LeeEvolved
Monkey Shoulder Blended Malt
Blended Malt — Speyside, Scotland
Reviewed
March 3, 2017 (edited March 24, 2019)
I decided to open this blended whisky while hanging out with a friend just to have something in front of me while flapping my gums. This is a blend that includes Glenfiddich, Balvenie and Kininvie of unspecified ages. It's a standard 40% and I'm sure is artificially colored. Technically, it's Batch 27.
First of all, it smells pretty sweet with little to no oak at all. That's pretty standard, though, for blended scotch. It's got to be as unoffensive as possible for the widest appeal it can get. Unfortunately, that also makes most of them bland.
This one suffers the same fate. Boring, uninspired and a bit of a chore to drink. It's very sweet, almost too sweet. I've had many Glenfiddich and a few Balvenie and I don't chalk either of them up as being overly sweet. I guess this is the Kininvie aspect taking center stage?
I think I paid around $30 for this bottle, but it's going to take awhile to finish this one off unless I find a mixer that plays well with it. I can't recommend it to anyone that prefers their whisky neat, but as filler it may work just fine. I just have to figure out which one.
Cheers, guys.
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And money saved for bottle of something better...thanks for diving on that grenade!
I bought a bottle of this after hearing some great reviews and had trouble finishing the bottle. I tried to share with friends but they didn't like it either. I believe this is a "vatted" malt, different from blends in that only single malts were blended together, no grain whisky added. I will not be purchasing again. Great review.
It' been a while since I tried this, but I remember being distinctly unimpressed. No real character to speak of; if I'm going to spend $30 on a blend, I'll get JW Black.