soonershrink
Tamdhu Batch Strength Batch 003
Single Malt — Speyside, Scotland
Reviewed
April 11, 2022 (edited April 3, 2023)
Prior to trying Glendronach 15, I hadn’t previously been interested in unpeated sherried scotch. But trying that one piqued my interest. I have since obtained Macallan Classic Cut in a trade, and now this one, a little dusty sitting on a local shelf.
A splash of water is recommended on this one. It's good neat, but it's even better with a splash, although if you overdo it, I think it goes too tannic. After trying this, I can see Fox's comparison with a barrel proof bourbon, as oddly, despite being aged exclusively in sherry casks, this hits with quite a bit of caramel and vanilla. The sherry fruits are there too, along with chocolate and some spicy barrel notes on the finish. I gotta say, I really enjoy this. I love the sherry fruitiness balanced by the bourbony caramel and spice with a little bitter dark chocolate. Top notch. Apparently sherry bombs are now in my wheelhouse.
By the way, who drinks all the sherry that provides these casks for whisky aging? Do you know anyone who drinks sherry? Do I need to start drinking sherry to do my part to ensure there continues to be sherry casks for whisky like this?
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@ContemplativeFox The nutty astringency of oloroso sherry is a surprise for many palates. I think there is a popular expectation that sherry will taste like port, but that’s only true (somewhat) in the case of Pedro Ximenez sherry.
@cascode your knowledge on this continues to impress me!
As for the sherry, I'd long wondered that too. Many thanks for the explanation @cascode ! I definitely recommend trying a PX and oloroso sherry. I won't promise that the experience will be enjoyable, but really you can pick and of them and you'll start to be able to detect their flavors. I was really surprised by how the Oloroso in particular tasted - not at all what I expected - and now I can detect it all over the place.
Haha, glad I wasn't totally off the mark with the bourbon comparison.
Welcome to the sherryhead club. Now you can trade off between smoky peat and sweet sherry. Cascode droppin knowledge per usual...the Aussie in the know
@soonershrink Ah, right - never heard of it. Must be very new and has no distribution over here.
@cascode no, it's called Galveston, a 12 year old. I think it comes from the Liber distillery in Granada.
@soonershrink Nomad, by any chance?
@cascode I was recently looking at a Spanish single malt that I believe used one of those. Glad I passed.
@soonershrink & @Bourbon_Obsessed_Lexington BTW one last point about sherry casks - occasionally you see an expression that was matured or finished in "ex-solera casks" and this is usually trumpeted as a big thing. Solera casks are barrels retired from a solera and were actually used to make sherry but the problem is they vary wildly in quality. It's not unusual for a barrel to be in a solera setup for 50 years, and by the end of that time it has about as much character remaining as a steel keg. I've tasted two "solera cask matured" whiskies and thought both were pretty horrible.
@cascode https://discord.gg/JuvB7bcf
@soonershrink Every time I've tried to follow one of the posted Discord links it says invalid - I think I have always seen them after thay have timed out. Hazards of living on the other side of the planet :-)
@Bourbon_Obsessed_Lexington It's hard to say but the big distilleries probably had stockpiles of barrels that lasted them for a while after the end of transport barrels. The embargo (it was Spanish law that changed things) was in the mid 80s so I’d guess anything put in a barrel after 1990 at the latest went into a new-style seasoned barrel. I’ve long thought that Lagavulin 16, for example, dropped in quality around 2004-2006, which is 16 years after the introduction of seasoned barrels.
@cascode once again you’ve proven everything I think I know about whiskey is probably wrong… and leaves me wondering how many bottles remain out there that would have touched those blessed, long gone casks
@cascode such a wealth of whisky knowledge. Thanks! And come join the Discord discussion!
@soonershrink The sherry casks used in the whisky industry were never the ones actually used to make sherry. They were “transport casks” that were used for shipping, back in the days when a wooden barrel was still the best way to bulk ship liquids. The sherry (which was high quality and of a specific type intended for drinking like oloroso or amontillado) would typically be in the barrel for a few months to a few years. After the barrels were emptied at a bottling plant they were shipped to Scotland for use by distilleries. In the 1980s the use of transport casks ceased and tankers or bottling on site and pallet transport from Spain became the norm. When that happened some bodegas began to produce “seasoned” barrels which are filled with mass-produced young “sherry” that is not intended for drinking. It does stay in the barrels for some months and is then dumped and either used again on another batch of barrels, or used to make vinegar, or distilled to make industrial alcohol. There are very few bodegas that season for a long time with high quality sherry. Your consumption of sherry will have no impact on the barrel industry, as it is now a different production stream entirely, but I would encourage every scotch drinker to buy a small bottle of each of several types of sherry just to help train the palate. Start with a PX, an oloroso and a fino – that gives you the base range of ultra sweet, medium and dry respectively.
@PBMichiganWolverine interesting
@soonershrink i think the sherry producers make more money on the casks sales than on the sherry.