Tastes

A full-on nutty sherry profile on the nose, but surprisingly thin on the palate. Given time, flavors of dry fruit and creme brûlée topping emerge. Delicious, but a step down from the Sanaig’s blend of sherry and bourbon casks.

I get brown sugar on the nose, plus tangy fruits. The palate is vanilla cake with pieces of dried fruit. The finish is dry with a hint of sweetness. Great balance of bourbon and sherry casks and my pick of the three core Kilchoman bottlings.

Dear Kilchoman - Your participation in whisky festivals is damaging your reputation. That’s my conclusion after tasting your core range with a brand ambassador last night. I have tried your whiskies many times at festivals and always thought them fine, but nothing more. I realize now that they are much better than that if sampled outside the environment of a festival, where one’s frazzled palate tends to remember only the biggest flavor bombs. These are sophisticated whiskies best savored in isolation. What’s more, I do not recall anyone at these festivals ever explaining to me why you have so many variants, a factor I always found too confusing to warrant my time, but I now get that there is a logical progression from the 90% bourbon cask of Machir Bay through the 50/50 bourbon/sherry of Sanaig to the 100% Oloroso of Loch Gorm. With my appreciation thus recalibrated, I can now declare that I enjoyed all three of this core range. The Machir Bay, which I’m told is technically a five-year-old, has a nose of white pepper and vanilla. The body is crisp, malty and creamy with a hint of sweetness on the finish. It’s technically excellent and perfectly quaffable, if not quite exciting enough to warrant a place in my liquor cabinet. Date stamp on the bottle implied it was a 2019 batch, but I don’t think we need another entry in Distiller.

This 15-year-old Laphroaig was an off-cycle release in the Cairdeas series: not a cask-strength take like the usual annual bottlings, but a limited edition released in 2017 from first-fill ex-bourbon barrels. The nose is more akin to the peaty 10 than the fruity 15 Laphroaig released for its 200th anniversary, only a little softer and sweeter. There’s a Meyer lemon edge to the sweetness, with a hint of heather and lavender. It’s surprisingly thin and delicate on the palate to start — the peat is more of a buzz than an overt presence — but then it quickly turns bitter. After that you’re left with a sour aftertaste. For all the great whisky that Laphroaig produces, it too often seems content to bottle sub-par liquid. This is one of those times.

How old do you want your Lagavulin? After giving us an eight-year-old for its 200th anniversary and a nine-year-old for the Game of Thrones series, Lagavulin has now released a decade-strong travel retail exclusive. With an upcoming 11-year-old Nick Offerman edition bridging the gap to the annual 12-year release, can 13, 14 and 15 be far behind? As a brand extension strategy, numbers seem more defensible than Vikings, and at a mere 40 pounds at Heathrow the stakes for punters are low even if the expectations are high on the back of the two younger releases. It’s bottled at 43%, which is in line with the 16 but three points less than the 8 and 9. The label speaks of a mix of rejuvenated and ex-bourbon casks, which is hard to parse: presumably it’s all ex-bourbon casks, but some of them have been re-toasted. We’re off to a good start with the nose, which is very promising: a rich and sweet toffee that should be very accessible for people offput by the more aggressive aromas of the 16. There’s a delicate peat too, but the impression is predominantly caramelized sugar. The palate is a little confused, however, and it took a couple of tastings on separate nights to get a partial handle on it. What’s certain is that it’s surprisingly light at first. After that I struggled to get a consistent reading. On the first tasting, there was a beat before the peat kicked in, which it did with a rumble that built up to a tongue-numbing level, albeit with a sweet undertone. I got a burst of caramel at the end but not much after that: the finish was a little short and flat. Take two suggested I needed to reset my expectations and consider this a delicate and subtle Lagavulin, an oxymoron if ever there was one, yet I’m still filling in the blanks between the soft start and the caramel drizzle at the end. Is there any flavor in the mid-palate to speak of? All in all, it’s rather underwhelming. Was Lagavulin trying to make a gentler version? Did it have some inventory in dodgy casks that it needed to move before it took a turn for the worse? Will my reset expectations learn to enjoy its subtleties, assuming some wait to be discovered? I suspect not.

Single Cask Nation don’t get a lot of reviews here, and in truth I don’t get to sample their stuff as much as I do the bigger independent bottlers. But thanks to a special offer at my favorite watering hole, I am able to give them a bit of the notice they are due and also get an introduction to another distillery I haven’t encountered before. This young and punchy Miltonduff has a somewhat funky nose with notes of bananas. It’s perfectly quaffable at its bottled strength and pleasantly oily. Flavors of orange and toasted malt lead to a long and spicy finish. The nose blooms with water, yielding aromas of hay. It’s juicy and lemony in the mouth, then sweet and tangy. Overall, interesting and good value. One reason I’m happy to give a shout-out to Single Cask Nation is that in addition to bottling good whisky at fair prices they also produce a very informative podcast, One Nation Under Whisky. In fact, it’s the only podcast I always make time to listen to. Check it out if you’re at all interested in the business of making and selling whisky.

I’ve been picking up some Ben Nevis samples following my great experience with the new batch of the official 10 year old. This was a somewhat different but equally delicious dram. The nose is TCP, warm tarmac, sweet paprika, Fisherman’s Friend and, of all things, turkey sausage. The palate is minty, spicy and sweet, with notes of baked oats and cured duck. The finish is exceptionally long, with a low rumble of spice and a rich malty undertone. Easy drinking at its bottled strength.

Some professionals in the whisky industry cringe when people complement their product as “smooth” but it’s the first adjective that comes to mind when drinking this. It really goes down like a warm honey, with a long aftertaste that is just the right amount of sweet. There’s not much of a nose to speak of, and you have to search hard for a trace of peat, but it hits the spot as an easy drinker. If you’re looking for something akin to a session whisky, you could do a lot worse than this.

Lemon Starburst chews on the nose. Lemony in the mouth too; smooth and oily to boot. The finish is long, sweet and a little sour. Goes down easy at full strength, but a bit of water doesn’t hurt. Perfectly fine, especially when the second one is free during happy hour!