Kavalan Solist Vinho Barrique Single Cask Strength

This marks the final bonus sample from the Scottish Distillery Tour. A bittersweet feeling for me. The end of a long and fulfilling journey, but also the beginning of the next chapter in my own personal whisky story. I had a small sample of this Taiwanese single malt at Whiskyfest in April and I absolutely loved it. Let’s see how this sample compares. These are single barrel offerings, so it’s very possible that there will be differences from what I had before. This one was bottled at 59.2% ABV and is non chill filtered and natural color of red mahogany. The nose opens with baking and wood spices, but quickly turns sweet. Lots of concord grapes and raisins. Possibly the most raisiny of all raisins ever raisined...two scoops even! Grape juice mixed with motor oil, but in a good way. Sweet wine, blackberry jam, grape jelly. Allspice or ginger, vanilla, brown sugar, caramel, toffee, butterscotch and maple syrup. Plums, prunes, faint dried apricots. Old oak polished with orange oil. Much sweeter than I recall from the first time I tried it. Water reveals buttery biscuits, cranberry and cereal malt. A little bit of a vegetal note and maybe some old leather. The palate is super sweet and a bit spicy. Baking spices as opposed to a peppery spice. Grape jelly, grape and cherry cough syrup, cherry lozenges. Sugary raisins bring it to a close. Not at all the rich and savory dram from back in April. This is sugary and medicinal. Water brings out more medicinal notes, mostly cough syrup. A full bodied mouthfeel that is thick, oily and mouthwatering. The finish is long, sweet and bitter at the same time. Thick, cough syrup and grape juice. This is such a departure from the Whiskyfest sample I had months ago. That one was hands down 5 stars, rich and luxurious. This one is bittersweet and very medicinal. It would appear that either there are big variations between casks or the Whiskyfest environment was conducive to more favorable tasting notes. I’m inclined to think the former as other drams that night didn’t hold up to expectations. This cask can only warrant a 4.25, and that’s perhaps a bit generous. A big thanks to @PBMichiganWolverine for sharing this $200 bottle, but I don’t think I’ll be seeking out a bottle any time soon. Cheers

A rainy, dreary sort of day here in the Upper Midwest calls for a dram with a bit more heft to it than the lighter summer whiskies and gins I've been enjoying over the last few months. Thanks to @PBMichiganWolverine's generosity, I was able to scratch that itch with this fine bit of whiskey from Kavalan. The nose is marked by dark dried fruits, honey-roasted cashews, and sweet mulled wine. The palate has a creamy, almost buttery character (with a bit of spark from the cask strength ABV), and positively oozes dark fruit, dried tropical fruit, nuts, and spice. Very good stuff indeed!

1oz pour at Jack Rose. I was thinking of buying a bottle of this. Thank god I thought of trying it first. You just can’t trust these glowing reviews of Asian whiskies. Are they really that good? Or are people just happy to jump on the bandwagon and try something different? This is different. Prune juice. Robitussin cherry. No. Fuck that. Buckley’s. It tastes bad, but it will cure you of constipation and upper respiratory infections. I struggled to see how this could have won so many awards. It needed a lot of water before I got anything pleasant in the form of a desert wine. Still, it’s just too much raisins and prunes. The finish is a fight between syrupy sweetness and bitterness that I preferred to stay out of. What would I pay for a bottle? $40. Haha. 80 / 100