Amrut Chairman's Reserve Greedy Angel's 8 yr

I have not written a negative review in a long time, but my least favorite “holiday” has me in the mood for such an endeavor. Hoe costumes, candy, and free handouts – Hallowe’en combines three of the biggest threats to a productive society. This is a review of Amrut Little Greedy Angels Chairman’s Reserve 8-year-old bottled at 50% ABV. This sells for $360-400. Non-Scottish scotches are across-the-board bad value now and are for those looking for novelty rather than quality. While the Indian malts have not become unpurchasable if you want to open bottles and drink them, unlike Japanese malts. But the Indian malts are still disappointing. And, in retrospect, even opening older versions of vaunted bottlings like Yamazaki 18 or Amrut Spectrum, I realize that these things were never better than good Scotches, and never deserving of the excess demand forced upon them by attention-seeking reviewers. Greedy Angels is nowhere near the quality of Amrut Spectrum. I admire the bravado and transparency to slap an 8-year-old age statement on a bottle and still charge $400, and I know about the truth that, in tropical climates, the liquid in casks evaporate much quicker, hence the moniker “Greedy Angels.” But it is a myth that you can then equate an 8-year-old Indian whisky to a 16-24 year old Scotch. Scotches that spend a long time in the right casks become beautifully refined and soft. I have never experienced a single malt from India, or Taiwan, or Tasmania that has been able to shortcut that refinement and softness. This 8-year-old whisky tastes like a good 8 year old whisky. There are no new make spirit flavors remaining, but it is still a brash and in-your-face experience. The tropical climate aging has not expedited the softening of this pour, but it has turned it into an infinity bottle type experience. As in, your non-master-blender-infinity-bottle that swallows $100+ whiskies and, alas, always manages to be the whisky version of someone with schizoaffective disorder off his meds. There are notes of meat, tobacco, ginger, mandarins, lemons, tropical fruits, and dried fruits with a modest amount of smoke, but there is an overriding alcohol bite, yeastiness, and acidity that I did not enjoy, for the price of this whisky. It is, in terms of aesthetics, loud and akin to the hoe costumes of Hallowe’en. I bought my bottle for $400. I would have been happy with the purchase if it were $100.

Now apparently there are quite a few variants of this whiskey, 8, 10, 12 yr etc. This is I believe the original bottled in 2017 with a run of 1350 bottles. It was released for the 60th birthday celebration of the Chairman of Amrut. For the Chairman Mr. Neel Jagdale's birthday, they created the Greedy Angels 8 Year Old Chairman's Reserve Indian single malt - at the time, it was the oldest whisky they had released. Now amongst the haze of Dramfest 2020 which despite 10 days passing I still haven't touched a whiskey (although that's about to change), this was towards the end and probably around the 900 mark but hey who really knows I just thought I'd pick a good one to celebrate the milestone. And it was..damn fine whiskey. One of my top 10 -15 out of the 120 plus that I recorded tasting. Would love a bottle but %$#!! the price dear godness...$250USD for an 8 year. As an aside Amrut was in my top 5 bottlers/distilleries out of the 40 or so I tried.