This has been a long awaited thing to happen. A new distillery on Skye!
A few years ago when they started building the Torabhaig Distillery, they more or less instantly killed Talisker’s marketing engine of being the only distillery on Skye, for almost 200 years.
Anyway, now there is a new one and from that new one there is the first official whisky. Bottled 46% and without much bells and whistles it was released two weeks ago. Of course it sold out instantly and every bit of bottles that was made available evaporated from shops quickly.
With a whisky coming from Skye you would expect it to be like Talisker, with some peat and lots of coastal notes. Let’s see where this one lands!
Sniff: Lighthints of smoke and a bit of vanilla. Some moss and ferns, slightly earthy. Straw with a lot of coastal notes. Seaweed and brine and sand and marram grass.
Sip: A slight note of cake batter. Some black pepper, earthy peat, a whiff of vanilla. Briny, but also sweet with sugary syrup.
Swallow: Quite a finish with some sweetness and coastal salinity. Balck pepper and a hint of peat.
I really, really like this. Of course it doesn’t have the complexity of a ten year old, nor does it have the depth. But for a three year old whisky from a new distillery this is very good. It is typical for the Isle of Skye, in character. I guess that is a good thing on one hand, but on the other hand it might make them just a Talisker copy cat.
In the end, I think the regular Talisker 10 is better than this, but I do think they’re on to something and if they keep up the level of quality in years and decades to come, they’ve got a fan in me!
What I also like is that they use a slightly different bottle than everyone else. It does add a little bit to the drinking experience, if you ask me.
Of course, since it’s not available in shops for more than five minutes after being announced, people try to flip it for 200% of it’s value. Unless you’re a collector it’s not worth that.
As with virtually everything, Glen Scotia’s open day during the Campbeltown Malts Festival got cancelled. Maybe ‘virtually’ isn’t the right word, because the virtual version is the one thing that did take place.
To compensate the sadness that followed of thousands of whisky geeks not being able to geek out on equipment they’ve seen a hundred times before (me being cynical), Glen Scotia released a tasting pack based on their Dunnage Warehouse tasting.
It consisted of five different high ABV drams: The current batch of Victoriana, and four single casks that are otherwise not available.
While this pack costed € 50, and while this is not cheap, I gladly paid since single casks from Glen Scotia are always interesting, and often good. Let’s dive in!
Glen Scotia Victoriana, 2019 release, 54.2%
Image from Whiskybase
Sniff: Citrus fruits, oranges and quite a lot of barley malt. Some black pepper and a bit of oak.
Sip: More citrus and oranges. Barley, oak, black pepper.
Swallow: Slightly charry, more wood. Dry barley, black pepper, oranges and some fresh herbs. A bit of mint or menthol.
Actually quite lovely. I’ve had this before, a previous batch, and I wasn’t convinced back then, but I wouldn’t mind having a bottle of this and going through that. It’s quite wood driven and in this case it makes for a very interesting whisky, rather different than a random Glen Scotia.
PS: I assume that this is the same as the current batch of Victoriana available because of the ABV.
87/100
Glen Scotia 2005-2020, First Fill Bourbon Cask 810, 59.9%
Sip: The palate stays quite sweet with banana and tropical fruit. Some hay and straw. Quite a lot of oak and alcohol. Black pepper and chili pepper. Rather dry.
Swallow: Slightly charry, dry, oak. Far less sweet with more focus on the oak.
It’s a little bit cloying with the nots of banana and all the pastry notes. Not necessarily bad, but I miss the Glen Scotia touch here. It’s all a bit much.
Having said that, its quite tasty, and very drinkable for a 60% whisky. The cask is very noticeable, so an nice example of a modern, active bourbon cask.
Sniff: Heavy red fruits. Like it’s all stewed raspberries and strawberries. Slightly spicy with the typical wood and sherry spices and some dried fruits.
Sip: A tad thin on the palate. Dry with some chili pepper, oak and straw. Dried fruit, sherry.
Swallow: The finish is slightly richer, with a hint of gum balls. Not very long.
Another weird one. Well, its not exactly weird except that it’s rather thin on the palate, and has that gum ball note on the finish. The thinness might be because of the lower ABV, but then it should have been earlier in the tasting.
The red fruits are nice, and don’t get too sweet with the spices that come along with it.
86/100
Glen Scotia 2009-2020, Bordeaux Red Wine Cask 2/359, 57.2%
Image from Whiskybase
Sniff: Heavy and rich, ginger nuts, spongy gingerbread (taai-taai).
Sip: Bone dry, there’s no moisture left in your tongue. Oak, red fruits, blackberries, raspberries. Sawdust, barley.
Swallow: The finish has a bit of a rancio overkill. Some of the ginger cookies again.
I have no idea what is happening here, but again, the cask has overtaken everything that the distillery normally does. It’s not exactly a bad whisky, but I’m not happy with it.
It’s way too dry and drying, the gingerbread is strangely prominent and towards the end the rancio notes go completely rampant.
79/100
Glen Scotia 2005-2020, Tawny Port Hogshead 6/413, 57.8%
Image from Whiskybase
Sniff: Charcoal and glue and paint thinner. Massive on the charcoal, in a very good way.
Sip: For the ABV it’s very smooth. Dry, charcoal, roasted grains, dark bread. Quite some oak, a very rich fruitiness.
Swallow: The finish is a combination of the nose and the palate. Compote of red fruit, treacly.
I know that you will now expect me to say this is a weird one again. And it is, but it’s also exceptionally good. I came in a little bit apprehensive since people had already told me it was good and I was a bit afraid that that was their ‘we are at a distillery drinking whisky’ enthusiasm talking.
However, my angst was unjustified, since this weird dram has so much awesomeness to offer. The charcoal like notes, combined with the rich fruits from the port cask make for a great drinking experience.
90/100
As said, it’s not cheap, but it was worth the money. The Victoriana and the Port cask were my favorites. The others are at the least very interesting takes on a distillery.
I got this sample in Jon Beach’s Advent Calendar, which I only started drinking this week, and only got in between Christmas and New Year’s. As usual, late to the party…
Anyway, my good friend JPH (aka Shrek) and I both got a calendar and we decided to taste the entire thing in a few weekly sessions over the month of February. We started this week with dram 1 to 4, and ended up drinking number five as well, because that was one we both already know. Because we both picked up a bottle at Jon Beach’s Fiddler’s in Drumnadrochit, in 2019.
Bottled from a rejuvenated American oak cask, I expected this to be a Glen Ord whisky with a bit more oak influence than normal.
Image from Whiskybase
Sniff: Sweet with honey and barley. Some vanilla and straw. I get some wet wood, from moldy warehouses. The alcohol brings a bit of bite. Later on, I start getting apple crumble with a hint of cinnamon.
Sip: The palate is dry and sweet, with mostly straw, barley and some oak. The honey is a bit held back, which makes it less sweet than the nose. It becomes a bit more viscous with a bit of time. The alcohol is less aggressive than expected.
Swallow: A short finish that leaves mostly the dryness, with hints of straw.
With Glen Ord you expect a dram that tastes mostly of honey, oak and some straw like notes and it does exactly that. It’s slightly more dry than I expected and that might be the cask rejuvenation kicking in.
All in all, I wasn’t overly impressed with this whisky. It’s nice enough compared to regular Glen Ord, but I found it quite hard to get a lot of scents and flavors from it.
It’s absolutely not bad, but also not something I’d like to have a bottle of.
85/100
The Singleton of Glen Ord 11, 2008-2019, Rejuvenated American Oak cask 308296, 54.8%. Bottled for Highland Whisky Festival 2019.
I was given a sample of this slightly older bottling a little while ago by MvZ. It’s been added to Whiskybase in 2013, but by the looks and style of the bottle I’d say this is quite a bit older than that.
Originally this was a € 20 bourbon or so, but since it’s older and since bourbon prices are going insane, it is now for sale in The Netherlands for € 224. Obviously this is utterly ridiculous for a ‘bottom shelf’ product, but collectors are sometimes quite ridiculous too.
Anyway, I decided this weekend was as good a time as any for putting it to the test. Also, since it’s at 45%, it’s not too sharp and a good whisky to start with.
Image by Antoine de Weerd
It’s a product from Buffalo Trace distillery and that elevates my expectations slightly, since I generally like what they produce.
Sniff: Rather closed at first, with vanilla, oak, some cherries. Some grain sweetness too, a whiff of banana bread.
Sip: The arrival has some oak and quite some black pepper. It’s pretty thin though. A tad watery with hints of dry grains and some banana. Some vanilla sweetness after that.
Swallow: The finish is warming, but still a bit dry and thin. Some sweetness, black pepper and banana.
Well, what to say about this. Going by the tasting notes it’s not too bad, albeit a bit thin. However, there’s actually no finish to speak of, and while there are some different flavors, it is just not enough to overcome the watery experience.
Honestly, having some (not a tremendous amount) of experience with dusty bourbons like this, I think this is performing at a below average level. It might be that this is a product from the drive to lighter whisky that happened in the seventies and eighties. If so, a shame. If not, what the hell happened?
First of all, it’s a bottling for The Netherlands. While I’m quite up to date on most things whisky, I’m not sure if specific bottlings like this have been done before, with brandy.
Second of all, it’s bottled by the Thompson Brothers of Dornoch, Scotland. They are the guys behind Dornoch Distillery and the whisky bar in the Dornoch Castle Hotel. Normally they bottle whisky and their own gin, but apparently they diversified into brandy as well.
Third, this early landed brandy stuff. Early landed is a term I’m more familiar with from the world of rum, but it means the same thing. It simply means that it was transported from its country of origin to Scotland before being bottled. It suggests that maturation happened in the United Kingdom as well, but I’m not 100% sure about that in this case. Either way, it doesn’t matter too much.
The label says brandy, because it is not allowed to label it as a cognac. It is a cognac, but instead of being bottled in that region of France, it was transported to Scotland before being bottled, hence ‘brandy’.
Now then, this came out sometime in December last year and most bottles were scooped up pretty quickly. I was lucky enough to get my hands on one for bottle-sharing. That share went quickly too, both in ‘sharing the bottle’, but also in drinking my 10cl.
Sniff: Lots of fruit and oak, with a crisp herbaceous note. A whiff of chocolate, mocha, old fruit. Grapes and raisins, overripe, fallen off the branches. There’s very mature ‘armchair and a fireplace’ feel to this. Dried plums, later on.
Sip: Quite dry with a bit of a corky texture, old oak. Some black pepper and raisins, grapes. Mocha, milk chocolate, some pastry cream. The dried plums are here too, and they bring a little plum stone bitterness with them.
Swallow: A warming finish with lots of raisins, old oak and a dry texture. The finish is long and slightly less sweet. Still with raisins, but towards the end the oak takes the upper hand, but there are still notes of dried plums.
Generally I’m not too big on cognac, but it seems that the whisky bottlers are also finding casks of this to bottle. When things get to 50-something years old the prices are still quite reasonable compared to whisky, but when it can’t be bottled as Cognac, it seems to push prices down a little bit, like with this one. A 27 year old single cask for € 80 is quite a steal.
And is it worth it? Hell yes it is! I absolutely loved every drop of this and am strongly considering getting myself another bottle before they’re all gone. I’m also hoping this is part of a parcel and not just a single cask. That way there might be more in the future.
Anyway, it’s quite different to whisky, obviously. But I certainly loved the combination of fruit, chocolate and herbs. The general feel of the armchair and a fireplace is awesome too. So both great in flavor and in experience. I love it!
90/100? Honestly, I don’t think I have too much to compare it to.
Back in the day when the United Kingdom was still part of Europe, these three GlenAllachies were released. I didn’t really notice them until they didn’t sell ridiculously well and they were slightly discounted.
Of course, a bottle-share followed suit, and I ended up with a sizeable share of GlenAllachie from Oloroso, PX and Port. I found it a good thing to investigate how the Speyside spirit stands up to quite active casks. At least, the color indicates that the casks were active. Two chestnut colored, and one pink whisky were set out for assessment on a lazy Sunday afternoon a while ago.
And while the actual tasting of these whiskies has been a couple of months, the blog post is only written now. Mostly because during the entire construction happening here, I lost my notebook and I didn’t write these notes on my phone for easy copy-pasting…
GlenAllachie 12yo, 2007-2019, Port Pipe 1860, 58.7%
Image from Whiskybase
Sniff: Stewed strawberries and rhubarb, with old, wet oak behind it. Quite some barley, with hessian and coconut mats.
Sip: The palate is unsurprisingly sharp with lots of red fruit. Sticky toffee pudding, cinnamon, cherries and almonds. Again, the stewed strawberry.
Swallow: The finish has more black pepper and while the heat dissipates, there’s some spiciness that lingers. Old oak casks, and slightly less fruity.
Well, it sure is pink and it’s a very true port cask. Lots of red fruits and that old oak that I often find in port casks. Pretty good, but not stellar. It doesn’t leave much room for the whisky, which again is typical for a lot of port casks.
Sniff: Old oak with sweet dried fruit. Quite a lot of baking spices for a PX cask. Menthol cigarettes and plums.
Sip: The palate is warming with some dry spiciness. Quite a lot of oak with cherry stones and almonds. Some bitterness, plums, chili powder.
Swallow: The dry baking spices linger, with some chili heat too. Quite short but does give some room for dried fruit, plums mostly.
While this whisky doesn’t give the spirit any more room, it’s slightly less singular on the cask’s former contents. There’s fruit, spices. Maybe not more spirit, but more typical flavors for whisky.
Sniff: Sawdust and baking spices, with a slight funk that’s not unfamiliar for Oloroso. Some apricot, hay and barley.
Sip: The palate is sweeter than the nose, with more fruit and more oak. Also a bit more peppery heat, but still a bit focused on the baking spices. There’s LOTS of flavor here.
Swallow: The finish gives more dryness, more spices instead of fruit. It’s also slightly longer than the previous two.
While being the hottest (in regards to the alcohol and heat sensation) this is also the most complex of the bunch, and I really enjoy the slight funkiness and spicy complexity this one brings. This is by far my favorite of the bunch.
Ever since summer I got back into bourbon. Of course, having been drinking whisky for the better part of two decades a lot of the entry level bourbons are familiar, so I skipped that step.
That means you get into the slightly more rare and obscure stuff right away. And with bourbon being insanely popular in America, there’s not that much coming over to the EU. There’s still more than enough, but the balance between price and quality sometimes leaves something to be desired.
But, with random shops offering random stuff all across the country, and auctions sometimes having acceptable prices, my collection of American whisky has grown rather quickly over the last six months.
These two were ones I picked up sometime during autumn because of their reputation and proof. I don’t necessarily prefer high proof, but I do think it offers a different perspective on what many Europeans still think of as an inferior type of whisky.
1792 Full Proof, 62.5%, a version bottled for a German importer
Sniff: Some chili pepper and a lot of fruit. Berries, cherries, something more tropical too. Syrup and vanilla sweetness. It gets more straw and oak after a while.
Sip: Very dry and hot. Hotter than I expected. Lots of pepper and dry oak. Leather, some tropical fruit. Oak and some nuts. A second sip is sweeter and a bit more friendly. Rich stuff, this.
Swallow: The finish mellows rapidly. Dry oak, slightly leathery, red fruit.
This is quite a delicious whisky. I understand why the brand has quite a high reputation stateside. There’s a lot going on in depth and complexity with the tropical fruits not being something that’s very common in bourbon.
88/100
A bottle like this should set you back around € 80 or € 90, but they’re hard to find.
Sniff: Dry autumn leaves, tobacco, wood chips. Hints of chocolate, cherry, cinnamon. Oaky sweetness with vanilla.
Sip: Syrupy, and quite hot. Dry with oak and cork. It becomes truly hot when you let it swim. Leather, cherry, almonds. Wood, sweetness and vanilla. Cinnamon.
Swallow: Dry, quite mellow compared to the palate. More focus on the cask with some oaky bitterness. Quite long.
While this is quite different to the 1792, it is as delicious. Slightly less complex, but it is a very good representation of what bourbon is about. The cherry and oak with quite some sweetness is rather typical.
While these drams are definitely not whiskies to start an evening with, they sure are a good way to end them! They’re quite capable of blowing other, more subtle whiskies out of the water. If you happen to like a bourbon every now and then, these are worthy of checking out!
Once more, Tom writes a guest post on some recent discoveries he did. In this case, something truly new: Dalmunach whisky!
Dalmunach was erected on the site of the much beloved yet quite unknown Imperial Distillery. As a whiskynerd interested in the releases by new kids on the block, I bought a few young expressions bottled by Cooper’s Choice. Besides 4 official bottlings and quite a few Duncan Taylor offerings, mainly from octave casks, there is not much Dalmunach around. Both bottled in 2020, one early in the year and one in fall. Let’s have a look!
Peach Parfait – 61% abv – madeira cask finish
Image from Whiskybase
Sniff: The name is well chosen. A sensation of walking among the trees with overripe fruit just waiting to be picked by hungry hands. Peach indeed, but also plums and a hint of strawberry. Underneath these layers I detect new make spirit, a strong malt spirit longing for maturity.
Sip: Incredibly subtle, the Portuguese wine has truly enveloped the malt spirit to great effect. Sweet and soft to taste, no bad influence from a rather high strength.
Swallow: Of course, here the alcohol breaches your taste buds but in a warming, pleasant matter. The departure is deliciously fruity from the wine influences. These kind of fortified wines are sometimes overpowering, but here it serves the distillate very well.
Attractive and already an established product. Seems that the Dalmunach spirit holds its own against a strong cask influence. Let’s test that with the next expression.
Sniff: Wow, a strong breeze of vinegar! Seeing as Marsala is made on Sicilia, one easily thinks of thick, mouthwatering olive oil. I wouldn’t immediately think of fruit. Some flowers emerge after a little breathing. Water helps to uncover red apples. Okay, fruit basket it is.
Sip: Damn, nothing left of anything that resembles MALT whisky. A very sweet and overpowering taste. If the objective was to give a very young spirit lots of flavour… mission accomplished Very spicy, sour too, and this underlying feeling of vinegar which puts me off. Water is truly needed to get back to the idea you are drinking a whisky. It cleanses away this offnote just enough.
Swallow: Quite gentle, even undiluted it is friendly. With water this Dalmunach gets more attractive and you experience a rich fruitiness from juvenile new make malt spirit.
A mighty interesting experiment, too sweet for me but good for at least one hour of playing, sniffing and tasting how it changes all the time. In that regard, something for nerds! Isn’t that what we look for, despite the lower quality score? I am glad I have a bottle, and if you want one too, it is still available at ‘t Bockje in Bathmen.
I’m a writer in a variety of fields and have a soft spot for whisky, mainly malt, mainly from Scotland. In other times I enjoyed a stint as editor-in-chief of one of the first whisky magazines in the world. When not sipping a good glass I like to write some more, read, watch 007 movies or listen Bowie music. I’m engaged to Dasha, I have a sweet daughter and I live somewhere between the big rivers in the middle of The Netherlands.
Earlier this week I got a sample in the mail of a to-be-released GlenAllachie, and today is the day that it’s available from various shops. Let’s start by expressing a bit of gratitude towards Nils of Best of Wines/Best of Whiskies.
Then, GlenAllachie. A distillery that no one paid any attention to until it was bought by Billie Walker, of BenRiach/GlenDronach/GlenGlassaugh fame. He sold the three distilleries to Brown Forman a while ago and has since bought GlenAllachie.
They’ve been releasing fairly awesome single casks since, with quite a few releases for specific markets. It seems some money was needed to pay the bills…
Anyway, a distillery that has become quite popular in my little circle of geeks, and rightfully so. Not everything is solid what comes out, but most of it is worth the money and quite good. Unfortunately the older single casks are unaffordable. The regular 25 clocks in over € 200, which I think is too expensive for what it is. Similarly aged single casks cross the € 300 line.
This one then, comes in at € 200, which is affordable for what it is. That doesn’t mean it’s cheap since there’s a lot of money involved, but it’s comparatively affordable. Which is nice, in this day and age.
This cask was picked by Mark Watt, of Watt Whisky, and a previous post on this here blog. This makes my expectation of it even higher, since I know and appreciate the man’s palate.
Let’s see if it lives up to its price point!
Sniff: Gentle on the bourbon cask with a good balance between cask, barley and spirit. Autumn leaves, puff pastry, moss. It’s quite light with some very crisp herbaceous notes.
Sip: The palate is a bit hotter than I expected. Dry, with some freshly sawn oak. Black pepper, dried breadcrumbs, puff pastry. Some vanilla, moss and ferns, autumn leaves. I get dried apple peel and a whiff of bitterness later on.
Swallow: The finish shows a bit more cask. Some vanilla, pastry cream, sawdust.
Yes, this does live up to the price point. It’s just shy of a 90-pointer for me, but I love that the time in oak has done a lot for the whisky without overpowering it. It’s still very much about the balance between oak and spirit, which is what whisky is about.
It seems like, just like with their rums, these guys know what they’re doing.
I got a wee sample of this from the guy who owned the cask, and he asked me to review it. Of course I didn’t do that right away, since that’s not really how I operate. Shameful, but true…
A 13 year old Kilchoman, of which there are only three so far, if I’m not mistaken. This one is from a fresh bourbon barrel distilled in 2007, and bottled for Max & Julia. That doesn’t tell most people much, those names, and that’s okay.
Let’s just dive right in, since there’s good stuff ahead!
Image from Best of Wines
Sniff: Kilchoman is maturing very nicely. This one shows signs of smoke and oak, with barley and some bakery sweetness playing second fiddle. It has an oily scents on the nose. Sun seed oil, grassy peat and a bit of engine grease.
Sip: There’s quite a lot of black pepper and sawdust on the palate. The scorched flavor of when wood is sawed too hot. Toasted oak I guess. So, smoke, oak, barley. Some heather, earthiness.
Swallow: The finish goes directly back to the sun seed oil with quite a lot of peat smoke. Heather and oak. Quite a long finish, with mostly drier and drier peat remaining.
Somehow this reminds me of how I liked Caol Ila when I just started drinking whisky. It’s not that it tastes similar, but it does make me enthusiastic in the same way.
This is a very complex whisky that breaks the mould for what I find typical of Kilchoman. Generally it’s a bit more fruity and lighter than this one. But, having said that, this does go in the direction of older Caol Ila a little bit with the notes of engine grease. I absolutely love it.
Of course, compared to the other ‘oldest’ single cask I tasted last year, which was a 12 year old at € 60, this is a lot more expensive at almost € 160. However, I think it can compete with virtually any Islay whisky up to € 200-something. This will be on my shelf someday soon.
The cask owner was bold enough to tell me he expected that I wouldn’t have to lie when I said I liked it. He was right.
Malt Fascination 