Jameson Caskmates Stout Edition

N: It's Jameson - caramel, vanilla, just enough fruit so you know it's Irish - but added to that are a few new wrinkles: chocolate, coffee, cola (maybe) and some dark fruit. Actually, quite a nice mingling of flavors. P: Chocolate hits hard early - soft, sweet milk chocolate first that shifts to a more bitter dark chocolate. This is a major change from mainline Jameson. The expected caramel and vanilla cream flavors saunter in and out of the chocolate bath at times. There's a bit of coffee in it too, but the fruit is more subdued than might be expected. Finish is, like Jameson, bitter first then moving to cinnamon spice. There's a third step in this that doesn't happen in the original: the cinnamon spice is joined by a lingering sweetness and chocolate. The bitter here comes across more like hops (or even coffee) than the tannins of the original. The cinnamon is much more subdued here and tends to fade out when the sweet chocolate hits. It basically turns into what I might expect if I ordered a Mexican hot chocolate in an Irish bar (Why? IDK, but I"m sure someone has done it). This is a solid line extension. It's a good complication of the original that feels like it adds something interesting rather than just presenting a different approach to Jameson. As a stout lover, this has been a go-to for me for years now. That said, approaching it for the first time since undertaking my pandemic inspired self-guided whiskey education (and having exponentially increased my exposure to different whiskeys in the process), it feels too sweet and overly chocolatey now. It's just too easy. The Teeling Small Batch can be found for about $5 more (maybe even less than that at times) and it offers substantially more depth and complexity - so much so that this starts to feel like a gimmicky flavored whiskey in comparison. I feel like I'll still return to this bottle from time to time, but it'll be more of a "good memories" than a "good whiskey" type of return.

Like Guinness? Like Jameson’s? You’ll love this.

Vanilla, butterscotch, dark chocolate