Tastes

Final dram tonight is Glenglassaugh Pedro Ximenez Sherry Wood Finish. Here's a dram that redefines expectations. Exploding with strawberry preserves, rum raisins, gingerbread cookies, orchard fruits, sponge cake, honey, and figs, it's fruity to be sure, but it's by no means a sherry bomb. Rather, the cracked white pepper and ginger notes typical of Glenglassaugh come out in full form, particularly in the palate, further enhanced by a touch of dark chocolate, raspberry jam, biscuits, plum, pears, and a fleeting bit of dememara sugar. There's clove, too, and a slight musk. On the finish, there's loads of those dark fruit notes: raisins, plums, figs, dates--and it turns the roof of your mouth into a canopy of flavors. There's cracked black pepper, but it has a back seat to the fruit medley. It does something few of the sherry cask finishes achieve: neither on the light, tangerine and fruitcake ting that from a quick trek in the cask that only flirts with what the sherry cask can offer, nor the picking up on heavier notes only with the loss of its pre-cask character. This somehow comes out of the cask an oddity: distinctively Glenglassaugh and yet distinctively a dense sherry contribution. Finish doesn't just last: it sings. Still after minutes have rolled by and the dark fruits are still hanging, giving much to ponder.

Candy corn, cashew butter, butterscotch, orange zest, caramel syrup, and faint baking spices adorn the nose of this rather smooth dram. For a cheap seat, it's something of a hidden gem: palate full of traditional bourbon flavors, including brown sugar, vanilla, black cherries, peanut brittle, and a drying rye spice that slips into a finish of milk cocoa and lots of tobacco leaf. Thin mouthfeel, with a medium-short finish. However, for not a lot of dough it's a good daily sipper for someone wanting a step down from the more assertive rye punch of some of its Heaven Hill brothers.

The nose on this dram is sneaky! If you didn't know better, you would think you were drinking a milder Islay as it has all the trappings: vegetable, moss, strong medicinal peat, sea spray, slight lemon zest, and white pepper. Palate is malty with intense salt, vanilla, crisp red apple, faint tropical fruits, floral, and sweet. The finish is medium, with more iodine and smoke, lime, and more vegetable and flower character. It's not as peaty as a typical Islay (although more than most peated Highlands), but particularly in the nose, all the essential characteristics are there. What does stand out in particular is the salt! Sharp, although not so much as to break the whisky.

Nose is not as peat-forward as most Laphroaigs (of course the smoke is still present), but has an assortment of seaweed, saltines, sweet oranges, peanut skins, sardines, and barnyard funk. Palate contains Band-Aids, butter, leather, dry earth, tangerine, and cereal. Finish rounds out with savory meat not unlike salted pork and fruity pepper. Lingering and mouth-coating, yet not as oily as some other Laphroaigs. The Madeira finish, while present, is subdued relative to say, the extent of the port casking on the 2013 Cairdeas.

Nose is orange peel, earthy rye bread, peanut brittle, caramel, and mild sugar cookie and baking spices. In the palate there is sour apple, cinnamon, rye spice, pepper, vanilla, and cayenne. Finish has brown raisins, brown sugar, mint, and draws out into a long spice-heavy finish with menthol, nutmeg, and eucalyptus. It rounds out chewy, mouthcoating, and enduring with a double wallop of rye and proof heat that is as flavorful as soul warming.