Ransom The Emerald 1865 Straight American Whiskey

Nose: maple, cinnamon, and an unmalted barley sweetness. Definitely has oily elements akin to redbreast 15's nose here a bit. Palate: fruity, spicy, sweet. Cinnamon, wood. Mild cherry/redcurrant. Honeyed red apple. Finish: mild wood tannin and baking spices.

Since Ransom has impressed me at every turn, i took a chance on this. French oak and restrained maple on the nose. Thick on the tongue without being sugary. Mellow with bread notes and spices and herbs that evoke USA not Ireland - at least to this guy. Quiet fruit notes that make me think brandy or cognac or even scotch. Smooth, mildly tannic, stewed apple and pear finish. I’d be interested to compare this to some scotches as well as Ransom’s The Geezer and Old Tom gins. A fascinating American whiskey.

Quite complex. Does not drink like an Irish whiskey, very much American with the strong barrel spice. Sweet nose of candy and French oak not unlike cognac. Hints of dates, caramel among faint biscuit on the palate.

Rating: 14/23 I heard good things about this when it first came out and have ben wanting to try it since. It's always seemed a bit pricey to me, but I finally found it on the cheap side, so I pulled the trigger. I'm interested to see how much like an Irish whiskey this is. N: Um, what? This has a lot of vegetal funk (and other funk) going on. Nothing here seems Irish. If I'd had to guess what I was smelling, I'd have guessed rhum agricole. It's very oily, but sort of like motor oil. A bit of tar, sugar cane, I'm getting somewhat rotting vegetation, grass, soy sauce, meat. I had a Japanese rum like this once. The meat here seems kind of like underaged rough distillate. Digging deeper, I do get a hint of that clean Irish oiliness behind the grass and it leads into a whiff of tangerine, apple, and floral vanilla, but that quickly vanishes behind the meat and soy sauce. It's a fairly complex nose, but it's quite out of balance. P: OK, so I'm getting rhum agricole, but more prominent is a yeasty American single malt - Westward, specifically. It has a ton of that Westward yeasty, papery funk. There's also a rubber flavor to this - though it's good, not like that rubber paired with ethanol that comes through in young, bad distillate. This is more like that Ardbeg tarriness, which does still make it challenging, but I like it. Some soy sauce hangs out with the rubber in an oddly successful way. No smoke in here though. Hard water minerality. A little oat creaminess. A farmyard character comes out, melding a nice sulphur with grass, a light oiliness, and a smooth transition into sweet apple brandy. There's a layer of vanilla here as well that kind of stands apart from the rest of the flavors. I do also get a little bit of cinnamon spice and some rhum agricole vegetal flavor like baby carrots mixed with a little zucchini. And maybe some other stuff, but there's a lot happening here. The depth and complexity here are terrific. The flavors are bold - almost too bold. The balance teeters, but it doesn't fall over. F: Barnyard funkiness mainly. Sort of a rye tartness and mintiness comes through at points too. Also, a bit of baby carrot here and there. I think there's still some more complexity here, but I'm having trouble describing it because it's very muddled. - Conclusion - In what way is this an Irish whiskey? This tastes more like an American riff on a Campbelltown scotch. OK, looking at the bottle, I see now that this is attempting to resurrect an Irish whiskey recipe from the 1800s, so who knows what it tasted like then. If Joseph Magnus is an indication, all whiskey tasted very different. So maybe if I'd read the bottle first (or just remembered - surely this was originally a big part of why I was so interested in this whiskey?) I'd have been less weirded out by this whiskey. At the end of the day, this is a great whiskey. It's very funky, but mostly in a good way. The complexity and depth are just amazing. I'm disappointed by how sanitized Irish whiskey has become, assuming it once was styled like this. So here's my dilemma now: Loch Lomond 12 (16) is also trying to be a spiritual Campbelltown whiskey. The Loch Lomond 12 is less complex, but it's richer and more coherent with a clearer maturity. I can sit and contemplate this for ages, but there are some off notes here, whereas Loch Lomond 12 is only lacking in that it doesn't have enough amazing notes. Also, although the palate is just barely balanced enough, the nose is not. The finish is fine, but its complexity is minimal, so it's not a really exciting end. In a quick side by side, Ransom's Old Tom Gin isn't as complex, but it's still fairly complex and it's much more coherent. Overall, I like this quite a bit. Its flaws are minimal, but definitely noticeable. The bottle does improve with age though, so they may all vanish. It's unfortunately that typical Ransom funk paired with a young age. Copperworks suffers from a similar funk until it has aged sufficiently, but then it's terrific. In spite of the flaws this has, I quite enjoy it. On the other hand, in spite of its tasty flavors, I find that it has trouble against low-end sippers like Compass Box Great King Street Artist's Blend (14). I was considering a 15 for a bit, but I'm now leaning towards a 14. This seems probably superior to Dewar's 15 (13). Considering the harshness of the Artist's Blend, I do think that this is a slight step up. I can imagine moving this up to a 15 in the future, but Loch Lomond 12 is clearly better, so I wouldn't go past that. I'm actually really close to moving this to a 16 though. If this just loses that bit of sulphur while it oxidizes, it will definitely be there.