Tastes

The expert notes are dead on here. The only thing i’d add is i get a lot of buttered popcorn and white pepper.

Fruit forward on the nose with sweet ripened orchard fruits intermingled with the clean grassy cereal notes of a well made irish. A touch of heat at the end reminds you this is cask strength. Its a beautiful nose - albeit slighly inferior in complexity to the blue spot. Baking spice, cinnamon and ripe bananas explode on fist sip, its got a bite. This isnt a dessert wine. Theres almost too much going on all at once, which is interesting and confusing at the same time. The finish is moderately long, with the baking spices and plum lingering in the background. Ive now had all the spots with the exception of the wine finished greens. Id rate them roughly as follows: blue>gold>red >yellow and then green without accounting for value. If you add value back in yellow rises above red. Id been lucky enough to find a blue very early in its run but had to wait for almost 3 yrs for a second and third. The gold spot was nearly impossible to find and became a sort of white whale for my mates and me until we finally located one. I can see what the hype was about, but to me the blue edges it out. I love how tighyly coiled and restrained the blue is. They both have similar notes and flavors but gold mashes the keys all at once and holds them down until you drown in them. Blue is like a jazz orchestra that takes a while to get going but when all the notes come into harminy it produces something greater than the sum of the parts. Glad i tried this and id likely get another for msrp.

Blackberries, Plum, spices, caramel on the nose. It’s a rich and complex dram. You can really taste the earthiness and wine influence.

Oaky and dry, musty and spicy with vanilla, orange and caramel. Thin mouthfeel but spice kicks in and sticks around. Baking spices, musty wood linger. It’s very quaffable but lacks a little body and viscosity. I wish they wouldn’t have watered this down so much but then again it might have been so oaky to be undrinkable if they hadn’t. I wouldn’t buy this again but would happily drink it if someone else did! I paid about $170 for this, which isn’t too bad but I’ve had better bourbon at that price point.

N: peaches, plums, baking spice. P: canned fruit in syrup, wood spice, mild lactic funk (which I love) Finish: medium length, sweetness gives way to a pleasant warming wood spice and candied mustiness I associate with old whisky that’s been aged in sherry. The expectations were high for this one. Maybe unrealistically so. I’d been on a hunt for a black art since trying the 5.1 a few years back and being blown away by it - that’s a top 5 whisky for me. I acquired this bottle of 6.1 at the distillery while on a scotch pilgrimage with good friends, which further adds to the pressure to live up to the hype. It was just under $400 which isn’t too bad compared to what one would have to pay to buy it in the wild near me. I think the 6.1 falls just short of those lofty expectations. I’ve just opened it so I’ll wait to see what happens and revisit after we get closer to the halfway mark (although that’s hard to tell with the black bottle!). I’m thoroughly enjoying this - I’m just not sure it warrants the $700-1000 I see this selling for if you can even find it.

I think I’ve finally arrived at the post hype stage of my ardbeg relationship. I’ve been so disappointed with pretty much every special release since blaaack, that my default stance is to expect to be disappointed. So when I finally got around to pouring the half bottle I shared with a mate (with a full one locked up for enjoying later) I was prepared to be underwhelmed. The nose is very intriguing. Vanilla, sweet candy and peppermint spice with swirls of wood smoke. Im surprised how sweet it is on arrival. Wood smoke and mild peat kick in, but don’t overwhelm. The spices from the rye really round this dram into form. It’s very good. Might be one of my favorite special releases in recent years. Surely ahead of scorch, ardcore, hypernova. It’s a solid sendoff for Mickey.

Really enjoy this wander back to the basics. You need to like medicinal peat, and loads of salt. It’s salty sweet like a salted vanilla pretzel. Right in my wheelhouse for a bourbon islay. I like seaweed and tar. If you don’t, I wouldn’t recommend this.