Tastes

3 stars because it's not bad, but minus a star for being about $15 more than it should be. Straight Edge and Wayne Gretzky Red Cask are both better options if you're a fan of wine-finished non-scotch corn-forward whiskey.

It's Redbreast 12 if you watered it down a little and replaced the butter-biscuit notes with pears that were juiced the second they became perfectly ripe. It's not very complex, but it doesn't need to be - it's delicious as it is. Like white grape pear juice and a combination of red and teal Fruit Roll-Ups. Skip the water on this one.

It's hard to be mad at an $11 bottle of whiskey for not being complex. It's not bad - it's just that the word Mellow should be replaced with Dusty. Drinking this is like the flavor equivalent of inhaling ground up corn- and sawdust. Mix 4 parts Mellow Corn and one part Talisker Storm and you've got something interesting, though, so there's that. I guess.

It's the scotch equivalent of swimming in the sea for a couple minutes longer than you ought to because the lightning in the distance is now MUCH closer than you thought it was. It's saltwater, brine, slight iodine, light smoke, some sweetness, some heat, some malt... It's incredible. If you close your eyes and envision standing on a cliff overlooking jagged rocks being washed-over by the ocean right on the bleeding edge of Scotland while sipping this you might swear you were actually there. For some crazy reason (I'm not complaining) several stores in the Twin Cities sell Storm for $30 or less a 750mL. This and Weller 12 (if you can find it at suggested retail), for the money, are probably the best two values in whiskey, period.