Tastes
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Well, this was not easy to find, but worth the pursuit! Like, whao. The most intense banana flavor, but so pure and natural that it’s the closest thing to drinking the puree of a very ripe fresh banana that I can imagine. This is it… the quintessential, intense, and super rich, bananas foster in a glass experience. Pure, clean, and a beautiful expression of banana.
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Took a while for me to pick up on the apple notes… first, I got woody vibes, and it had the character more of whisky than of brandy. But upon returning to it, there is an apple essence in there, but it’s subtle and very dry and removed from any acidity and quite dry, doesn’t quite pack much of an apple punch.
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Bought this by accident… but I’m not mad about it. This is actually quite nice. The Benedictine is balanced nicely by the brandy, with round woody notes and warm fruity, vanilla, and honey notes. It’s kind of a cocktail in a bottle in one sense, or the base of a nice cocktail waiting to happen in another.
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This is not subtle. It's rose water and a field of other flowers followed by a complex bouquet of other botanicals and spices that are much harder to place, but reminds me of walking through a flower shop. If you love floral gins, this is the one for you. Juniper character is really played down here... so gin purists might feel a certain way about it, but this would be a perfect bottle to break out for romantic themed cocktails.
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A really great bottle for the price. Subtle brown sugar and maple, along with cigar box, boot leather, and cedar. Just all around pleasant, approachable, and easy to enjoy. The finish is long and devolves into more and more bracing tanin and oakiness. This might be like the bourbon equivalent of Monkey Shoulder for me, but we'll see.
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A beast! Smokey, umami, almost bacon-like. With savory richness that keeps going and evolving on the palate. I'm not well-versed enough on peated scotch to truly rank this, but I'd like to do a blind tasting some time soon of this one, Lagavulin 16, and Laphroaig. But this is right up there with Lagavulin from my initial impression.
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This is… an experience. When I drink this and I’m in the mood for it… there’s just nothing else. For reference, the only other Islay single malt in my repertoire is Laphroaig 10. Other than that, only peated scotch has been blended. I get so much complexity out of this. Smokey, tamari seaweed snack being eaten on the beach as the sea spray hits me and the person next to me is eating a bowl of figs while smoking a cigar. It’s … camphor and eucalyptis and other hard to place but adjacent flavors. Herbs and earth. It’s like asking me to try and pick apart what’s in Ricola. I tried this tonight 3 ways: neat, on the rocks, and then in an old fashioned. The old fashioned was great, but you could skip the bitters and a bit of saline helps bring out the brine even more. The rocks mellowed things out, but this actually just made it less sweet, somehow MORE smoky (to me), and less savory, all while making the ethanol paradoxically MORE noticable. A few drops of water in the neat pour opened things up a bit and there’s almost like a baked vegetable… roasted broccoli? … deeply complex element coming through. It’s that core peat-induced flavor that I can’t seem to find the right analogue for. Also tried this just now in a rusty nail. Now this is an interesting twist on a classic. Almost unrecognizable. Maybe could benefit from something else to balance things out. Oddly, though, the spirit itself is quite balanced. Sublime.
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