Glen Garioch 15 Sherry Cask Matured (Travel Retail) Review

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Following last week,s Glen Garioch which I liked and found to be a bit different, let’s have another Glen Garioch today, but this time an official bottling, a 15 year old sherry cask at cask strength that was bottled as an exclusive Travel Retail market offering at first, but it did slip into regular web shops.

Glen Garioch 15 Year Old Sherry Cask Matured Travel Retail (53.7%, €99,99)


glen-garioch-15-year-old-sherry-cask-matured-whiskyNose: Cereals and sherry, lots of vanilla, also sherry spices of cinnamon and nutmeg. Dusty and limestone notes like in many other Glen Garioch whiskies, rubber, ginger, a touch of perfume but also unsavorable lactic note and cheese. Continue reading →

Glen Garioch 23 Year Old 1991 Cadenhead Small Batch Review

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I was preoccupied with other things, so today we have a quick post with tasting notes of a bit weird (in a good way I promise you) Glen Garioch. It’s a 1991 distillate, bottled in 2015 as part of the Small Batch series of WM Cadenhead.

There were 444 bottles produced of this Glen Garioch and it was bottled at 54.4%.

Glen Garioch 23 Year Old Cadenhead Small Batch 54.4%, £81.79/€129,99)

glen-garioch-23-year-old-1991-small-batch-wm-cadenhead-whiskyNose: Spicy, very dusty as many other Glen Garioch whiskies, crisp ex-bourbon, honey, pickles (!) and after it opens up a bit, peat smoke which isn’t a big surprise being a pre-1995 distillate.

Palate: Sour, lots of peat smoke, honey, fruity sweet with pears on the front, pepper, a touch of ginger, oak dryness and as expected, dusty.

Finish: Medium length, lingering peat smoke , drying, traces of pickles vinegar, sweet honey, pepper. Dusty (doh!) Continue reading →

Glenmorangie Milsean Private Edition VII Review

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For seven year in a row with no end in sight, Glenmorangie presents us a new expression in the Private Edition series. 2016 brought us Glenmorangie Milsean (pronounced “mill-shun”) which means “Sweet Things” in Gaelic.

So it marks the returning to the previous theme of special cask finishes after the detour of Tùsail last year which focused on different barley. It was finished for 2.5 years in toasted ex-Portuguese red wine barriques (154 of those) and should bring out a candies shop feeling. If you want to learn more on this whisky, head up to the excellent and very detailed blog post at The Whisky Exchange.

Glenmorangie Milsean (Private Edition VII) (46%, £75.95/€89,00)

glenmorangie milseanNose: Ah, it’s very Glenmorangie at first with sweet honey, butterscotch, toffee, nutty with a dash of vanilla. Then come the sweet candied fruit, berries and tangerines, dry tannins and spice, sweet deep red hard candies (lollipops), bitter citrus peels. It’s tarty and jammy, even has a resemblance of roughness on the edge. Getting sweeter over time while maintaining the sweet candies feel.

Palate: Nutty butterscotch with bitterness turning to sweet and dry berries, candied fruit, spicy with lots of ginger along with some pepper and oak spices, earthy berries tart.

Finish: Short-Medium length sweet finish with spiciness (oak spices, ginger) and dryness.
Continue reading →

Cooper’s Choice Mortlach 1996 19 Year Old Review

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Haven’t tasted lately too many Mortlachs and it’s sad as most Mortlachs I tasted were very good and tasty (new official lineup notwithstanding), so it’s time for a new Mortlach review on the blog and today: a 1996 vintage Mortlach from a bottle share we did locally here. This bottle got me curious as I’m more used to ex-sherry Mortlachs, while this one was aged in an ex-bourbon cask.

It’s a 19 year old single cask Mortlach, bottled under the Cooper’s choice brand, a sibling to Finlaggan and Ileach brands from Vintage Malt Whisky Co. bottled at 53.5%, non chill filtered and not colored.

Cooper’s Choice Mortlach 1996 19 Year Old (53.5%, €135,70)

cooper's choice mortlach 1996 19 year oldNose: Not exactly a textbook Mortlach nose with a fresh nose and not much of the meaty stuff. Instead there is a leathery note and apricots, a restrained storm of oak wood spice, honey and vanilla pudding and freshly sawed evergreen woods with dust, With time: more apricots but of the jammy type, with lemon peels and a soft perfume edge. Continue reading →

Caol Ila 17 Unpeated Style (Special Releases 2015) Review

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It’s no news that Diageo release 2 affordable whiskies each year with their Special Releases annual series, The Lagavulin 12 and an unpeated release from Caol Ila.

The Lagavulin 12 2015 was already reviewed here (very favorable), so let’s check the other candidate this year: a 17 yo unpeated Caol Ila.

Interesting to see that it boast a jump of two years over last year’s release so it’s not coming from the same stock.

Caol Ila 17 Unpeated Style (Special Releases 2015) (55.9%, £89.95/€107/$144.99)

caol ila 17 unpeatedNose: Dusty, oh so dusty, much more dusty than the 15 yo, that I had to re-check the bottle for whisky turbidity. Vanilla and honey, traces of peat smoke (even here you can’t really escape it ah?), pears, peaches and golden apples. After a few more minutes in the glass, it gets less dusty (although it’s still there in big way), sweeter and fruitier. Continue reading →

Springbank 16 Year Old Local Barley Review

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Not all whisky releases were born equal as some of those releases are highly sought after for various reasons such as excellence, investment, collectability, distillery preference, etc. But setting price to such whiskies is a tricky job. Take the new Springbank Local Barley 16 YO as an example.

The Springbank Local Barley series has a great reputation, and Springbank has a large group of loyal followers and since the last LB bottling was in 2001, it’s understandable why it flew off the shelves in a matter of hours, even with quite a large batch size of 9000 bottles and a RRP of £95. But that price tag caught my eyes and invoked the musings in the next few paragraphs.

If you look at that price, isolating it from the hype parameters (distillery name, provenance, etc), you’d instantly think it’s too expensive. Come on, you wouldn’t pay that sum for a 16 year old ex-bourbon whisky from an anonymous distillery, right? I know I’d pay maybe £50 or £60 for such whisky but no more. But instead, we faced a price tag £35-£40 higher than what reasonably expected.

I’ve seen a couple of threads on the internet where people were trying to justify the pricing of the local barley release: Continue reading →

Ardbeg 21 Year Old – The Story of an Epic Marketing Faliure

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The inevitable has happened and it seems finally that an aged Ardbeg release, at least according to the new label that popped up on the TTB site, will be on shelves later this year.

ardbeg 21 front

It’s been like forever since we saw a new age statement Ardbeg (especially if you exclude ardbog, aged 10yo but not it wasn’t mentioned on the label) and it makes me giddy with excitement and also fills me with dread from the expected price tag (which I bet will be around the £250-£300 mark).

If you put aside the excitement and the fact that most of us will not be able to afford a bottle and look deeper into this forthcoming release, a few interesting facts come up and one brow raising question should be ask. Continue reading →

Macallan Rare Cask 43% Review

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A while ago I reviewed Macallan Rare Cask Black but it was not the first expression in the Rare Cask line up as before the Black there was the blank one 😉 (Or if you prefer, the one without an adjective). The Rare Cask whisky was released in the US late 2014 and it arrived to UK/Europe mid 2015.

In line with all their recent releases, this one is a NAS whisky and bottled at 43% so I assume it was chill filtered (the Rare Cask Black is bottled at 48% and non chill-filtered). So while the Rare Cask Black predecessor is lacking in terms of punch and whisky “purity”, maybe it’s more transparent regarding the content? After all, on the Rare Cask Black we only know there are less than 100 casks that has contributed (or can contribute) to it. So what do we know on the original Rare Cask? This is what The Macallan tells us:

Crafted to showcase complexity and depth, Rare Cask is drawn from the broadest spectrum of casks, 16 different types, ever identified by the Master Whisky Maker. Far less than 1% of those casks maturing at the distillery have been identified as fitting to bestow the Rare Cask name.  With rarity at its core, this is a whisky crafted from casks so rare they will never again be used in any Macallan whisky. Combining Spanish and American sherry seasoned oak casks, a high proportion of them first fill…

Allow me to be frank: This is collection of marketing bullshit! Where should I start in tearing all those nonsense statements?

  • 16 different types of casks? I’m trying to figure out what does it mean in terms of whisky impact – with so many cask types, I assume that for most cask types in this mix the impact on the whisky is negligible so why do we care? Is it done in for the sake of transparency? Why not just go ahead and fully list the types? Let’s have a small exercise and try listing the possible cask types in this mix: Gorda, Butt, Puncheon, Hogshead, ASB, QC and Octave, both American and European Oak and probably some exotic casks. But again, that’s all besides the point: The more the merrier? Does it really teach us anything important or relevant on the whisky itself?
  • “Far less than 1% of the casks in the distillery” – We have no idea what “far less” means here, the exact value could have been 0.99% or 0.5% and not necessary 0.01% as we’d like to imagine. And as Macallan produces 8 million liters of Alcohol a year, there are probably some few hundred thousands of casks in the warehouses so the limited range of casks may in fact not be so limited.
  • “casks so rare they will never again be used in any Macallan whisky” – Oh really? Just like most refill casks? And allow me to bet that the first fill barrels will be used another time…
  • Besides, what’s so rare in sherry seasons oak casks? Give us whisky only from proper sherry casks, now that will be rare!

OK, time to stop the rant as I’m getting too upset from this marketing mumbo jumbo and let’s check if this whisky is worthy of the “rare” title.

Macallan Rare Cask (43%, £190/$229.95/€279,99)

macallan rare cask 43%Nose: Ooh a very gentle and lovely Sherried nose, I usually don’t mention appearances but it got some rocking legs in the glass. Dried fruit, soaked raisins, cinnamon and nutmeg, hints of sour berries, blood oranges and after a few minutes also cereals and vanilla (must be some sherried American oak casks in those 16 types, right?) and 50% cacao chocolate. A very elegant nose. Continue reading →

Deanston 20 Year Old 55.3% Review

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Another Deanston whisky review but this time it’s a limited edition cask strength Oloroso sherry whisky. Until now the widely available official releases have been ex-bourbon based, with special editions (such as Deanston Spanish Oak, wine casks and BYO) available at the distillery only, so it’s a good sign that Deanston embraces the sherry route for wider availability – we even got a few bottles of this in Israeli stores!

Deanston 20 Year Old (55.3%, 8400 bottles, £100/€129,50)

deanston 20 year oldNose: The creamy note is apparent here, with sweet honey and butterscotch, but slowly the sherry influence sneaks onto the stage. There’s dried fruit, fresh berries and dates. It must have been some old sherry refill as the impact isn’t too strong after 20 years. Oh, there’s vanilla too so maybe some american oak too? Continue reading →

Deanston 18 Year Old 46.3% Review

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Burns Stewart Distillers were busy last year with many new releases, from the 18yo for Deanston and Ledaig up to the 42yo Ledaig. I have found out (via Michael) that BSD official importer in Israel managed to bring a few crates of those new releases so it’s a good excuse to review some of them.

The first one on the operation table is the Deanston 18 Year Old. It was aged in hogsheads and then finished in first fill ex-bourbon casks for extra sweetness. As usual with BSD, it was bottled at the customary ABV of 46.3%

Deanston 18 Year Old (46.3%, £61.95/€107.50)

deanston 18 yoNose: Cereals, porridge and butterscotch, sweet honey and creamy, light vanilla, hay and meadow, almost flowery (but not), hints of huge spice to come on palate with white pepper as a teaser, nutty/almonds, pears and peaches and sweet oak.

Palate: Creamy and spicy, white pepper, honey, cereals porridge, bread dough, hay and meadow, gentle oak wood spiciness, semi-dry yet maintain rich feeling

Finish: Medium length, gentle bitterness of oak with a touch of grapefruits, creamy sweet honey,

Thoughts: Surprisingly better than I expected as the sweetness from the first fill barrels finish is balanced elegantly with the oak bitterness. The bottle price in UK is very reasonable and would recommend one for that price but the price in Europe and in Israel (around 110 Euro) is too high. Too bad.