Tastes

Soft nose with light hints of malt, lemon, grass and confectioner’s sugar. Starts gentle in the mouth and then swells mid-palate into lychees and other fruits. Long peppery finish with a hint of cream. I didn’t find anything special here - I’m not sure what the wine casks bring to the table - but it’s pleasant enough, especially when your local bar is selling pours at cost for members of its whisky club (cc @rmeister23)

Creamy and malty on the nose, with more of the same plus lemons in the mouth. Reminds me of a classic Bruichladdich - nothing too complicated, just tasty and satisfying. @SolanaRoots are you sure this is virgin oak? There’s none of the excessive oak spice that I associate with new barrels.

I’m attempting to plow through my backlog of samples by trying a half ounce and moving on if something doesn’t hold my attention. I may end up blending those that don’t grab me immediately, so perhaps we’ll see how well old Old Pulteney intergrates with esoteric Bruichladdich casks. For Friday’s session, I pulled out a trio of Springbank single sherry casks distilled between 1991 and 1995 and worked through them from youngest to oldest. The first one was distilled in 1995 and bottled 21 years later by Copper Monument from a sherry hogshead. Bottled at 45.8%, it started well with aromas of stewed fruits, a flaming Christmas pudding and caramelized nuts. But the palate was a little one dimensional and watery, a dialed down version of the nose. A nice funky aftertaste offered some redemption. The next one was more interesting: a private cask (#321 if you want to look it up) distilled in 1993 and bottled 23 years later at 52.3%. It delivered a tasty mix of funk, peat and leather on the nose followed by a sweet and savory palate that faded to a tangy finish. Still, half an ounce of both was enough — I’d rate them 3.25-3.5 — and I was content to move on to the eldest of the trio. Cask 420 was distilled in 1991 and bottled 25 years later for the wonderful Bleeding Heart restaurant in London at 53.2%. If you’re going to bottle a whisky for a location that can claim a connection to Dickens, it better offer some sense of history, and indeed the nose is rich in old books and older leather armchairs. On the palate, it’s much punchier than the other two, thick and mouth coating. There’s a burst of peat, followed by cocoa, melting chocolate lava cake and brown sugar. It finishes on the brown sugar note, which slowly fades into a coda of spicy peat. From beginning to end, a near perfect combination, lacking only some of that beguiling Springbank funk. Sadly, I had only one ounce of this, and I couldn’t find any trace of bottles for sale online - there were only 100. But it would be churlish to complain too much. Single casks are very hit or miss and I wager you’d be disappointed if you’d spent a lot of money on one of the first two. The Bleeding Heart bottle, however, is one that legitimizes the obsessional hunt for the golden barrel. Long may the search continue.

Aromas of dark honey and a smoky chili powder make this Lagavulin more broody than its older siblings. Sweet mesquite smoke tricks you into lowering your guard before a more vibrant peppery spice fills the mouth. You’re left to savor a peppery finish with a dusting of dark chocolate. It’s perhaps a little watery and lacking in mouthfeel - I’d love to try it at cask strength - but it’s nevertheless an enjoyable variation on the rest of the family and a redemption after the disappointing 10 year.

There’s an interesting twist to the latest limited-edition Laphroaig: nothing. No fancy finish, no complicated back story, just a traditional first-fill bourbon cask maturation with a sweet sixteen years in the wood. The last time we saw a 16-year-old from Laphroaig was a very limited half-bottle release for its 200th anniversary in 2015 and comparing my notes for the two suggests a similar recipe. The new version is still available from Amazon in the UK though I count myself lucky to have obtained one from the more limited US retail allocation. The nose is predominately sweet camphor with creamy undertones, though there’s a hint of lactic acid and lemon. Pine needles in a damp forest also come to mind. In the mouth, it starts sweet, then turns increasingly peppery. The aftertaste begins tangy, then veers into menthol with a hint of sweetness. It’s a straight-down-the-line Laphroaig, flawless in its representation of the distillery. As I wrote for the previous 16, it’s mellower than the 10 and less challenging than the 18. There are no waves of complexity to the palate nor any great surprises, but there’s nothing wrong with that when it comes to Laphroaig. Sometimes it’s hard to improve on the original.

Implausibly, Whisky Magazine has just given this one of its highest-ever ratings: https://whiskymag.com/taste-bottling/glenfiddich-12-years-old

I really enjoyed the Northern Borders collection of Canadian whisky released in 2017 so when I visited Toronto for work this week I made time to track down this bottle, which was hailed at one of the standouts from the 2018 series. I’m glad I did. The nose starts out like a high-rye bourbon but quickly evolves into something more complex. Waves of cream oscillate with the spicy aromas of fennel and cardomon seeds. The interplay between cream and spice continues in the mouth and peak in a finish that is long and yeasty, like a crumpet or Indian appam pancake. It reminds me in many ways of the recent Michter’s 10 yr rye and although this one doesn’t carry an age statement it’s three-quarters of the price. While that’s still ambitious by the historic standards of Canadian whisky, it’s hard to complain about the quality. A winner.

Nose is elusive and hard to pin down, but the mouth flavors are far from shy: they’re rich and flinty. I like such mineral qualities in a white wine, but they don’t quite work here. It’s too dry and austere and ultimately not very memorable.

I enjoyed this more than I expected given the disdain many people have for modern Dalmore. Lots of nuts and caramel in the flavor mix, but it never gets too sweet.

Revisiting this courtesy of the bottle @PBMichiganWolverine left me after we opened it a few weeks ago. It didn’t stand up to the competition on the night and it’s clear to see why when tasted in isolation: it’s a bit of mishmash. There’s some tasty sweet sherry/spirit integration mid-palate but the nose is quite muted and the finish veers off in a wood spice direction that feels non-sequitur to what precedes it. While I’m no fan of heavily sherried whiskies, this is one instance where I think the spirit would have benefited from longer in the cask.