cocktails and even then I’m not sure where it would be best used. At over $30 this is a hard pass when you can get a cheap bourbon and some ginger beer and make a great Kentucky mule and still have separate bourbon and ginger beer should you want each by itself. Buy it if you’re adventurous and have a crazy sweet tooth, other wise steer clear. Cheers

When most people think about quality blended scotch they instantly think Compass Box, and rightfully so, but Douglas Laing is also putting together some great stuff as well. Here we have Scallywag, a malt blend using only Speyside single malts, namely Macallan, Mortlach and Glenrothes (any others are not named specifically). Matured in both sherry and bourbon casks, bottled at 46% ABV, chill filtered and most likely has colorant added making it an amber gold. I can confirm that it is chill filtered because I made my wife a whisky and water with it (about a 5:1 water to whisky ratio and 2 ice cubes) and even after 20 minutes it remained clear as apple juice. The nose is full on sherry but not overly so, very Macallan-like or a more intense Famous Grouse. Red grapes, raisins and figs. Sherry oak, wood smoke (but not peat). Vanilla, semisweet chocolate, lots of fruitcake. Tobacco, leather, salty, raspberry chocolate. Definite signs of both well aged and youthful stock. After a little time the Mortlach worm tub profile starts to take form with those meaty/mineral notes. The Glenrothes components come in as well with a more honeyed profile. Honeysuckle, plums, melon rinds and dried apricots. Brown sugar, toffee, caramel and a malty biscuit note at the bottom of the glass. The palate is sweet sherry and lots of spices, but not too spicy. Very light peat and wood smoke. Dark chocolate, tobacco and leather. Vanilla, allspice and pepper. It’s all Macallan at first, then more of a Glenrothes feel with a pop of citrus peel, stone fruits and honey, oak and biscuits. More of that Mortlach meaty/mineral funk from the nose. Cinnamon, nutmeg and lots of fruitcake. A medium bodied mouthfeel that is a bit thin and creamy. Mouthwatering The finish is long with sweet sherry, baking spices, fruitcake and dry. When I first opened this blend I was not impressed. It seemed overly spicy for 46% and the Mortlach profile was too strong. There are only a handful of distilleries that use worm tubs that I actually like, Talisker, Edradour, Oban, Old Pulteney, Springbank to a lesser extent but they are growing on me, so that funk was just too much. It reminded me too much of Craigellachie which I am really not a fan of. The first half of the bottle was used for trading samples and once they were poured I let it sit a few months. Going back to it, things really improved. As I made my way towards the end of the bottle it really became a very solid dram. If you are a big Mortlach or Sprinkgbank fan and like sherried scotches then I would highly recommend this one, but I would say to work through it more quickly to maintain that profile. At $70 the price is a bit high, but I would say it still is worth it. A solid 4 Cheers

I received a sample of this bourbon from a guy I work with whose father in law is as much into bourbon as I am into scotch, but with a bigger budget. Parker’s Heritage is known for doing different barrel finishes, this one was matured 7-8 years and then spent 4 months in orange curaçao barrels. What’s orange curaçao you ask? Well I’ll tell you. It is a liqueur that is flavored with bitter orange peels. Technically it’s the peels of the Laraha citrus fruit. What’s the Laraha citrus fruit you ask? Well I’ll tell you. It’s a descendant of the bitter orange and the fruit is too bitter and fibrous to be considered edible. Why is it called curaçao and not Laraha you ask? Well I’ll tell you. The Laraha grows on the island of Curaçao located in the southern Caribbean Sea just north of Venezuela and east of Aruba. The Laraha is also known as the Curaçao Orange. Any time I mention oranges in this review, please note that I am specifically referring to the Laraha citrus fruit. Enough botany for today? Good, let’s get on to the whiskey. Bottled at 55% ABV and is non chill filtered and natural color of a red mahogany with orange hues. A very pretty color. The nose is dominated by the orange curaçao from the get go. Strong orange oil, orange peel and oak. A definite pine note as well. Orange sherbet/creamsicle, candied oranges. Equally sweet and bitter. The nose just screams mid to late October with baking spices, oak and oranges. Very unique. Some vanilla and chocolate start to come through along with candy corn. Baked apples & pears, brown sugar and caramel. Nutty, perhaps Brazil or pecans. Strong barrel char and a hint of mint. Water brings out more sweetness and tones down the bitterness, warmer with more of the classic bourbon notes. More caramel, toffee, vanilla custard and buttercream frosting. More corn. The palate is sweet for the first couple seconds, then a wave of spice takes over. On the bitter side after that with orange peel/oil. Oranges & cream, strong oak and a bit nutty. Corn, candy corn, some rye spice and ginger. With water there is just as much orange, but it’s sweeter, less bitter. Vanilla and even some coconut. A full bodied mouthfeel that is oily and mouth coating. The finish is medium long with orange pith, vanilla, oak and very dry. I didn’t expect quite this much orange flavor from only 4 months in liqueur barrels, but here we are, in a proverbial orange grove holding a glass of bourbon with an orange twist. I can only see this as a once in a while type of dram as it’s just too strange to be an every day sipper. I’m happy to have tried it, but once is enough for me. A solid 4 though. Cheers

I heard tale of this bourbon from a guy I work with who is very into the bourbon world. He told me it’s not mind blowing but solid, cheap, strong, and sadly, discontinued (turns out that last part was just a rumor at the time and it is still in production). So when I happened upon a bottle at a local shop I grabbed it and paid the man the $30 that the bottle was stickered at. The mash bill is 60% corn, 30% rye and 10% malted barley. Bottled at 57% ABV and is non chill filtered and natural color of dark copper. The nose is very minty/herbal/grassy to start, most likely to the high rye content. Rye spice, oak and sawdust, musty with a touch of dill. The corn starts to come through, but so does a bit of acetone harshness. More oak, and it’s quite nice, heavy barrel char, sooty, cloves and cinnamon. Charred orange peel, walnuts and banana peel. Floral, honey and apples, vanilla, chocolate. Letting it sit out a long time, over an hour, there is a light vegetal note, like cooked celery or water chestnuts. Water brings out more sweetness, stale popcorn, more vanilla, honey and floral notes, caramel and rye bread. The palate has huge oaky notes, rye spice and corn. Sweet and spicy, but definitely on the spicier side. Walnuts, banana, more rye and mint. Barrel char, caramel and vanilla. Not much else which could be due to the high ABV. Water brings more corn, less sweet and more spices. Spiced cake and some peanuts. A medium to full bodied mouthfeel that is lightly oily and astringent. Mouthwatering and then dry. The finish is medium long with oak, spices, corn, rye and caramel. Not great, but not bad either. Water helps make this more drinkable, but the key is ice. I found that a big ice ball (with or without a splash of water) really brings out the banana flavor. So if that’s your wheelhouse then load up your glass with ice. It’s not bad with a good dose of cola either. At $30 it’s a bit expensive to be used as a mixer, but the higher than usual ABV kind of justifies the higher price. While I’m not really a fan of ryes or high rye bourbons, I can appreciate this one. 3.25 Cheers

I received a bottle of this 2018 Macallan Classic Cut from my friend @LeeEvolved as a Christmas gift. He gave me a choice between this and I believe the GlenDronach Peated Portwood. Having had the 2017 version and found it quite good, I decided to go with this one. Bottled at 51.2% ABV (which is down significantly from the 2017 version), non chill filtered and natural color of orange amber. The nose starts off with sweet raisins...but then it was like someone flipped a switch and it shifted radically to straight up artificial movie theater popcorn butter topping. You know the stuff, thick, greasy and has that not really butter but kinda smell. That plus a huge hit of sulfur. Very sweet on top of that and quite fruity. Strange oaky notes as well, like the butter and sulfur got into the wood. Grape jelly, strawberry jam, blackberries, cranberries and blueberries. Butter toffee, caramel and vanilla, pie crust. Cashews and perhaps some peanuts. Light maple notes, brown sugar and even a little white chocolate. Letting it sit for a good long while more and more caramel comes out. Water will make it slightly sour if you add too much. Still has those buttery notes but not as bad. More raisins and some faint spices. Baked apples and pears. The palate is full on sherry. Big over the top bright juicy sherry, it really shows it’s youth though. Sulfuric and buttery, like someone melted a stick of butter and a sulfur candle into a bottle of cheap sherry. Ugh. Plenty of caramel and some mint. Tart berries, but still some sweetness, like a berry compote where only 1/4 of the sugar was added. Sherried oak and faint cocoa powder. Raisins and craisins and some light ginger. Not much heat given the ABV, but it lets you know it’s there from time to time. Water doesn’t do much but brings out a little more sweetness and tones down the overall profile. A medium to full bodied mouthfeel that is oily and mouthwatering. The finish is long with sherry, mint tea, caramel, slightly tart and dry. It took me a little over a month to work through this bottle and for the first 2/3 of it those buttery and sulfuric notes were inescapable and a chore to deal with. The last 1/3 still had them, but greatly reduced and the berry notes were able to be more easily enjoyed. Quite a disappointment when compared to its 2017 counterpart, like drinking a cask strength mixed berry jam... not really my kinda thing. A few redeeming qualities in there, but very much overshadowed by those funky notes. Thanks for the gift Lee, it did it’s job and got me good and buzzed on more than one occasion, but I’m throwing in the towel on this 2018 Classic Cut. Cheers

My wife bought a bottle of the standard Jameson and it came with a miniature of both the stout and IPA editions of the Caskmates expressions, so I decided to do a side by side. The IPA Caskmates is the standard Jameson that is finished in casks that once held IPA beer. It’s bottled at 40% ABV and is chill filtered and has colorant added making it a honey gold. The nose is very light, even compared to standard Jameson. Light cereal malt, some citrus notes. I would have to describe this as “crisp”. Grapefruit hops with a lemon note. Some faint honey and even fainter oak. There is a real lack of complexity here. Hoppy and floral and every now and then there is a light soapy note and a hint of pine. The palate has a surprising burst of grapefruit hops. Much stronger than the nose would indicate. Very creamy, some vanilla, very citrusy. Lemons and grapefruit. The IPA influence here is stronger than the stout influence was. Not much else to speak of. A medium light bodied mouthfeel that is creamy and mouthwatering. The finish is medium long, all grapefruit and grain alcohol. Again...it’s Jameson. The same, only different. The palate on this one is the most different of all the Jameson’s I’ve had. It’s definitely a one trick pony though. A serious lack of depth. For $33 it’s not terrible, but I’d rather get something else. 3.25 Cheers