Malt Fascination

Last Saturday I may have been swearing a bit on Facebook and Twitter. I’ll explain why below.

Yoichi is one of my favourite Japanese distilleries and since I was planning to do a lot of SMWS reviews over the coming weeks, I thought this was a nice one to start with. Yoichi is one of the last distilleries (maybe the last) that still uses coal fired stills. It’s situated on Japan’s island of Hokkaido, in the far north of the country. In the winter it can get quite polar there so there is a lot of wheather influence on the maturing casks as well. This results in a rather unique whisky.

Nose:
Slightly smoky from the start with sweet cherries and polished wood. Rather sweet and on closer inspectation there are also other red and black fruits like blackberries. I also get a lot of spices including ginger.

Taste:
Very dry with a massive amount of wood influences. Almost astringent. Sweet red and black fruits but most of all the cherries are back. Furniture polish and leather wax. Incredibly sharp.

Finish:
The finish is slightly different and very, very long. It starts of rather sharp but soon settled down into loads of forest fruits with mostly cherries and blackberries. I also get a slight hint of custard and tropical fruits like mango.

An absolutely stunning dram with loads of great flavours. Although it’s bottled at almost 60% ABV, it tastes more like it is a lot higher than that. Therefore I thought it a good idea to give it a few drops of water to get the sharp edges off the mouth feel and get a bit more flavour out. Luckily there was a glass of water on the table and I knicked a few drops from that. Or so I thought.

Apparently after about 6 years of drinking mostly water, Anneke decided to get a few cartons of Crystal Clear. For the non-Dutch: That is some chemically preparing saccharin influenced fruit drink. Which looks exactly like water. So, instead of water I got that in my superb whisky. Absolutely ruined my dram and since I only had a small sample of 2cl, I ruined everything I had of this great (and expensive) whisky. My wife half expected me to hurl my glass through the living room in frustration, but instead I ranted on Facebook and Twitter. I can still almost cry thinking back about this.

Anyway, this is one of the best drams I’ve had this year and I will add it to my wish list for sure. Hopefully a bottle comes by on some auction site or someone who reads this will sell one to me 😉

Yoichi 1982-2009, SMWS ‘Almond slices and Cricket bats’, Refill ex bourbon hogshead, 59.6%, used to go for € 105, but I expect it to have doubled in price.

Whisky and how you collect it has always been and will always be a topic of much debate. Since I’ve been shouting about Bottoms Up tastings and downsizing, I thought to give my two cents.

My collection started with a single bottle back in 2004 or so. A Glenfiddich 12 and after buying it I couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that I’d just bought a single bottle of booze for over € 25. By the time I finished it, I bought another one, and after visiting a whisky tasting in Den Bosch at Barrique, I bought a cask sample there. That went bad within a week because of a non-air tight cork. After tasting several different whiskies at my father in law, I decided a visit to De Whiskykoning was neccessary.

There I bought a Caol Ila 18. From then on I would go there every two weeks and buy a bottle for quite a while and my collection started to take shape. Since then I went from a wooden crate, to a dressoir to a whisky cabinet to boxes behind the chairs to a whisky room. The whisky room was camouflaged as an office at first, but since I stopped working from home all non-booze stuff has been removed.

Now I find myself having about 240 bottles of which most (some 140) are open and I don’t like that. Not that I hate it, but I found myself buying random stuff because I felt like buying whisky. I’ve ended up with at least 20 bottles of which the cork hasn’t been off in at least a year, some boring whiskies and some bad whiskies, some will become sauce.

I’ve decided to start downsizing my collection and focus more on quality. Tasting samples first, saving money for a bottle and then buy that one special bottle. A good way to start was the Bottoms Up tasting, at which we emptied about 10 bottles. I’ll be finishing off some more bottles over the coming weeks and will probably take bottles with me when we go away for a weekend with friends and such.

The goal for 2012 is to reduce the amount of open bottles to a maximum of 100 and decrease the amount of cash spent on booze. So far (with about 2.5 months already gone) things are more or less according to plan. I’ve been able to buy some, sell some and trade some and my wishlist has only five bottles on it.

The wishlist:

• Springbank 21 (the old one)
• BenRiach 1975-2011 Asta Morris
• Inchgower 1982 Duncan Taylor (might turn in to a Malts of Scotland one, depending on the sample I got from Martin)
• Sazerac 18 2011 or 2012
• Caperdonich 1972-2011 Perfect Dram

Fun fact: I’ve never tasted Caol Ila 18 again after finishing my bottle in 2006. I’m too scared it will fall off its pedestal.

Last week I was planning to bottle my London Porter (a kit from Brupak), but since we had been away for a bit, the central heating hadn’t been on and the fermentation took a bit longer. I bottled the stuff last Sunday.

Officially I should have been 30 bottles/10 litres, but the thick yeast on the bottom of the bin was quite a lot, I spilled some and I tasted some, so I ended up with 28 bottles. Still a very decent result, right?

The flavour of the Stout is something that I hope improves over the coming couple of weeks in the bottle. Now the flavour itself was rather OK, but it tasted quite thin and didn’t have nearly enough body to be really good.

The new batch in the bin is a Scottish 80/- Ale (80 shilling), which should be a very decent ale, if the body is right. Rather simple in its flavour, but very drinkable and I could keep on brewing stouts and other heavy beers for quite a while, but they’d be ready in summer. I prefer lighter beers then.

I think when this batch is done I might drive up to Brouwmarkt in Almere to get myself informed on taking the next step and make a pale ale from scratch with malted barley and hops. To counter the fact that our central heating is off when we’re away, I also want to pick up a heat belt.

The logo is still under review, it’s probably going to be the one below, and I think I’m sending out a couple of beers to Boyke ten Broeke when the next batch is done. So thanks, Boyke!

Last Friday was the date that I finally hosted a home tasting again. It had been ages and I wanted to do a Bottoms Up or left over tasting for quite a while to get through some almost empty bottles and lower the levels in some bottles that weren’t going fast.

My pre selection was some 30+ bottles to which I added and removed some before the date was finally upon us. In the end there was a good variety of ages and ABVs with some nice cask strength bottles and such. Of the people coming to the tasting, I believe that about half brought some bottles as well so during the night there were over 40 expressions to taste.

Martin, from the Usquebaugh Society brought a bottle of Coleburn 1972 which, apart from being the most luxurious bottle on the table also was my favourite. This was mostly due to its old fashioned style of whisky. A Highland Park 17 by Adelphi was the runner up. Highland Park was a theme on the table for some reason with there being 5 or 6 different ones available.

In the end I think I had about 15 whiskies and I wasn’t drunk. That was a relief, especially in the morning when our new dining table arrived at 10 AM. I don’t know how everybody else fared, but regarding how some of the guys left my place, I can only guess (and chuckle).

I don’t give up easy. Another Douglas of Drumlanrig bottling from a distillery that was still on my list, so for that, thanks Elise! After yesterday’s deception I decided to taste another one that was sitting around, and before it empties up in the Bottoms Up tasting tonight!

Nose:
Weird. I wrote it down as having a very heavy flavour of light sherry. As in, the sherry flavours are fairly light, but there a huge lot of it. Still, not too much, and also some cereal, ginger and bay leaf. A bit of wood, but for some reason I still find it tastes young. A 12 year old shouldn’t have that.

Taste:
Quite spicy with chilli peppers but also peaches, wood, simple syrup and a bit of a sugary feel to it.

Finish:
The finish is remarkably fresh with some caramelised peaches and other tropical fruit. The canned variety. After a short while you get a lingering taste of wood.

General comment: It’s an okay whisky. Not too bad but not something I’ll remember long (contrary to yesterday’s Macduff). The sherry influence is pretty good and consistent but I think this should have been in the cask a few years longer.

Allt-a-Bhainne 12, 1997 – 2010, Douglas of Drumlanrig, 46%, Sherry Butt #6187, used to cost around € 36

Another left over I got from helping out at the Whisky Festival The Hague. This time a Macduff, and I’ve been looking forward to this one, since Macduff is putting out some terrific casks lately, most of them around the 10 year mark from 2000 and 2001. This one is from a hogshead instead of the more regular sherry butt and bottled by Douglas of Drumlanrig. This bottler is considered by many (myself included) as a hit & miss bottler, with quite some nice whiskies but also a few that really suck.

Nose:
I get a huge hit of balsamic vinager right away, with green tree bark and lemon juice. There’s also a scent of boiled vegetables in a very, very nasty way. In some cases the balsamic vinegar scent works, but this is not one of them.

Taste:
The flavour profile is a bit better than the nose was. Reasonably sharp, lemony and quite grassy as well. Wet, mossy wood, like the green tree bark above.

Finish:
The finish is, again, a little bit better, with some young woodiness added to the grass and lemon. Not very long.

After writing down these notes I threw the rest in the sink. This is an absolutely dreadful whisky, in my opinion. It tastes like the cask gave of the exact wrong flavours. The finish loses much of the very nasty flavours but doesn’t give any goodness in return either.

While Jock Shaw states that there is no bad whisky and you’d be happy with this after being stranded on an island for a year, you’d also be happy with a half rotten mango after almost being starved to death. That doesn’t make it any good, though…

Macduff 10, 1999, Douglas of Drumlanrig, 46%, used to cost around € 40

On my journey I get to meet quite a few people who are making their way in the whisky world as well. I think it will be nice to introduce them every now and then.

Some of these people I meet in real life but since the surge Twitter tastings quite a few of them are ‘Online-only friends’. Quite weird, but in this day and age I don’t think of it as a very abstract idea.

The first ‘Whisky person’ is Colin Campbell. A native Scott of Helensburgh who’s been living in France for a few years now. I met Colin through quite a few Twitter tastings he organized (Mackmyra, Irish Whiskey among others) and he also participated in some Bottle-Shares.

Although he grew up around whisky, the go-to drink was 70/- and 80/- (that’s beer, by the way). Drinking whisky only started after moving to London and tasting whisky started in Paris.

I discovered my enthusiasm for tasting whiskies when I found out about Whisky Live.  The first one I went to was at the Old Bourse in Paris.  My objective was to drink as much as I can before I fall over.  but I then met Richard Patterson who promptly slapped me.  I think I might have mentioned something about ice in a Dalmore.

A masterclass by Charles MacLean a year later in Verviers sealed the deal and introduced him to the whisky family. He tried his hand at blogging some time ago but limitations in time and money prevent that from taking off.

• Best whisky tasted: Dalmore 50 yo, Bowmore Gold, Lark Cask Strength.
• Worst whisky: Teachers
• Favourites: Talisker, Dalmore, Lark, Tyrconnel, Rittenhouse, Evan Williams, Nikka Coffey Grain.
• Angle: I love ‘exotic’ whiskies, whiskies from places you say… “What they make whisky?!?”

I hope you guys like this kind of post, since I plan to make it a regular category on the blog. Please let me know!

You’d almost expect Glen Garioch to be up for sale in the near future, with all these bottlings coming out last year. The same happened with Tamdhu just before Edrington sold it to Ian MacLeod.

Not that I mind since from both Tamdhu and Glen Garioch, the bottlings have been great so far! I hope they keep this up since I think Glen Garioch’s style is one we don’t get nearly enough of!

Nose:
Very slightly peaty with almost no smoke. Very spicy and herbal with pepper, some curry powder and maybe even cardamom. Also dried orange peels with some farmy hints of straw.

Taste:
Again, quite spicy and rather full bodied as well. The slight peatiness with here a hint of smoke makes it a little coarse. Peppery and a curry like spiciness as well with more farmy notes and a hint of mango.

Finish:
The finish is very dry with straw, peanut shells and wood dust. The spiciness continues on here as well with the addition of some sweet caramel fudge.

A very nice Glen Garioch. Very complex with all kinds of flavour goodies going on! I like the slight peatiness and the spice and fruit mix. Farmy notes usually do well in my books (think Brora) so that’s a straight hit.

Fun fact: Looking back on my blog I found I already had this one up, with completely different but complementary tasting notes. I gave it four stars then, I’ll stick to that.

Glen Garioch 1991-2011, The Whisky Agency, 54.4%, Ex bourbon hogshead, available at Gall & Gall Van der Book for € 93.99

An Ardbeg by Chieftain’s. Chieftain’s is one of my least favourite bottlers out there because of the weird finishes I’ve tried from them. Usually those finishes almost destroy a whisky to a point that it just doesn’t taste anything like it should. I’m thinking about a Brora from a couple of years ago that was finished om cream sherry casks.

This Ardbeg, while being a 1994 one and thus supposedly a good one, went into Barolo casks. Normally I would have skipped this one because of that, but since I got this sample from whisky buddy Bennie, I gave it a try. (and many thanks to Bennie!)

Nose:
Meaty at first and definetly a red wine finish. Sweet grapes almost to the level of ‘pourriture noble’. The usual smokiness of Ardbeg has been pushed back very far.

Taste:
The flavour is also very sweet. A little too sweet for me. At first it’s also a bit thin for some reason, but after a few seconds it gets bone dry with flavours of wine and wood. So dry it almost cuts your tongue. For some reason, then it goes smooth all of a sudden.

Finish:
I didn’t pick up any new flavours during the finish which makes this dram a little one directional.

Tasted blind I would have never said this was an Ardbeg. The typical salty smokiness with citrus background is nowhere to be found. In short: not my cup of tea. There aren’t many finishes that I really enjoy apart from sherry casks. There are of course a couple of nice Octomores and the Longrow Gaja Barolo cask is a stunner too. This one isn’t.

Ardbeg 17, 04-1994 – 09-2011, Chieftain’s, 49.1%, cask #90542

Since I more or less stopped reviewing beers on a regular basis, I though it would be nice to do a monthly overview of the most interesting beers I drank during the previous couple of weeks. My last post was around the end of January, so here’s the second:

Struise Brouwers – Cuvée Delphine
Technically the same brew as the Black Albert, but this one was aged in Four Roses bourbon casks. Terrific stuff and the barrel ageing is really a good addition to the already great Black Albert.

Great Divide – 17th Anniversary Wood Aged Double IPA
A double IPA aged in stainless steel with wood chips in it. The result is a best of both worlds beer, with the influence of wood ageing and the carbonization of steel instead of a wooden barrel. Not too crisp, but very flavourful.

Southern Tier – Back Burner
Apparently this is an Imperial Barley Wine. This always makes me think it was brewed for Darth Vader, but anyway… Very flavourful and sweet, with quite some biscuity and fruity flavours.

Meantime – IPA
A massive bottle filled with crisp, zesty and biscuity IPA. Technically it might not be the most extraordinairy beer, but it sure is good! And not too expensive either.

Emelisse – Imperial Russian Stout (Peated)
My favourite Emelisse beer so far. The cask ageing works very well here and the peated barley is not too overpowering. Maybe the best peated beer I’ve had.

Port Brewing – Older Viscosity
Definetly the most expensive beer I’ve bought at € 17 per bottle. I just had to try this barley wine or whatever they call it. It took me all night to finish it, but it sure is damn tasty. I’d have given it six stars on Untappd if I could! Massive amounts of goodness in each sip. If you can afford it, try this!

Mikkeller – Beer Geek Breakfast
Another terrific stout. Quite some coffee influences and a nice gentle carbonization. This is also an evening filling beer if you just sit back and enjoy it.

All beers are five star beers, and since I didn’t go anywhere else to check the inventory, they’re all available at Drinks & Gifts.