Malt Fascination

The youngest of the Bottle-Share, and definetly one that is not a blenders’ whisky. Cragganmore has been part of the Classic Malt as long as I can remember, and although I’m not particularly fond of the regular expression and the distiller’s edition, I usually really enjoy the independent releases and premium Diageo bottlings. Let’s hope this one lives up to my expectations!

Nose:
Pretty solid spirit with more of a Highland character than a typical Speyside nose. Well, according to me. Pretty strong with vanilla, old wrinkled lemon with some sweetness in the background. Chalky and biscuits.

Taste:
A bit of tongue burner but it gets a lot smoother very quickly. Creme brulee with a chalky note to it. Again the old lemon and shortbread. I like this kind of stuff 😉

Finish:
The finish is quite long with a reasonable amount of wood and sweetness. The fierceness lingers for a while before giving way to some crisp vanilla and lemon. A hint of coconut?

I really like this type of whisky with the chalky American oak flavours. I also found it in some other low-highland whiskies like Glencadam and such. The intensity is great but not overpowering other flavours.

Cragganmore 19, Bladnoch Forum, 8-3-1991 – 12-07-2010, 53.8%, available from Master of Malt.

Nose: 8
Taste: 8
Finish: 8
Overal experience: 8
Price/quality: +2

Total: 34 points

Not everybody has received their samples yet, but I’m going to start reviewing anyway. I’m such a rebel 😉

Glenburgie is a blenders’ malt, as are a lot of the Bladnoch Forum bottlings, but their Single Malt is available under some independent labels. They also produced GlenCraig until 1981, which was their regular product distilled in a Lomond Still, and therefore not a Single Malt, according to the SWA.

Nose:
Very light, but with a lot going on. There is some caramel, sweet fruit with just a touch of wood. I also get green plants which some people associate with sulfur. In the background I taste some vanilla.

Taste:
Again, some caramel. The whisky is a bit more fierce than I expected after the smooth nose. Woody and sweet. Dutch pancake syrup and treacle and again, some vanilla.

Finish:
A nice finish that has an abundance of fudge and caramel. It intensifies after a few seconds before fading away. It has a sugary feel to it.

A nice dram that has a lot of unexpected flavours. I never had a Glenburgie, but this was a nice get-to-know-you dram for this distillery. The treacle, caramel and sugar theme makes it a bit odd, but there are some other flavours for complexity. Not spectacular but nice.

Glenburgie 26, Bladnoch Forum, 26-10-1983 – 16-06-2010, 53.7%, available at the Bladnoch webshop and distillery.

Nose: 6
Taste: 6
Finish: 6
Overal experience: 6
Price/quality: +2

Total: 26 points

The Ultimate is a Dutch independent bottler who also has a huge whisky shop, and is the importer for Gordon & MacPhail, a lot of American stuff and Amrut, among others. The ‘owner’ (not sure if he still is) has been in the business for about 50 years I believe and the releases I tasted most recently have been quite hyped in the Netherlands.

Edradour 2003-2011, 46%
This is quite a feat for The Ultimate, since it is the first independent bottling of Edradour after the reopening by Andrew Symington. A shorter middle cut should make for a cleaner, and better dram.

Nose:
Dusty cereals, old wood and a hint of used casks. I also get some straw, a bit of a barn smell and not much else.

Taste:
Sugary sweet in some points, young and a little bit flat, to be honest. Not much depth and not many flavours that I can discover.

Finish:
This isn’t too bad, rather simple but the sweetness is quite nice with a little bit of vanilla.

Not my kind of young whisky. Although its 8 years old, it doesn’s show much maturity. I get the feeling the bourbon casks used had been used before and they didn’t add much to the spirit. I think the hype is more about the fact that its a new Edradour than about the taste.

Edradour, 2003-2011, 46%, The Ultimate. Available at Drinks & Gifts for €49

Tamdhu 2004-2011, 60.2%
A lot more alcohol, but a young whisky as well. This one got rave reviews in the first couple of days it was out in the open. Luckily, Drinks & Gifts had samples available of this one as well, and I could try it before deciding whether to get a full bottle.

Nose:
A massive nose with mocha, cocoa and coffee. Cinnamon, soft tropical fruits like mango and papaya. Lots of spices in the background. Very sweet, but heaps of flavours.

Taste:
You really get a hit by the 60.2% ABV, but there is also a lot of sweet tropical again. There’s also a little bit freshness in there, a sprig of mint I guess. Some liquorice maybe? Sweet oranges too!

Finish:
Guess what? Its fruity! Caffe latte, chocolate mousse. Maybe a bit on the short side, but the impact is something that needs to be processed as well.

This is one damn fine dram! Heaps and heaps of flavours and it has all the goodness of a good sherry cask. I wonder what this would have tasted like at 10 or 15 years old. A little bit of wood was the only thing I missed.

Tamdhu 2004-2011, 60.2%, The Ultimate. Available at Drinks & Gifts for € 45

I’m going to Schotland soon and my plan is to pick up a few bottles of Mackinlay’s Rare Old Highland Malt. I am also planning to share these bottles between myself and everyone who is interested.

Thusfar, I’ve got almost enough people to share 3 bottles of the stuff. In total I need only 8 more people to fill up the entire list (or less people if someone wants a 10cl sample, instead of 5cl).

The cost of this sample will be € 8.50, excluding shipping. If you’re interested, please let me know!

This is the replica whisky that is made to the flavour profile of the whisky found on Antarctica last year. The blend is created by Whyte & Mackay’s master blender Richard Paterson.

Yesterday the guys from the Edinburgh Whisky Blog hosted another Twitter Tasting, together with the anCnoc Distillery. anCnoc is preparing the release of a new 35 year old whisky, later this year (probably after summer).

This tasting was not open for public entry, unfortunately for a lot of people, and I feel truly blessed to have been part of it!

Nose:
It starts with a light sweetness with a hint of wood, but very quickly the real character pops op. I get big hints of sticky toffee pudding with baked apple and some cinnamon. There are also scents of waxed leather and lacquered wooden furniture. If I am very careful, I get a snuffed candle.

Taste:
It starts with honeyed sweetness and fruit, like a very nice Christmas cake. Sticky Toffee pudding again, but there is also a layer of nuttiness, brazil nuts (paranoten in Dutch).

Finish:
The finish is long, very long. I get bitter chocolate. Orange peels boiled in syrup. Mixed nuts and raisins, and some wood to round it all off. Afterwards you get a slight fizzyness which leaves a slight but perfect dryness.

This is one fine dram. I am always worried about being a bit over enthousiastic after such a nice and exclusive tasting, but in this case I simply know it is justified. An absolutely terrific dram. Very smooth, but heaps and heaps flavour and complexity.

anCnoc 35 years old, 43% (at this moment, this can change a little bit before bottling).

Nose: 10
Taste: 9
Finish: 10
Overal experience: 10
Price/quality: ?

Total: 39 points

When I received the 13 year old Highland Park, bottled by the cool chaps at Master of Malt, I also received a sample of their new Caol Ila 30. I was quite happy with both samples as both Highland Park and Caol Ila are favorite distilleries of mine (I have a lot of those, though).

I liked to taste this one a bit more, since there have been some affordable Caol Ila 30’s over the last two years which turned out to be good, but not great whiskies (One by the Bladnoch Forum and one by Specialty Drinks Ltd, called Port Askaig).

Nose:
The first thought in my mind was ‘is this 30 years old?’. It smells a lot younger than that. Lots of light smoke, quite grassy and milky. A little bit musty, oily and a hint of salt. All in all a very nice and typical Caol Ila nose!

Taste:
The taste is quite peppery, with some peat smoke. The alcohol is pretty prominent, but never annoying. I find it quite briny, with sea weed, sand and again, a hint of saltiness. It tastes like the beach, which is nice.

Finish:
The finish surprised me with hints of chocolate I didn’t see coming. A lot sweeter than I expected, but not a bad surprise. A quite long finish which also reminds me of a Dutch dairy product called ‘Milk and fruit’.

Nice! A Caol Ila that never diverses from the distillery’s staple character and flavours, but it still surprised me with some unexpected tastes in the finish. I actually like every bit of the  scents and taste, but it is not one of those drams you never forget.

Still, a cask strenght Caol Ila at 125 euros is a very fair deal. Especially when the 25 year old distillery bottling at 43% is a lot more expensive, and I didn’t like that one at all!

Caol Ila 30, 1980-2010, Master of Malt, 57.4%, available at Master of Malt for € 125,-

Nose: 7
Taste: 7
Finish: 8
Overal experience: 8
Price/quality: +1

Total: 31 points

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Since I’ve started this blog, I have been posting on a very strict daily basis. The biggest exception was when I didn’t get the post up at 8 am, and had to postpone it for a couple of hours.

Now, I’ve decided to not post on such a strict interval. I will still post a lot, with tasting notes, tasting reviews, some news and Bottle-Shares and such. It might happen, however, that there will be an occasional day without a new message on this here blog.

The reason for this is that sometimes I just don’t have anything to say and have been too busy to taste some samples and write tasting notes. In these situations I sometimes find that I am just writing stuff down to have a post without it adding anything to the general content of the website.

So, today a post about not posting, which is kind of odd. I will start putting up tasting notes of the Bladnoch Forum Bottle-Share somewhere later this week. Wednesday’s post is going to be something unexpected I hope, but I still don’t know if I can give some more details on it, so check in every now and then to see what’s new!

Through all kinds of Twitter conversations with Billy Abbott, I found out about a little thing called The Whisky Squad. Its a group of (now) friends who come together every month to enjoy a few new drams.

Everyone present pays a certain amount (lets say, €25) and the organization buys bottles of whisky from that money. Of course a tasting follows and the bottles are everyone’s so they may be drunk in its entirety (but not on a school night, of course).

I’ve done a few of those tastings a few years back in Den Bosch, but on a very irregular basis, with far less people (usually around 4 or 5) and from my own collection. This was fun, but I guess its more fun when the bottles are new for everyone and with more people..

Reading about the Whisky Squad got me thrilled to start doing tastings at home again. Occasionally a few guys from the Usquebaugh Society come over for a BYO tasting, sometimes blind. I, of course, come up with this just before summer, the worst time for whisky and tastings…

I plan to start picking this up in the near future, no concrete plans just yet, though. I usually like tasting at someone’s home better than a regular tasting in a shop or something. Of course, in a commercial environment, someone from the distillery might show up and that can be nice. One more plan added to my list of things to do!

The last few weeks, starting with a trip to Zuidam for their Genever, I’ve been branching out. I’ve placed tasting notes to Genevers, Rums and now a couple of beers. When I get to it I might do other stuff like cocktails, port, sherry and the likes. I did make the decision to not do wines, since there’s too much variety with big differences in annual batches, plus I don’t know shit about them…

Beers now! In my point of view a logical diversion from whisky, since a huge chunk of the process of making both is similar. If you take in account that lots of craft beers nowadays are barrel aged, it gets even more alike, apart from the distilling.

I bought a couple beers at Drinks & Gifts from brewery De Molen (The Mill) in Bodegraven. They are one of the more prominent Dutch craft beer breweries. Of course, there are others, but this one has the most ‘off the beaten path’ beers.

Sladek Hopburst
A IPA (India Pale Ale) with heaps of hops in it. A rather bitter beer with a nice edge of spices and herbs. The bitterness never overpowers the more malty flavour, which is good. The slight soury taste does remind me a bit of a sip of wash I had at Springbank and Laphroaig, but this is heaps better! The flavour really lingers, which doesn’t happen too often with a beer.

Hemel en Aarde (Heaven and Earth)
A dark Imperial Stout, brewed with Octomore malt from Bruichladdich. The smoke manifests really different than it does in a whisky. Its far less apparent in the scent. There is a smoky sweetness mingled in with the roasted malt. Not peaty at all, but I do get some coffee smells. The flavour is almost like an ashtray! Also heaps of moldy wood. The finish is quite long and a hint of freshness that I didn’t see coming. It all sounds nice, but the woody sweetness that is VERY present is something I can’t appreciate. I bought this one as confirmation. I really don’t like wood aged stouts…

Hel en Verdoemenis (Hell and Damnation)
This was another Imperial Stout made with English Brown Malts and matured in Wild Turkey barrels. It smells more roasted than the Hemel en Aarde variety with more chocolate and charcoal. It also has some very sweet woody sweetness but it also smells a lot like soy sauce. This continues into the taste and finish but there is also a very heavy and sweet undertone. You really understand the almost burnt malt.

And I still don’t like wood aged stouts, maybe even wood aged beers in general. I might have to try some more and I reckon I am going to visit De Molen this summer with some friends.

All these beers are available at selected liquor stores throughout the country, but I know you can get the stouts at De Molen, and all three of them at Drinks & Gifts.