Glenburgie 25, 1995-2020, Hogshead 6543, 52.9% – Signatory Vintage

Posted on 19 March 2024 by Sjoerd de Haan-Kramer

During COVID (yes, again) there were a lot of Glenburgies being released. Most of them were distilled in the mid-nineties and they tend to make for gorgeously fruity drams. It should come as no surprise that some of these bottles found their way to the MaltFascination headquarters.

Image from Whiskybase

There are a few of these bottles left on my shelves, but this one got recently emptied. At some point the time to say goodbye is there, and in cases like this is does feel like going out with a bang. Or a buzz, if you’re the recipient of this whisky.

Sniff:
Strangely, it starts with a whiff of all purpose cleaner, the lemony kind. But, after the cleaning alcohol goes away a lovely fruitiness remains. Not chemical anymore, mind. Crisp apple, fresh lemon and a hint of lime. Some white grapes too.

Sip:
The palate has a minor note of white pepper, sharp sawdust, and a hint of cork. Corky apple, is more apt. So apple, lemon wax and candied lime. Some dried passion fruit too, as well as a hint of coconut.

Swallow:
The fruitiness is massive on the finish. There’s some dry, peppery heat, but mostly it is lemon and lime, the pithy kind. There’s apples, grapes and passion fruit too. Oak behind it all. The whitest oak you can imagine.

Textbook stuff. If you want fruity Glenburgie, the mid-nineties should not let you down. This one doesn’t at least. And the ABV isn’t too high so it’s very drinkable as well. Very solid stuff!

91/100

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Glen Garioch ‘The Birds’ 1975-1990, Oak Cask 5910, 46% – Moon Import

Posted on 18 March 2024 by Sjoerd de Haan-Kramer

This whisky was bottled when I was, most likely, eight years old. Ever since then it has started to gather legendary status and currently it sits comfortably at a 91 point score at Whiskybase.

Interestingly, Moon Import seems to be still active, but at a rather slow rate. Three bottles were released in 2020, seven in 2019. Whether or not that counts as ‘active’ is up for debate.

Glen Garioch is one of those distilleries that has a rather great status for older whiskies from years ago, but doesn’t seem to be scoring that highly with their more recent releases. I know they changed their distilling regime in 1995 from lightly peated to unpeated. During the eighties there are some of those FWP whiskies that are more known from Bowmore. It seems that all the Morrison-Bowmore distilleries have that (Auchentoshan being the third).

Image from The Whisky Exchange

This one was bottled before they stopped peating, so a whiff of smoke is to be expected. Let’s find out!

Sniff:
Old lemon and grist on the nose. Lemon drizzle cake with crunchy sugar. Some heather, a whiff of soil. Old wood, some hessian and moldy attics. After a while apples, pears and melon peel are noticeable too. There’s a lot of oak as well.

Sip:
The palate is dry with a lot of oak and desiccated lemon. Again, some pastry notes but it’s slightly more like puff pastry. A note of black pepper, burlap, soil. There’s a lot to unpack here. Licorice root and a little bit of honey.

Swallow:
It mellows quickly on the finish. The dry notes of oak and sawdust, a pithy lemon thing too. It’s not an overly long finish, but there’s a lot of flavor, and a lot of different flavors all vying for attention.

I was not expecting such an old and not-cask-strength whisky to be this intense. This might cause some issues in the line-up! There are a lot of layers to the whisky and with every sip and every sniff there’s something new to be discovered. Stellar stuff!

91/100

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Linkwood 1973-2004, Refill Bourbon Hogshead, 52.5% – Skorupa Rareliquids

Posted on 13 March 2024 by Sjoerd de Haan-Kramer

If you’re thinking that you’ve never heard of this bottler, that would make perfect sense since this is the only bottling under their name. I had this sample a while ago and I still had no recollection of it, also in part because JPH and I tried this one semi-blind.

In this case, semi-blind means that we did consciously order the samples, but when we tried some of the batch of samples, we didn’t check beforehand which was which.

My most memorable Linkwood 1973 was a bottling done for the 10th anniversary of The Whisky Exchange, ages ago. Back when things were more affordable. It was also part of why I was quite eager to get my hands on this one, since Linkwood from that era holds such good memories.

Image from Whiskybase

Let’s find out if this one lives up to those memories!

Sniff:
Chocolate oranges, honey and burlap. There’s quite some maturity to this, with old oak. After a minute the orange mutates into dried lemon wedges. Some dried peaches in the background.

Sip:
The palate is a bit lower in ABV than the previous whisky, I think. Although it doesn’t really have a thin texture. Some peppery heat, oak shavings, dried orange and apricot. Again, a bit of hessian or burlap. Almond flour, there’s a bit of a slightly bitter touch to it.

Swallow:
The finish is very much a mouth coating. Still dry, but clinging to everything. Warming, with lots of oak, a bit of a fireplace ashy flavor too. Dried citrus, and the bitterness has gone.

I would have sworn this was a rather timid sherry cask, but I guess that is what such long and uninterrupted maturation does to a dram. The chocolate oranges that shift from orange to lemon makes perfect sense for Linkwood, since lemony flavors are not uncommon in hoppy beers, which is what I always seem to get with Linkwood. Glorious stuff, this!

91/100

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Lagg Corriecravie, Sherry Cask Finish, 55%

Posted on 12 March 2024 by Sjoerd de Haan-Kramer

While trying to focus on all kinds of townships and locations on the Isle of Arran, Lagg have taken to the smallest named settlements they could find, or so it seems. Corriecravie is a couple of minutes west of the distillery, but isn’t more than a handful of houses and a swing set.

The previous edition, Kilmory, is even smaller. Although, there is a campsite there so that might count for something.

Anyway, this second regularly available release is a sherry cask finish, whereas the first edition was fully bourbon cask matured. The other difference is that this one was released at 55% ABV instead of the former 46%. With this still being some three years old, I’m not expecting a lot of depth going in, but I do expect it to be a very drinkable whisky. I was rather thrilled with the first release.

Image from Whiskybase

Sniff:
Even with this being only three years old, there’s some full on sherry happening on the nose. Dried fruits with a slightly bitter note of almonds on top of the dates and prunes. Strangely, I’m not picking up a lot of smoky notes, which should be there. There is a bit of a green and ever so slightly acidic note here too.

Sip:
For a 55% whisky at only 3 years old it’s not overly intense to begin with. However, after a couple of seconds there’s quite a lot of white pepper and sawdust coming up. There’s some dryness that holds the middle between oak, barley, dried fruits and almonds.

Swallow:
The finish is slightly flat, with a more one-dimensional sherry flavor. It’s still obviously sherry, nothing really stands out except for that peppery dryness and oak.

It’s a tad more complex than I anticipated, although the sherry really pushes the peaty notes back. I really had to remind myself that this was a peated whisky, just to not forgot about that.

So it is a rather tasty dram that, for a three year old, is nothing to scoff at. It shows promise, but I do think they pushed the sherry a little bit too far.

85/100

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Whitlaw 10, 2013-2023, Oloroso Sherry Cask 1789, 47.5% – Càrn Mòr

Posted on 11 March 2024 by Sjoerd de Haan-Kramer

For some unknown reason I though Whitlaw was an Autralian of New Zealand distillery. I have no idea where that comes from, but I was very wrong of course. I didn’t taste this exactly blind, but this did blind me somewhat to what I was actually having.

I even told JPH that I didn’t really understand why New Zealand distilleries would want to do a thing that is so close to Scotch and not create their own niche. Turns out, this is very similar to Scotch indeed!

So, after doing some minimal checking on Whiskybase (read: entering the wbid and seeing what’s there), this turns out to be a Highland Park whisky, but without the name on the label. A ten year old from a sherry cask, from a bottler that seems to be doing quite a few of those dark sherry whiskies.

Image from Whiskybase

I’m quite partial to Highland Park, so let’s find out where this one ends up!

Sniff:
There’s a lot of gentle sherry with lots of dried fruits. There’s a bit of a twig like bitterness behind it, with dates and plums. Not overly complex, but there is a bit of oak in the background too.

Sip:
The palate brings a lot more punch than the gentle nose made me expect. Quite dry but mostly sherry with lots of dried fruits, some heather and wood. A hint of walnuts and almonds. Black pepper too.

Swallow:
The finish stays rather sharp, but combined with the sweetness of the dried fruits, the oak it’s quite enjoyable. It’s a very long finish too, which is great!

There are a lot of positives in this dram, but the singular drawback is that the sherry has been very active during maturation and there’s not a lot of distillery character, or idiosyncrasy left. A minor note of heather is what I can pinpoint in the notes I wrote that are something that I find typical for Highland Park. Not unique, but typical.

Still, quite a tasty and easy to drink whisky, so that’s good.

86/100

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Taking Flight with the Springbank Stallions – Part Two

Posted on 8 March 2024 by Sjoerd de Haan-Kramer

A year and four days ago Tom wrote about the first tasting with the Springbank Stallions in a wintry Campbeltown. This time, the tasting continues with part two, again in Campbeltown in January.

Some quick fire tasting notes to round off his series of guest posts, since Tom has turned from collaborator to competitor for the attention of the various readers of whisky blogs. He has started his own blog over at Whisky Odyssey.

So, this will mean this will be his second-to-last contribution to the blog. I guess Tom already forgot but I still have tasting note flagged in my mailbox that I never got around to posting. Haha!

One group of crazy whisky geeks and ALL the Springbank Society bottles ever made. Yeah, you can not do that in one flight. So after the first debauchery last year, we continued in 2024 with another big undertaking.

A contrast with the previous year is that we don’t taste them in order or appearance. Inhouse Society Expert and host Bram van Glabbeek (you may know him as one of the WhiskyNerds) decided coupling cask types together in one flight would make for a better tasting and drinking experience. So, just like last year, here are the quick fire impressions of this mammoth tasting, based on 1,5 cl samples and interrupted by several activities including luscious food by Donald Brown, who celebrated his 60th birthday with the Stallions.

Flight 1

Hazelburn 10yo Refill Sauternes Hogsheads – 55.9%
Quite a strong beast, mostly on yellow fruits and sour notes. Very hot in alcohol. With water a tropical fruit bomb. Lovely. 82 points.

Springbank 9yo Fresh Sauternes Hogsheads – 57.1%
More woody notes and a lot more spices. Less fruity but more depth and character. The typical Campbeltown dirty side is there. Good! With water very sweet. 82 points.

Longrow 9yo Fresh Sauternes Hogsheads – 56.3%
More oily on the tongue, but it’s really harsh to enjoy neat. Not the best example of Longrow. 80 points.

Hazelburn 16yo Ruby Port – 50.8%
Not bad … for a port matured whisky. Nice and fruity but mouthfeel and finish are very dry and with lots of rubber. It is a style. You need to like it. 81 points.

Springbank 15yo Fresh Port Hogsheads – 56.2%
Much better than the Hazelburn, juicier and a bit more of pushback on the power of the port cask. Red fruit, wood spice and with water a lot of candy flavors. Lovely actually. 85 points.

Flight 2

Longrow 13yo of which 6 years in Chardonnay – 56.7%
Amazingly nice mineral nose, but the taste leaves a lot to be desired. Also, the peat is subdued. Interesting but not really good. 78 points

Springbank 15yo Jamaican Rum – 51.2%
Fizzy stuff, and quite fruity on the tongue. Somehow I never feel rum is out of place with Springbank. With water even sweeter and softer. 84 points.

Springbank 8yo Fresh Oloroso Hogsheads – 57.3%
Just delicious, fat and full of cherry, sour notes and also a burn of wood, leaning towards sulfur but kept in balance just enough. Water reveals a full throttle rubbery note. 83 points.

Springbank 8yo Fresh Sherry Butt – 57.2%
Very fragrant, dunnage warehouse, wet floor, also some sulfur on the nose this time. The taste however stays far behind on the previous one. Extremely dark chocolate. Honestly, after a while, we must conclude this is just not good. 78 points.

Longrow 14yo Fresh Sherry – 53.2%
Meaty of character, some barbecue notes. There must be something about these casks, but we are on a solid sulfur session here. The peat makes it a bit more interesting but overall these are not the best experiments for my palate. 82 points.

Flight 3

Hazelburn 11yo Fresh Bourbon Barrel – 54.5%
Fresh is the operative word here. Lots of vanilla and lots of wood spice. Very clean. Close to the regular 10 years old but on steroids. With water even more nice spices. 86 points

Springbank 5yo Fresh Bourbon – 57.1%
Crispy whisky if there ever was one. Proof that not only newcomers can release excellent young whisky. The smoke is missing though, overpowered by lots of vanilla and hot alcohol. With water however, lots of mineral qualities and dry grain. Lovely bottling this one. 84 points

Longrow 20yo Bourbon Barrels Refill – 47.9%
Another clean example but a bit too light on the peaty influence. Rather smooth on the tongue. With water the smoke gets really pronounced and swirling around on the tongue. Beautiful. 88 points

Springbank 28yo Sherry Hogshead, Bourbon Barrel, Butt, Rum – 48.2%
This is of course a gigantic treat to drink and sniff and enjoy. Lots of cinnamon, milk chocolate and light coffee. The taste is the same, on praline and mocha. Also some meaty influences like ham (with melon) and to confuse some more: lychee. In short: this vatting keeps playing wonderous tricks on you. 91 points

Flight 4

Hazelburn 11yo Re-charred Bourbon Hogshead – 54.2%
Back to a fruity character and truly tropical taste, with lots of pineapple juice and some peaches for good measure. 88 points

Springbank 18yo Re-charred Sherry Butts – 58.9%
Leathery and deep mahogany. Hot on the tongue with this his high abv but beautiful in coffee and chocolate notes. Some dry leathery notes. Really good stuff. Leaning to a meaty character. 86 points

Longrow 11yo Refill Re-charred Butts – 59.9%
Rather one-dimensional on smoke and meaty notes. You can binge this during your summer barbecue. Straight in your face good stuff. Water adds more complexity on coastal notes. 88 points

Hazelburn 18yo Refill Sherry Butt – 54.4%
Has the same look and feel as the 11 yo, so lots of fruit but with a red fruit influence of the sherry. Not at all overpowered and this works like a charm. Not necessarily better but equally good stuff. Adding some water actually pushes it to great heights. A fruity explosion. 90 points

Springbank 14yo Refill Sherry Butt Local Barley – 57.8%
Local barley this time and quite malty indeed. The sherry plays secondary fiddle and invokes this barbecue feel again, but not from peat and smoke but more in a meaty note. As you can imagine this is an intense final flight and this finishes it off quite rightly. 90 points

Bye Tom!

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Balcones 3, Bottled in 2020, Rum Cask Finish 17070, 65.4% – OB for Whisky Tasting Festival Utrecht

Posted on 7 March 2024 by Sjoerd de Haan-Kramer

Sub-titled ‘To Commemorate The Greatest Whisky Festival Yet To Come’, because the bottles were already ordered when the bubonic plague ravaged the world and shut everything down. A friend of mine, RvB, got a set of bottles and shared them so we could all get a sample of this and another one that still is somewhere on my shefl.

Image from Whiskybase

Balcones, from Texas, things work differently than they do in Scotland, so a three year old whisky tastes a lot older, but also in a different way. Time is still time, even though maturation is considered to be faster in different climates. Saying that I don’t mean this is a bad thing, this shorter maturation. It’s just a different style of whisky that’s the result.

Anyway, tasting notes!

Sniff:
A lot of heat on the nose. A bit of a rum like funkiness, bitter oaky notes, hot peppers. There’s quite a bit happening here.

Sip:
The palate continues down the same line, although there’s a bit of copper here too. The bit is real, but it takes a while to get over the initial shock of my taste buds. Barley, oak, lots of dryness but with a thick texture. A tidbit of rum funkiness in the background.

Swallow:
The finish has a lot of bite initially, and even though it dials down a bit after that, it stays hot. It’s that Balcones flavor of copper, barley and tumbleweeds.

With this clocking in at over 65% ABV, it’s not surprising that it’s rather hot on the palate. A drop of water helps, but it’s not something I generally do. Especially because I see whisky as a thing to have when winding down. When winding down and finding a whisky (too) hot, I would have to get up and get a drop of water. So, what I’m trying to say is that I drink my booze without dropping water in it, and when doing this it’s hot.

Definitely not a bad whisky at all. Far from it. At the original price it is quite awesome, but with this currently going for € 130, it’s a bit too steep.

86/100

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Burnside 28, 1991-2020, Bourbon Barrel 7367, 45% – C. Dully Selection

Posted on 6 March 2024 by Sjoerd de Haan-Kramer

Yeah, another ‘blended malt’ from Balvenie Distillery. There’s a drop of something else, most likely Glenfiddich, in this one to declassify this as Single Malt. Of course, this generally is reflected in the price and many whisky fanatics know by now that this does not mean anything nowadays.

Image from Whiskybase

Especially with Balvenie you get to the point that this will set you back a few hundred Euros already, but an official single cask is considered to be made of unobtainium for mere mortals. Luckily, this was shared in our bottle-share club and I managed to get a sample. As said with the Clynelish I reviewed a couple of weeks ago, I had never heard of C. Dully. Selection until recently, but I must say that it’s one I’m hoping to keep an eye on.

Anyway, Balvenie then. Let’s crack in!

Sniff:
A really good balance between oak, honey and still a bit of green spirit. There are notes of blooming heather, straw. Leafy greens and moss too.

Sip:
The palate is dry and slightly sweet. White oak, straw, sweet apples, heather and honey. Less green, differently sweet and a bit more dry than before.

Swallow:
The palate loses a bit more of the sweetness, but not the notes of heather and apple. There’s straw and oak.

A very gentle dram, but predictably glorious. This does exactly what you expect and hope it does. And even though this clocked in just over € 200, it’s a bottle worthy of such a price tag, methinks.

89/100

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Springbank 24, Open Day 2023, Oloroso & Port, 47.6%

Posted on 5 March 2024 by Sjoerd de Haan-Kramer
Image from Whiskybase

It’s been quiet on the blog here. Mostly due to me being insanely busy with work and preoccupied with other, non-whisky things. In all honesty, I have missed having time to sit down with a couple of drams, so I’m hoping to make up for that the coming weekend.

The misses is away so there’s no one to comment on my drinking, so things are looking up. Of course, this is in jest, because the misses only comments on my drinking when it’s regarding non-whisky stuff…

Anyway, another one from a bottle-share hosted by Erik Elixir, this time for the 24 year old Springbank drawn from a mix of casks. Port and Oloroso Sherry. Interestingly, distilleries tend to specify which kind of wine or sherry cask a whisky matured in, but the type of port is often a mystery.

Anyway, old Springbank. Generally insanely expensive, and this 35cl bottle is (currently) no difference. Setting you back at least € 290 in the secondary market that translates to € 580 for 70cl. Just saying.

Sniff:
Quite some oak, with a huge dose of Springbank-y notes. Hessian, marram grass, sea weed and a whiff of smoke. There are notes of peach, slightly yeasty and a hint of walnuts.

Sip:
The palate is rather gentle and dry. There’s a bit of mulchy oak that brings a bit of bite with white pepper. Peach, beery yeast / yeasty beer / wash. A nutty hibt, with hessian, rope and some copper.

Swallow:
The finish is slightly more metallic. Less barley-like, but still with some oak and a minor bitter nuttiness.

My guess would be that this was a second fill sherry cask and a minor portion of port casks was used. With there being 1920 bottles of it, I guess it’s one cask of both, but I don’t see any information on whether it’s a first or second fill cask. Anyway, the whisky is awesome. I love that the previous booze is kept in check and the whisky got quite a lot of time to pick up some oaky notes without being a ‘wood only’ dram. Gorgeous stuff!

90/100

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Clynelish 12, 2010-2023, 1st Fill ex-Bourbon Barrel, 58.7% – SMWS 26.126 (Madeleine a la Plage)

Posted on 27 February 2024 by Sjoerd de Haan-Kramer

It’s been ages since I bought a bottle from SMWS. I tried some over the years but, and I think I’ve stated this before, it feels a bit silly to pay for a membership to a club to be allowed to buy bottles when there’s so much whisky around.

Image from Whiskybase

This one came from a share, and in the near future I have a lot of SMWS samples lined up thanks to JvG, formerly of Whisky Oss. There’s a sizeable box of those sitting right next to me while I’m writing this.

Sniff:
Waxy lemon and shortbread biscuits. Slightly creamy too, quite different from what I expected. There’s some white oak as well.

Sip:
The palate is slightly less sweet and has quite some intensity. Straight forward straw and barley, a bit of oak and heather. Some vanilla and honey, but not a lot.

Swallow:
The finish is quite intense and loses all the creamy and sweet notes. It’s mostly dry, heathery and has notes of straw and oak.

Especially on the nose this is a Clynelish, but the typical SMWS sharpness takes over on the palate. I often find their modern bottlings to be quite fiery up to a level that it seems they ought to be selecting slightly more gentle casks.

Anyway, it’s a nice dram but I find it far from spectacular, although most others seem to be really thrilled with this one. Maybe it gets better with a drop of water, but with this coming from a sample that’s always a bit of a guess. Some whiskies don’t swim well, and it’s always a risk to try…

85/100

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