Veil Double Espresso Vodka

Rating: 8/23 N: I get coffee and wood, not alcohol. There's something a bit spicy and light. It doesn't smell great, but there's an OK amount going on here. P: Coffee, sweet, spicy, something a tad off, a bit watery. Not impressive, but not bad. Definitely one of the better offerings in the Veil flavored line. The sweetness is just a hair artificial and the watery flavor from the vodka isn't helpful. Otherwise, it's fine. F: Some of the bitterness from the coffee and artificial sweetener remain. Not awful, but nothing exciting. This is definitely better than the caramel Veil. It doesn't taste great, but it isn't awful. I'm thinking an 8 or 9, but I think I'll stick with an 8. There isn't much actively bad here and there's a bit of complexity from the coffee, but there isn't much to recommend it either.

There's a lot of coffee on the nose, but it also smells like cigarettes. There's also some weird fake caramel and vanilla and something else I can't quite place. Maybe there's a bit of fudgey chocolate nose. The palate is much sweeter with the coffee and chocolate immediately coming out along with some strong sweetness and off flavors. It has some ash tray notes, but also some youthful sweetness like light caramel and sugar syrup, maybe with a bit of brownie. This is weird and definitely misses its mark, but it's not awful. There's several flavors but they're kind of weird together mixing the ash tray with light sugary notes and so forth. I think it's better than a 5 because it's interesting, but it's definitely not great because it's very rough around the edges. There's quite a bit of soap in here eventually too. Still, not awful. The long dark roast finish actually isn't so bad. With the mix of flavors going in here, it's actually a bit reminiscent of tequila. Weird. I'm going to start it at a 5 and update my rating later because it is just really strange in ways that are often not good. It highlights the icing sugar and fake caramel sweetness of Kahlua, as well as its chocolate rather than coffee flavor. Kahlua tastes substantially better, though not as complex and still not great.