#Dramogram was a small whisky project that happened during May of this year. The idea was that every participant got a random other participant and would send a blind sample to that person. This way everyone got one sample and sent one sample.
I sent a couple to England, because nobody sends just one sample. I also got a wee box of samples from Joe Ellis, of Whisky Wednesday fame. Two other samples were in the box. One was the standard Ballantines Finest (which I hadn’t had in ages) and the GlenDronach Allardice. Reviews of those two are to follow at some point.
As for the notes I was supposed to put on Twitter on May 31st. It turned out to be a bit tricky, since that was the day we arrived in Scotland and we were still settling in to out cottage when the night was upon us. I did manage to get a few tweets out but I did the tasting notes from the top of my head. Here are the more ‘official’ ones.
Glenmorangie Artein. Available from Whiskybase Shop.
Sniff:
Rose wine at first, with barley and vanilla added. It’s warming and you can smell the cask it comes from (Super Tuscan wines). I also get a whiff of dunnage warehouses. It’s very sweet and gentle, with quite a lot of vanilla notes.
Sip:
Gentle too, with a light sparkling touch to it, like soda water. There’s a hint of pepper, grapes and less wine influence than I expected. It’s tasty though, with syrup, grapes and chalk.
Swallow:
The finish suddenly has a rather overpowering wine flavour. There’s also oak. It’s lasting quite a while but when it starts fading it just drops off the radar.
The first time I tasted it my palate must have been off since I didn’t really pick up on the wine notes and I thought it was a bourbon. There’s such a lot of sweetness and vanilla going on that it would have been entirely possible.
What do I think of this whisky: I’m not entirely positive. While it is a tasty drink, the rather overpowering vanilla oakiness take away a lot of the Glenmorangie character and what’s left is overpowered by the wine notes. It’s a nice experiment but not one I’d love to own a bottle of.
Glenmorangie Artein, Super Tuscan casks, 46%, available from the Whiskybase shop for € 92.50.
