Blue Spot 7 Year Cask Strength Single Pot Still

Wow is this one interesting. So much going on. The whisky is delicious. It shifts flavor profiles as you drink. From the core of a yellow spot to a rich sweetness and mouth filling flavors. It lingers very long and nice. The tiniest drop of water opened it up. Great straight but the addition of the drop was better for me. Love this one!

Review # 200. Breaking out the biggest of my big guns. And this will be a dead bottle when all is said and done tonight. N: An absolutely heady scent of mature red wine, pear, peach, coconut milk, and toasted almonds. Crisp red apple, vanilla, caramel, and cookie flour. Tropical flowers. A boozy apple cider and cinnamon note. Rich, heavy, absolutely delightful. P: Caramel, vanilla, spiced coconut, cinnamon, wood. Apples and dried leaves - taste of autumn. Cherry and bread pudding. Plenty of baking spice in the middle - ginger, more cinnamon, nutmeg, coconut shards, cardamom, cumin. Worn leather and some dust and earth. Then another splash of ripe orchard fruit, surprisingly. Mineral notes, slightly bitter, transition to the finish. Hot and chalky finish with sweet pear and green apple nipping at the sides of the tongue. More of the same baking spice as above lingers for a long time. Then something like a raisin cookie emerges after several seconds. Exquisite dram. An incredible taste on par with just about anything else I've had (probably top 5) and certainly a top 2 in the Irish category. The only Irish I can compare this to is the Redbreast Cask Strength. The batch I had of that bottle was absolutely divine and a hair better than this, just a hair. This is deeper, richer, more complex and actually makes the RB look a little simple in comparison. But I liked that simplicity and I paid $67 for the RB and $300 for this (a moment of weakness following a COVID test - negative). It's really impossible to justify that swing. But then there's the batch variation in RB. Maybe Blue Spot will have significant batch variation - too early to say - so that could be a wash. Hard to pick a winner. Bottom line: a bottle of this at the $85 or so it's supposed to retail for would be the killer app of Irish whiskey, but that's just not how the whiskey world works right now. Still, I think the RB is (or was, at that time) underpriced and this is overpriced (thanks secondary :-/). I would probably grab this again (two bottles, in fact) at $150 or less. I'd be tempted at $200. If your budget allows the splurge, grab this one. Price aside, it is an excellent whiskey. _______ Please come join an unofficial Distiller community on Discord: https://discord.gg/4nfePCdyKM. (If the link is expired, post a comment and I will post a new one.) We chat spirits (and other things) in real time while being a great resource to each other for recommendations, finding deals, and generally enjoying the journey together.