Tastes

Every year, after Thanksgiving, I join my wife's family in the annual trek to the Christmas tree farm outside of Three Oaks, Michigan. I can give or take on all the Yuletide trappings, but since Three Oaks is home to Journeyman Distillery...I'm willing to put up with a day of holly jolly crap to swing by the distillery. I picked up a few items this year; the Featherbone bourbon is the weakest link. A spicy-sweet, but unremarkable, nose leads into a noticeably sweet, gingerbread spiced palate that has just too much young spirit character and not much of a finish. I'm feeling generous enough to call it three stars since this isn't bad, just disappointing considering the comparative quality of their other products.

This year, I'm thankful for booze! OK, I'm thankful for booze every year...and not because I spend Thanksgiving with my in-laws. They're great folks, and they were pouring this lovely stuff tonight. While a weak 4 stars from me, this is a pleasant, well balanced rye. There are more stereotypical rye notes on the nose than the palate - cinnamon Red Hots, baking spice, dill abound on the nose, but these are all tamed down and swirled with chocolate and light caramel on the palate...and then those spices come back around at the finish. I don't know that it fully scratches the rye itch for me, but it's a solid "late evening with my wife's family" dram. Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm a bit amazed that I am the first person to review this lovely whisky from Tomatin! I missed my chance to buy it in Chicago, but sometimes life (and smaller, less cutthroat whiskey markets) give you second chances. I stumbled across a bottle in Madison, for less than $50, and I snatched it up...and I'm glad I did. This is to Tomatin (along with the rest of the Cuatro Series) what Lasanta, Nectar D'Or, and Quinta Ruban are to Glenmorangie. Take the standard house malt, age it in the usual barrels, and then play games with finishing casks. Like Glenmorangie, the light Tomatin base is an excellent canvas for finishes, and the PX profile of sweet richness does well in concert with the base whisky's sweet cereal notes. Tomatin 12 has always made me think of Frosted Flakes; now, we're in Raisin Bran territory as the sweet grain profile is made richer and nuttier by the sherry notes. The palate is creamy and sweet, with raisin, date, and slivered almonds joining the standard Tomatin milk-and-cereal profile. The finish is a bit short, but overall this is one of the better things ever to come out of the distillery.

Well, this is lovely stuff. Not life changing, not revelatory, but a nicely balanced bit of whisky. The nose is a bit of dried fruit, a bit nutty, and a bit citrusy, and a bit caramely - there seems to be some varied cask selection here, but it works. The palate, while a bit lacking in the flash department, is equally well balanced and friendly. You'll find most of what's on the nose on your tongue, along with the tiniest hint of wood smoke and a surprising coconut note at the finish. While initially short-seeming, the finish comes with a persistent plumminess that doesn't fully fade away for quite awhile. Yet another Flora and Fauna bottling that merits wider production and distribution!

Be ye warned: this note is NOT for this bottle. Rather, it's for Penderyn's Bryn Terfel whisky from their Icons of Wales series. As opposed to their Ikons of Whales, which is just fishy orthodoxy. At any rate, the booze. If a dram could be described as both light and full, this would be one such whisky - light in color and in body, but the flavor profile is round, rich, and tastes somewhat overwhelmingly of banana and marshmallow. Add nuts and chocolate and you could have a banana split. The marshmallow note stayed around for a while on the finish. Until Distiller adds this bottling and I can migrate the review over the the proper whisky, I'll refrain from entering a rating, but I'd call it 3 stars.

My grandmother (Mema) grew up on a Texas farm during the Depression, and her family is predominantly Scottish, so let's just say frugality is one of her dominant traits. When we'd go to the movies, she would always have me sneak in candy because she would sooner die than pay $4 for a box of Raisinets. Why do I tell that story? Because this dram IS Raisinets candy in liquid form. Raisin and chocolate swirl together on the nose and fill out the rich, spicy palate. A little bit of vanilla and sweet coconut hint at some American oak influence beyond the obvious sherry qualities. The finish is reasonably long and pleasant and, just when you think it's all over, the spices come back for an encore - cinnamon, clove, cardamom. A very tasty drop of whisky!

It's taken me a while to get to the point where I feel I can review this whisky, as it sent me on a rollercoaster ride initially. My first dram was quite pleasant and what I expected - a nutty, slightly spicy, lightly fruited dram that wore its sherry influence on its sleeve, but in that particular Glenfarclas style. It fell, as I expected, somewhere between the 10 and 15 year olds for complexity and body. My second dram was a disaster - I'm assuming either my taste buds were out of sorts, or I accidentally grabbed a dirty glass, or something, but it tasted foul and I almost didn't come back for a third dram. But I did, and then a fourth, and I'm happy to say that Dram #2 was an aberrance, nothing more. It is precisely what one comes to expect from Glenfarclas - dried fruits, nuts, a lightly smoky black tea quality (think Russian Caravan), a pinch of mint, a little something sweet from the bakery. It suffers a bit from comparison to older expressions, which simply bring greater complexity and longer finishes to the table, but it is an immensely drinkable sherried single malt priced quite favorably. For me, there's no need to bother with the 10 Year when I can buy a bottle of this for only an extra $7-10.

Part of a sample set from Master of Malt, so I can only go off of initial impressions. That being said, the nose on this is alone worth the price of admission. Bread pudding with raisins, orange zest, toasted almonds, creamy vanilla sauce. Now I want dessert. The palate matches up, though perhaps not as full as the nose might promise and the finish is shorter than I'd care for. Still, an enjoyable dram...I'd call this a 3.5, but no harm in rounding up, eh?

My beef with NAS whiskies is a simple one - too many of them are inferior replacements for age statement bottlings marked up for way too high a price. Talisker, to their credit, seems to have found a better way - continue to release age statement whiskies, charge less for NAS (or at least fair prices...your market's pricing mileage may vary), and use the NAS expressions as a means of branching out and exploring other ways of living into their distillery style. Here, they pull the lever back on the peat to reveal another side of Talisker. Grainy sweetness, caramel apple - very bright and fresh - open up the palate before the signature pepper, sea spray, and peat smoke drift in. This could be a trainwreck, but it works quite well. It's not going to supplant the flagship 10 Year, or the Distillers Edition, but then again, it's also not trying to do that. It's just out to show you the Isle of Skye - simultaneously beautifully gentle and forbidding - through the lens of its signature malt. Well worth trying if you get the chance.

The scene: Fort William, nearly the summer solstice. Rain, twilight, haggis nachos at the pub. Enter this dram, picked because I hadn't even heard of it, and I could see Ben Nevis from our bed and breakfast, so I figured it was local. It was the highlight of my evening (beat the hell out of Oban), and I was heartbroken to discover upon getting back to the states that it's not widely available here. If I'd only known that before I boarded my flight... Fortunately, Masters of Malt sells it, so I added it on to my annual whisky Advent calendar purchase, along with Talisker Skye and a pack of miscellaneous samples. Ben Nevis is as good as I recall: rich, hefty, full of dark dried fruit, fig, chocolate, orange zest, ginger, clove, cardamom, and a tiny whiff of sweet pipe smoke on the finish. Please, for the love of God, somebody start importing this and selling it in Wisconsin!