Malt Fascination

Last Saturday was the annual Whisky & Rum festival in IJmuiden, organized by a local but very well stocked liquor shop home to the same town (Zeewijck). Since IJmuiden is only 20 minutes or so from my home I have come to know the shop owner and shop a little bit and visit there a couple of times per year. Last year was my first trip to the festival and this year I planned not to go after hearing that it was planned for the exact date our firstborn is due.

But, since there were no signs of the wee one seeing the light of day anytime soon I carefully started breaking the news to the misses that I would kind of like to go to the festival after all. Without drinking of course, since I would have to be able to go home at any given moment.

She surprised my kindly shrugging and saying ‘well, it’s not like we got any other plans and as long as you can still drive…’. I was rather stunned. I love her.

So I made a quiet deal with Richard who runs the festival that I would like to drop by but buying a ticket was a risk. He was very kind and allowed me to not buy a presale ticket and such. Partly because I would not be a part of the actual festival including the booze and such (it saved all of us a bit of a hassle).

I arrived just after the biggest throng of people was in so the festival was in full swing already. Walking around a bit I saw some familiar faces and shook some familiar hands.

The atmosphere was rather terrific with people from all echelons of society happily going along. Exactly what I love about whisky (and comparable drinks). I hung around a few stands to have a chat. Kept a club member from being bored for half an hour trying to win a few souls for the Usquebaugh Society.

I had one whisky at the Kintra stand, a 22 year old Bladnoch that was quite different from Bladnoch’s distillery profile of grassy and sharpish. Good stuff! I thought about having something else but decided against it and after a few more chats I decided to call it a night.

Luckily I didn’t take that second dram, since I got pulled over for a general breathalizer test after leaving the festival. I think they were in exactly the right spot to write a few tickets that night!

My first ever Japanese whisky! It was prominently displayed at De Whiskykoning somewhere in 2006 and after softly calling my name for several months every time I walked by, I decided to pick it up even when it set me back € 70. A massive amount of cash for a bottle I hadn’t tasted before. I still don’t like taking a risk on bottles of similar price.

Back then my collection wasn’t very large so I had no problems opening it up right away and it turned out to be a highly enjoyable whisky. A lot gentler than I expected, though. It was in the period many whisky fanatics have gone through in the beginning of their whisky education. The period in which you’ve just wrapped your mind around peated whisky and want a dram as strongly peated and with the highest ABV you can get your hands on. This meant I had to get used to this one and it took me a few glasses to.

Sniff:
Warming and rich with quite some wood scents. Sherry and a bit of hot red cinnamon. Sandal wood as well, which is something I rather enjoy in Japanese drams. I get sour cherries and orange after a while, and slight hints of peat smoke.

Sip:
Quite gentle, but a little thin. Watery even. But that’s just the start of it. The flavors get more pronounced rather quickly. There’s a certain heaviness to it with smoke, cinnamon, pepper and again the Japanese oak. Orange and sweet smoke take over after a few seconds, and again the sour cherries and orange.

Swallow:
The finish is very gentle with more tropical fruits involved. Peaches mostly. Not too long and the spicy edges are gone.

I’m not sure which types of casks have been used, but a start on bourbon cask and finish on sherry and mizunara wood wouldn’t surprise. Maybe the blend is made up of those casks or married in them. Who knows… Good stuff nonetheless. There’s quite a lot going on and the flavors are still rather pronounced after 6 years since opening it. The investment was worth it. It’s a bit more expensive at the moment but still worth it. The 21 is only € 15 more expensive though.

Nikka Taketsuru 17, 43%, Blended Malt, available at Master of Malt for € 85.

Thanks to Mark Dermul, of Whisky Rambling fame, was nice enough to sell me a sample of the Ardbeg Day bottling. Since I don’t like spending money on shipping and such things, I decided it was a very smart thing to get some more samples from him in one go.

Since he is the Toshan man, I chose some new and rare-ish Auchentoshan, and a small sample of the Johnnie Walker Blue Label. The one of their usual suspects that I hadn’t tasted yet. Well, until they revamped everything that is.

The blue label is a fairly expensive blended whisky, with ‘whiskies of up to 50 years old’. Of course, that doesn’t mean shit, since that can be one drop (or even one casks) for thousands of bottles. Anyway, bitching at marketing aside, here it goes!

Sniff:
Initially it feels like it needs to find its balance before it starts working. Then you start getting sweet barley, pound cake with some old and weathered polished oak. Weird minerally notes and clay that’s being baked. It does get very sweet after a minute with caramel fudge, some orchard fruit like ripe apples and pears. Maybe the apples are too ripe.

Sip:
Not sparkling, but a bit of a similar tease at first. Not sharp though. It does taste ‘old’, maybe even a little musty or moldy. Some fruit, some wood, some spices. All expected flavours are present, which does make it complex. It’s not blowing me away, though. It gets more gentle quickly with fudge and toffee and a very small hint of coffee. Latte style.

Swallow:
The finish continues with the old and musty notes and shows a bit of the sherry cask’s direct influence with sherry flavours. Refill would be my guess… It reminds me of Christmas cake without the candied fruits.

As I said during the ‘sip’ part, it doesn’t blow me away. The watered down to 40% bit doesn’t help of course, and I think there’s colouring involved as well. There’s a lot going on but it never gets very stunning or any of the flavours very pronounced. There’s quite some ‘old’ going on, and some complexity, but I don’t really think it’s my style of whisky. I like bigger flavours I think, or a more decisive way of going at it. More clear sherry style, or more clear bourbon style, for example.

Johnnie Walker Blue Label, 40%, € 165.68 at Master of Malt

A nice 15 year old Macallan. Who’d say no, right? Well, I didn’t after a ‘New in Stock’ tasting in Den Bosch about 5 years ago. At 63.1 % ABV this one was packed full of flavour and one of the precious ones in my collection.

Last weekend I finally finished it in the need to finish some bottles that have been open for 5 or 6 years. There’s still a few left, but I’m crawling closer to my target to finish off some 20 odd more bottles this year.

This Macallan was, although ridiculously high in alcohol, not as burning and searing as some other Blackadders. And another weird thing is that I always considered this a sherry cask bottling, but the label says ‘oak hogshead’. Of course, that doesn’t rule it out, but I haven’t seen a single bottle that didn’t promote the sherry cask(s) used for years.

Sniff:
Juicy apricots and peaches, with quite some burnt or scorched wood. The smoke isn’t there, but there’s a certain charcoaliness to it. Some barley and straw as well, white oak. Based on the nose it might be a bourbon cask, although it has some sweet tropical fruits. Caramel and fudge pop-up too.

Sip:
Quite some vanilla that is the base of all other flavours. Spicy with tree bark and allspice. It does get really dry after a while, probably because of the insane ABV. With water more tropical fruits pop-up with lemon curd, pineapple juice and maybe even a hint of banana. It reminds me of recent Lochsides.

Swallow:
Again, loads of fruit and spices. The allspice and tree bark are back. Very long lasting. Watered down it gets maybe even more burning than it was before, strangely enough. Grilled apple and pineapple. Somewhat less tropical and less spicy.

This is an insanely good whisky. I regret not buying a case of it when I had the chance, but that’s always easy in hindsight. The rich fruitiness and tones of spices and wood really help each other shine. Stunning.

Oddly enough the edition that was released next year, which I hoped would be a back-up for this one wasn’t nearly as good, but I wouldn’t giving that a try again either. This one though. Damn!

Macallan 15, 1991-2007, Blackadder Raw Cask, 63.1%, Oak Hogshead (#21411), no longer available.

A few years ago, in 2009, us whisky fanatics were thrilled by the opportunity to buy bottles of whisky from the first new distillery in quite a while. Not ages, since there was Arran about a decade before, Glengyle, Ardbeg, Bruichladdich and some others, but still it was something new for many of us.

Kilchoman Inaugural Release

Without flinching we paid sizeable bucks for a three year old Kilchoman, mostly because there was the sympathy vote. A new independent distillery, in a crisis, without cash to spare. We all gladly chipped in to help out.

This doesn’t work for any distillery. Bruichladdich made it because they could charge regular prices for regularly aged whiskies from old stock. Glengyle/Kilkerran can hold its own mostly because of the Springbank and Longrow profits (plus, it only runs a few weeks per year).

Last year Glenglassaugh released their first three year old and I don’t know many people who bought it. Enough peope did probably, but they also have old stock that’s being sold off at premium prices.

Wolfburn Distillery

I am just wondering what will happen in 2016/2017. There’s a new batch of distilleries being (re)built now or soon. In the second half of this decade we will probably see the first releases of Wolfburn, Falkirk, Annandale, Kingsbarns, The London Distilling Co., Ardnamurchan and Barra. There are probably a few more but these are the ones I can think of from the top of my head.

Image by David Simon

I can’t help but worry for the people taking the risks of building a distillery and getting loans to do it. I wonder if people are still willing to pay anywhere up from € 50 for a three year old whisky because it’s new, if it’s the fifth in a year. I worry because I am willing to spend money on whisky, quite a lot if you ask my wife, but I hardly ever buy anything from the new kids on the block at this moment. I have some Kilchomans but haven’t bought any in two years. The same goes for Glengyle. I skipped the Glenglassaugh. I can’t remember anyone being thrilled by Abhainn Dearg.

Let’s just hope people have thought this through properly and are not just trying to hop on the bandwagon of whisky before the boom goes bust! (Or putting all their eggs in the collector’s basket, for that matter).

Lagavulin is a rare distillery to find anything off, except for their standard bottlings. I was lucky enough to find half a bottle of a Murray McDavid one at a whisky friend, who was selling samples of it (I bought the entire bottle that was left). Apart from that, they occasionally do extra releases, with the annual Diageo Premium releases always encompassing a 12 year old, cask strength version. This year, and in 2007, they also released a 21 year old but that’s about it, in recent history.

This 12 year old is one I picked up quite some years ago at De Whiskykoning and have been slowly sipping away ever since. I felt it was time to finish it, but not before writing notes of course!

Available at The Whisky Exchange

Sniff:
Quite some head-on smokiness in this one. Lots of straw and light yellow fruit, with apples and pears. Vanilla and creme brulee too. Carambole too (I had to look up the name, never had a clue!).

Sip:
Dry because of the load of alcohol in it. The flavour, however, is juicy and sweet with still yellow fruit, although more tropical now. Fresh pineapple, tinned pineapple and syrup. Also some vanilla, straw and the typical smokiness as well.

Swallow:
The finish continues the fruity, smoky ride we’re on but does become a bit more hot with more spices, pepper, tree bark, white oak. Quite dry too.

When I initially opened it about 6 years ago, I thought this bottle was as fiery as it could be. I think the years it has been open have mellowed it (or oxydized it, if you will), but I think it improved the whisky a bit. It allowed it to shine a little bit more.

All in all, this is great whisky. I tasted quite a few of the annual 12 year olds an never have they disappointed me. This one, however, is a bit more fruity and less typical briny / salty / heathery than I usually find Lagavulin. A nice diversion of the regular.

Now I want to get my hands on the current release.

Lagavulin 12, released in 2003, OB, 57.8%, currently priced around € 171

Another month has gone by and another load of beer was had. I’ve turned down my spending on beer so there will be less BrewDog, Flying Dog, Struise and other beers like that. Of course, I couldn’t stop all together so there’s a lot from De Molen, and other more local breweries.

Wake up Dead – Left Hand Brewery
A thick stout with loads of fruity flavours in it. One day, I’ll brew stuff like this but before that, this is a very good alternative. € 6.99 for a big bottle isn’t bad either.

Citra Single Hop IPA – De Molen
Light tropical fruits on a malt base, that’s what this one does for me. Mango, passion fruit, pineapple. Good stuff!

Cascade Single Hop IPA – De Molen
A more herbal variety of the previous one with lemon and lemongrass, more barley flavours. Sharp and crisp.

Super-charged Saison – De Molen & Hopping Frog
My first saison I think. A farmhouse ale if you ever try it. Seriously thinking about getting a case for bottle conditioning for a few years. Stunning beer.

Spanning & Sensatie – De Molen
Not exactly the Chocolate Oak Aged Yeti, but still a damn good beer like that. The pepper and chocolate work very, very well with the dark roasted malts.

White Label Barley Wine – Emelisse
Very fudgy with apples and cinnamon flavours. Malty as a base flavour. Very good stuff.

Never Mind the Anabolics – BrewDog
The one BrewDog beer I actually liked this month. I tried some Abstrakts that weren’t my cup of tea. This one though, although I’m not sure if it works, tasted rather fine.

Willy – De Prael
De Prael’s quadrupel. I always think of quadrupel as Belgian style Barley Wines. Very good and tasty. Thick flavours.

Skuumkoppe – Texelse Brouwerij
Their staple beer. And I see why. Quite some flavour, absolutely nothing wrong with it.

Columbus – Brouwerij ‘t IJ
I think this holds the middle between quadrupel and saison, which is a good middle to hold.

So again, I managed to get through all my craft brews in the shed, apart from what I made myself. Those will be had the coming weeks I think, so I got back to brewing some more. There’s still a few beers that caught my fancy over at Drinks & Gifts, but those might have to wait a bit. 75cl of a 10%+ beer with the mrs. being 9 months pregnant is not the best of ideas. Something with driving to the hospital and such.

According to my logs I write about how I rate booze every 6 months or so. I’ve been blogging here for two years and this is the fourth post. On the other hand, I haven’t revised my way of ranking stuff or written about it since April 2011. At least, that’s the post I can find quickly. Probably there’s a newer one, but I don’t really care for searching for it manually and the WordPress search thingy doesn’t pick it up easily.

Way back in the day, I ranked everything on a 40 point scale. That sufficed for some time, but after a while I felt I couldn’t really recall the nuances between 37 and 38 points, or 5 or 6 for example. Therefore I simplified everything to just a zero to five star system. 5 being incredibly good, zero which was utter crap from my perspective.

At Maltstock a conversation I had with a couple guys from Belgium turned to rating whiskies. They didn’t write down anything. They said: If I remember a whisky, it’s either very good or very bad. The very bad you remember and laugh about, the very good you put on your wishlist. Everything in between is not really worth remembering, since you only want to spend your money on the very good ones.

And there you have it. From now on that’s what I want to do. I’ll write down my opinion and that’s it. I like it, or I dislike it, or I’m a bit indifferent.

Snobby, you might say, but I see it differently. I try not to be a whisky snob. I hate that. I hate people who react to ‘daily drams’ as being inferior. While I believe some whisky shouldn’t exist, or at least not be bottled, I acknowledge that taste is a very personal thing and worth discussing, but should not be enforced.

By searching for the best and being very selective with what I spend my money on, I just try to get the most of my cash. I gladly pay a tenner more for a bottle if that means I enjoy it more. If that means I only buy ten bottles per year, so be it. Quality over quantity.

So that’s it. Another change in my reviews. It simplifies my life, and I hope my reviews become more interesting for it.