Green Spot Chateau Montelena Single Pot Still

Nose: mixed candied nuts, distant tannic red wine, boozy ethanol Palate: brown sugar, fresh red fruits, walnuts Finish: menthol, white pepper, faint oak Nice flavor. Pricey. Seems a little younger, but a solid pour. Up to the individual to determine if worth the price. This really improves with the addition of water. It brings some strawberry cream to the palate, a little dried fruit to the nose as well as some ripe cantaloupe, and softens the finish with a not unpleasant fresh celery note added at the tail end.

Are Redbreast and Green Spot the Beatles and Stones of the Irish whiskey world? One producing great records of gooey pop goodness after another while their rival produces raunchy balls-to-the-wall singles year-after-year, making it near impossible to decide with any finality which is better. When my wife and I first moved into our house well nigh ten years ago, my uncle gifted us a bottle of Redbreast 12 at our housewarming, and until that time, it was the best Irish whiskey I'd ever tasted (though granted my experience theretofore had been Jameson and Tully). Since then the Irish repertoire has expanded to include bottles of Writer's Tears and Knappogue, but tonight, I added Green Spot, and if we're keeping with the rock parallels, Green Spot is the Beatles to Redbreast's Stones. Seriously, where had this Irish whiskey been my whole life? The amusing admission: I still haven't had regular Green Spot, which might be why I'm calling this one the Beatles. The Chateau Montelena, having been finished in Zinfandel casks, piles on the fruity sweetness like a McCartney piano ballad, but whereas I hate Paul's piano ballads, I love this flavor, this nose. And like a Paul ballad, it was something of a Long and Winding Road that led me to this Green Spot's door. By which I mean, it was #16 on the Whisky Advocate Top 20 in 2018, which put it on my radar, and my good friend from Chicago (who I've mentioned before in my whisky tasting review as a big influence on what I'm drinking) picked up a bottle of the regular Green Spot this past St. Patrick's day when we had our FaceTime call and raved about it. So at that point, I knew It Won't Be Long until I picked up my own bottle, though it was sort of fortuitous that Montelena became available as an online only pick in our local stores and I noticed it and snapped it up. The nose is as lovely as wandering through Strawberry Fields, the aroma heavily influenced by the wine to make the berries prominent, if not the most prominent note, but there's also vanilla and a bit of spice. The palate is rich and creamy (the creaminess being my favorite part), though of course, being Irish, there's also apple/pear and cereal grains in the mix. In the finish, I even get something like vanilla milkshake, which might be what the bottle profile is calling marzipan, which I've never had but my wife tells me is a sweetened almond paste. It's a nice whiskey to sip and sit with with no rush to finish the glass but let the experience linger as long as possible. I cracked this bottle with my wife tonight on the back deck since my wife, when she drinks whiskey, drinks Irish whiskey, and we sat and had a glass together as dark came over the house, enjoying the glow of the hanging lights above us. Now I'm at my parents' house, drinking it with my dad and preparing to watch our football team get our rear ends handed to us (because they're playing last year's Super Bowl champs; though update: they did make a game of it and lost by a smaller margin than expected), but at least the whiskey is good. I've seen this going for $100 in some states, but I'd never give them that much of my money for this. I nabbed it for $64.99, and at that price, I'd strongly recommend picking it up. Here the stock ran out within 2 weeks (I pulled the trigger when there were only 12 bottles left online), so my advice is don't hesitate. If you're an Irish fan, you won't regret it.