Soba45
Kavalan Solist Oloroso Sherry Single Cask Strength
Single Malt — Taiwan
Reviewed
February 16, 2019 (edited March 21, 2020)
I've had a few Kavalans now and they've all been yeah not to bad...but. This has none of the but about it. Initially I thought argh its going to be weird dr pepper sweet cherry thing going on based on the nose and yes there is a bit of that going on but its very well balanced by the rest of the components. I finally get what Kavalan is about with this drop. Rich wooded sherry, tabbaco leaves, prunes, burnt caramel, creme brulee cherry and a load more. This is very very good. The colour is like a rich pinot noir wine and the nose subtlety hints at the underlying flavours without any ethanol blast, nor on the palate. The aftertaste is slightly sickly cherry sweet which takes it down a notch and I dunno if I could drink loads of this, I'm more a dryer Oloroso sherry Finish person than PX style. Pure ongoing drink ability I'd rate lower perhaps in the 4 - 4.25 level but on overall quality and experience it's a 4.5. It reminds me of the Bruch Black Art 4.1 in a way...profile completely different but a great dram marred slightly by the over sweetness. Still I demolished the dram in record time with only a few drops of water to accentuate the flavour. Very, very well done.
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@LeeEvolved I was thinking about buying a bottle but further research led me to realize I had tasted a limited run edition of 507 bottles....I thought if it had the Soloist label there was just a single (ongoing) edition. I've seen excellent reviews of some Kavalan Soloist Sherry editions and poor ones of others (one TWE one I had I just gave a 3). So you may strike it lucky or you may not! Mine was the 58.6% variant.
@PBMichiganWolverine Ha yeah I saw Crown Northern Harvest Rye going for $130USD+ for a short time after...now I can get a litre for $60USD!
@Soba45 that idiot also caused the high Yamazaki prices by declaring Yamazaki 18 best in world. But...ironically it didn’t work for Crown Noble Northern when he did that for them.
@PBMichiganWolverine Two words. Jim Murray...:-) Once he named one of their whiskies best Asian whiskey in 2017 the mania around Japanese whiskies spread to this distillery, their reputation was sealed and then it was a case of supply and demand and started charging stupid prices. Yes I definitely wouldn't be paying the price they wanted but then again I've only bought full bottles in that price range or more a couple of times in my life. I have samples of another Taiwanese distillery omar which I'm looking fwd to. They also seem highly rated but much much cheaper.
@Soba45 I just don’t understand why all the Soloists are so crazily priced. They’re not doing anything special to warrant those prices
@LeeEvolved No worries :-). It's definitely a different take on the usually Scotish sherry casking effort. There seems to be a fair bit of variance on the scores on the site for this dram though. A lot of people love it but others note flaws so it seems like there is a bit of variation between batches. At least I got on the right side of the coin toss this time unlike the 25 yr Talisker experience!
I’ve wondered about this dram. I’m slowly trying to build a nice set of the Solist bottles and this one kept me wondering if this one was really necessary, with sherry casks not being as experimental as the others. You answered that with a resounding “Yes”. Thanks for that and for the excellent review, sir. Cheers.