Dan Murphys international whisky tasting night.
N: Thick artificial and rubbery. Lots of synthetic core syrup sweetness and liquid smoke flavour, vague lanolin and lightly fragrant herbs. This has been sat for maybe 30 minutes in the glass. Yet, was still an olfactory assault.
P: Corn sweetness and lots of candy (hairbo lollies!), sticky BBQ sauce and prominent wood ash. There is a pleasant toffee apple and cinnamon underneath but there is too much cloying corn sweetness to enjoy it.
F: Short-medium. Yet more candy sweetness and some building ethanol heat.
Aggressively artificial. No clear character or purpose for me just a powerfully synthetic mash of woodsmoke and sweetness. Wood smoke is hard to do well, and I haven’t found myself to be a huge fan, but this just came across like a home distilled garage experiment and is not something I would seek out.
Distiller whisky taste #177
135.0
AUD
per
Bottle
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@Ctrexman Good call. Their single malts are never less than interesting, and maintainm a subtle thread that is lost when they go overboard with special casking, mash-bills and ferments. Just filling good quality French oak casks with their distillate and letting it sit for a few years in that intense Texas climate is the way to go IMHO.
@DrRHCMadden Agree completely. There is a tendency towards intensity and simplicity from some distilleries who lose the plot that peat smoke in Scotland was never an intentional design element - it was just a necessary component. That does not mean it's something precious and immutable, but I taste a lot of these intentionally "wood smoked" whiskies that have only been done that way with the express intention of creating a wall of smoke in the profile and think "calm down guys - your distillate is good and it does not need this fake raiment".
@cascode couldn’t agree more. I thought this at the time. The red gum was super interesting at first, but it has lost increasing favour with me, it’s just too intense and at times can get a little nauseating. So much so, I didn’t even bother with a sampler of the stringy bark malt, or string bark rye. Wood smoke seems to be too aggressive at the best of times. And, in my opinion; is incompatible with high corn.
@DrRHCMadden This will make sense to you but few others here - I think of Balcones as very much the American cousin to our Archie Rose.
@Ctrexman I’ll try and track some down. I’m quite enjoying tasting distillery sets, seems like there’s a bit to sample for Balcones so may prove interesting.
The Balcones single malt line is very good to outstanding. The corn line is polarizing but there is some good stuff there
@cascode I find tasting events difficult to really dig into things too well, they come out thick and fast, people talking, no time to reflect and savour. That said, with this one, it didn’t deserve any more time spent, and it’s not something I will circle back to in more ideal settings. One and done. Ah, Sir; your 2c have a value of many thousands of $ in everyone else’s currency.
@DrRHCMadden My thoughts on this one were pretty similar - I never bothered to review it here as I only tasted it once at a pop-up Chambers Liquor store tasting where they served about a teaspoon in a little plastic cup. Absurd, but it was still enough to tell me I wouldn't be buying a bottle. Apart from that I've only had 4 Balcones whiskies and they have made very different impressions. The French Oak Texas Single Malt was very good and the Single Malt Single Barrel French Oak (confusing, I know) was Good. However I thought the Pot Still Bourbon was merely "meh" and I actively disliked the Baby Blue. Just my 2c.
@PBMichiganWolverine this was my first, certainly wasn’t left thinking I wanted to try more from here…
@DrRHCMadden one of the few Balcones I didn’t like. Their best ones yet, in my opinion, were the tequila cask, and stout cask