John Walker & Sons Celebratory Blend

I’m honestly not a fan of JW, but wow I really love this. Very floral and fruity. The higher abv makes it even more so. It’s like all of the yum you get with a nice px, port or sherry cask but none of the over powering sweetness. Could sip on this for many years to come. Very sad it’s a limited one time release. Would take one of these over any JW I’ve had including blue, without a doubt.

Flowers and red wine on the nose. More of the same on the palate with sweetness, nice spice, and vanilla showing up late. A very nice creamy mouthfeel. A long finish with spice, sweet syrupy fruit and vanilla. JW has done it again, opened my bottle, had some and then picked up another bottle right away. Enough said.

Simple. Fresh. Nice For Sipping

Nose: Honey, dried fruits and cereal notes. Country spring air. Palate: more honey sweetness, salted roasted bar nuts. Some fresh ground pepper adds a nice zing to things Finish: some subtle notes of peat smoke and dark chocolate bitterness. Raisins emerge at the very end of it all.

Nose: Apple, pear and malt on the initial nosing, maybe an orange peel aroma as well. The leathery Darjeeling tea and floral sherried oak that is common to all Johnnie Walker blends is present. Ginger, treacle and yeasty wash, and there is an ashy note – not quite peat smoke, more like soot. Complex and interesting for a blended scotch nose. Palate: On the entry there is sweet gristy cereal, malt extract, orchard fruits, thinned honey and red berries. This sweet arrival flows into the development, gradually accumulating more spicy and bitter notes. Cinnamon (both sweet and hot), pepper, a drying flavour like unsweetened cocoa and tannic oak all appear and the ashen note from the nose is present here as well. The texture is excellent, with silky and creamy highlights from the grain whisky component. Finish: Medium. The fruity and malt notes fade quickly (very quickly in fact), but there is a bright, crisp grainy flavour that lingers. The bitter tannic tinge remains until the end and there is a little white pepper and brine in the aftertaste. There is a particular quality to all Johnnie Walker blends that is instantly recognizable, and this certainly has it. It’s very much like a mixture of Red Label, Black Label and Gold Label turned up to 11. I can immediately recognise Cardhu in the blend and I bet there is some Teaninich as well, but that's all I can spot for sure. The hot and bitter notes combined with 51% abv would make it a challenging whisky for a novice, but to anyone with some experience I would think it should be most interesting. It does not taste "hot" as such, but the ethanol concentration amplifies the spice notes and tannins. Certainly anyone who likes Johnnie Walker should try a pour. So, the elephant in the room – is this REALLY what 1860s blended whisky would have tasted like? It is impossible to say for sure as there are no surviving samples of such whisky to analyse. There are recipes and blending records in the Diageo archives but the fundamental problem is that the style of malt and grain whisky that is produced today is very different to that of 150 years ago. The best that a blender can hope to do is make something that is an honest hommage, and approaches what we think it may have been like. On that score it's interesting how much this reminds me of Old Parr blended scotch, another Diageo brand that has a very old-school recipe, and I think that answers the question. Whether or not this is genuinely like something that would have been made in the 1860s it is most definitely a very “old-school” style of blended whisky, and that’s good enough for me. In reality, I'd bet good money that this is more like JW from the 1960s than the 1860s. Where does it sit in the JW lineup? Somewhere between Double Black and the 18 year old. It's more interesting then the lower echelon Red, Black and special finish blends that I've previously rated at less than 3 stars, but not quite up there with Blue Label or the old Platinum 18 that rate 4 or more. I agree with the official Distiller rating of 89, but the official comments leave me scratching my head in confusion. I’m not convinced that he and I have tasted the same whisky. At the usual price of $100 in Australia it is questionable whether this is value for money, however when I bought it on special for $75 I bought 2 bottles, and I’m glad I have one to keep in the short-term stash. “Good, not far short of Very Good” : 84/100 (3.75 stars)

Open 5 weeks Nose - Orange spiced chai tea jumps out of the glass immediately, hints of cinnamon apples, honeysuckle nectar, butterscotch, breakfast cereal, and noticeable ethanol punch. Palate - After that nose it is surprisingly light on the tongue at first. Canned apples and pears, floral honey, golden raisins, shortbread, black pepper, hint of citrus rind. Medium-long finish with bitter wood and ethanol, then followed by delicate apple and honey notes as it fades. I wanted to buy something special for NYE that my brother would equally enjoy. This seemed like a good choice at least in name only. Although considerably more expensive than most Johnnie Walkers or highland malts, there is a lot going on here at considerably higher proof. This is the best JW I've had, but I haven't had Green or Gold yet so one day I may change my mind. If you like highland malt, this is a definite buy and the type of special release I'd like to see more of from JW. It's frankly amazing that JW priced this so cheap.