Monkey Business

Monkey Shoulder is a blended malt (a mixture of malt whiskies from different distilleries, not containing grain whisky) that has been on the market for almost a decade (since 2005).  It sells for a very reasonable price - around $30.  Yet, somehow it had eluded me until recently.  Events aligned to make Monkey Shoulder a part of a number of evenings over this summer.  It all started a few months ago when I attended a Tasting Table barbecue with NYC food and whisky blogger Susannah Skiver Barton (@whattastesgood) of whattastesgood.net.  She blogged about the event at:
http://whattastesgood.net/2013/07/29/cueing-up-summer/

One of the featured cocktails at the event was made with Monkey Shoulder (the "Summmer Jam".  See Susannah's post for the recipe).  Attending the event was a voluble and fascinating young Englishman named Freddie May (@oloroso) who reps Monkey Shoulder (among other interesting whiskies and spirits) for William Grant & Sons.  We had a fascinating conversation about whisky: maturation, mashing, barrel management and the William Grant operations.  Stuff like that.  My whisky geek monkey bone was tweaked.

Susannah Skiver Barton toasts a Summer Jam with Freddie May

I subsequently sought out Freddy May to see him do a tasting of the Tuthill Hudson line at The Astoria Whiskey Society (the subject of a future post).  Also at the barbecue was a young man named Nicholas Rotondi, who works at PR firm Exposure.  Nicholas has been a part of a lot of fun evenings lately (which is another story entirely).  Nicholas' role in this story was to express some surprise that I hadn't tasted Monkey Shoulder straight.  He kindly sent over a bottle for review (thanks Nicholas).  As in the manner of the Zeitgeist, I found myself encountering Monkey Shoulder again and again in the weeks that followed.  As it happens it's in my glass right now - and it's a value for the money champion with a few interesting wrinkles to its tale.

Nicholas Rotondi of Exposure: party meister

Monkey Shoulder is a blended malt composed primarily of whisky made at a small distillery near Balvenie (and operated by the William Grant & Sons - the same parent company) called Kininvie.  Kininvie, built on July 4th 1990 is on of the newer distilleries in Scotland - and Monkey Shoulder is one of the few ways to taste it (there are only a handful of single malt editions).  Most of its output initially went into Clan MacGregor.  Kininvie is only a few hundred meters away from Balvenie, and it doesn't have its own mash tuns.  It gets its mash piped from Balvenie.  Kininvie was mothballed in 2011 but then re-opened in 2012.  Now Monkey Shoulder is primarily Kininvie, but it also has malt whiskies from Balvenie and Glenfiddich as well.  It's a NAS vatting - but the age of the whiskies is around 8-9 years of age.  The "Batch 27" on the label apparently refers to each batch being vatted of 27 individual casks of whisky.  The casks used are exclusively ex-bourbon - and it shows in the color and the flavors which are honeyed and malty - without any sherry influence.  At $30 to $35, Monkey Shoulder is priced comparably with mid-range luxury blends like Chival Regal and is a few bucks less than  Johnny Walker Black Label.

Monkey Shoulder Batch 27 43% abv.

Color:  Full Gold

Nose:  Honey, malt, heather, floral bloom, wax, apple, green melon, hint of anise.  There's also a bit of distant musky almost meaty animal smell behind those sweet fruits.  All of these elements are gentle and light - yet sweet and satisfying.  It's a very pretty nose.  For the price it's stunning.

The palate after a sufficient amount of airing (20 minutes) is malt sweet on entry, with vanilla pods and florals.  Honey and honeycomb wax big - with an attractive aspect of Speyside classic apple pear and melon fruits.  Warm and malty on the expansion with some white pepper.  43% isn't the norm at this price and it brings some richness and a bit of intensity that I greatly appreciate.  The finish is gentle and relatively short.  But this doesn't come off as too young.  The spirit heat is well integrated into the malty richness.  Sweetness and fruits with a relative absence of oak tannins or bite are the hallmarks of youth here.  The palate isn't huge, but the sins are of omission rather than commission.  This comes off as a quality highland malt with a classic Speyside profile.  You can taste the Glenfiddich and the Balvenie in it in the green fruits, honey, and sweet balance.  It's a fine malt to relax with, at a price that you can use heedlessly. I've had the opportunity to dram it in a variety of circumstances and its gentle sweetness is immediately appealing with people new to malt whisky.  Yet there is enough going on to satisfy experienced malt fans (as long as they don't have their peat freak or thinking caps on).  Gentle, sweet, fruity and appealing.  Easily recommended.

****

Hibiki 12 succeeds brilliantly

Hibiki 12's rich full gold color

I wasn't prepared for the Hibiki 12. I hadn't read the rave reviews or seen the awards and accolades. I had been sent review samples of the 12 year old expressions of the portion of the Suntory line that is distributed in the USA: Yamazaki, Hakushu, and Hibiki (thanks Danielle from Exposure). I started with the latter because it's a blend and blends are never as good as single malts, right?  If you don't know the full story, here are my tasting notes first so you can experience my surprise with me, then the story afterwards:

Hibiki 12 43% abv

Color: rich full gold

Nose: Oh my my. Rich honeyed beehive. Clover honey, baking biscuits or maybe pecan pie, magnolia blossom, ripe cassava melon, mango and some strawberry component. A rich sweet appetizing nose with some complexity and evolution over time to hold you nosing a while.

Entry is sweet with honeyed crumpets and a silky slightly viscous mouth feel. There's a nice mid-palate expansion with white pepper, malt, green melon, sweet butter, and some warm musk and floral perfume. The finish is moderately brief, gentle, and mild with little wood, but a clean and malty afterglow and a gentle flavor of toasted seeds.

With extended air it becomes lushly, tropically, floral. Hibiscus, jasmine and more in a loud and riotous profusion over the juicy fruity malt. Puts me in the mind of Balvenie, but more juicy and effusively floral.

A drop of water amps the sweetness up into pure whole cane sugar territory. It doesn't need it, but is vibrantly and effusively sweet if you add a drop or two.  It's so lush that I highly recommend a bit of experimenting in this regard.

Smooth and easy going but also rich and full of character. Luscious. Youthful, sweet, intensely feminine. Just lovely. High four star - almost five.

****

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Hibiki 12 in the glass

So how does Suntory achieve this amazing flavor profile?  According to the .pdf fact sheet I received from Exposure, "Hibiki is created from a selection of pure single malt whiskies, aged in various types of casks, including Mizunara, a very rare Japanese oak"  elsewhere it says "Hibiki’s soft yet complex taste profile is created from unique bamboo charcoal filtering and plum liqueur cask maturation."  Charcoal filtering is pretty unusual - but anyone who has tasted Jack Daniels Tennessee whiskey knows it produces a softness.  However it's not usually associated with such density of flavor.  Presumably the component whiskies are Yamazaki and Hakushu, Suntory's two distilleries.  I'll be tasting 12 year old expressions from those two next - with great anticipation.  Plum liqueur cask maturation is also unusual in my experience.  No doubt it has a significant impact on the tropical fruits and floral aromas and feeling that bless this excellent whisky.  Bravo, Suntory.  A home run.

Spice Tree is a fierce but elegant excursion into the deep wood.

An homage to G-LO.  Can you identify the hero?

This will be my third consecutive post boasting the latin name of the sessile oak:  quercus petraea.  Compass Box features this spicy French oak in a number of their whiskies - but it takes total center stage, and indeed provides the name for the flagship of their regular issue malt whisky line: Spice Tree.  The story of how John Glaser's first two editions of this expression were banned by the Scotch Whisky Association for being non-traditional has been told often.  The gist is that Glaser lined the barrels with interior staves of quercus petraea, but was told to desist by the SWA - with threats of legal action.  Then Glaser produced the work-around of using quercus petraea to form the head (the ends) of the barrels used - the same as in the Oak Cross expression (although Compass Box's web site says that Spice Tree is aged longer in Oak Cross casks that have been more heavily toasted).  This is a blended malt - thus it is composed of a mix of single malts.  The web site specifies that it is "entirely sourced from northern Highland single malt distilleries, primarily malt whisky distilled at the Clynelish distillery.  All 10 to 12 years old."  Clynelish has a wonderful aroma and gingery, almost curried flavor profile - so it's a good fit for very spicy oak - at least in theory.  As far as I know, no one else is using sessile oak to age Scotch whisky - so this is an attribute unique to Compass Box

Spice Tree:  46% abv; $65 at Shopper's Vineyard.  50ml sample proved by Robin Robinson at the chocolate pairing tasting event preview. 

Color: light amber with some greenish tints.  A nice rich color.

Lovely light amber with greenish tints.

Nose: malt, honey, demara sugar, a bit of meaty note - like Christmas ham (roasted salted pork with cloves and a sugar glaze), a touch of herbal vegetal sap (parsley, cress or burdock), some sherry, and a distant hint of fine leather (as in nice gloves, not cowboy saddle). Classy - very poised.

Opening is sweet and bright with plenty of sugar and also a pronounced herbal note - like a cross between parsley and black mint.  Then it is suddenly and dramatically spicy. The first hint is a complex oaky balsa wood perfume flavor that rapidly broadens into a spike of spice heat that is prickly and numbing on the tongue in the same manner as clove or cinnamon (without actually tasting a great deal like either). At the same time vanilla perfume and a rich sherry note provide a sweet and floral counterpoint.  The transition to the finish is marked by a melding of the sweet and heat which combine to form a flavor reminiscent of ginger.  Then the oak takes over and the lingering finish is a drying and elegant wood fest.  This is the longest finish in the regular release Compass Box line and it's a pleasure.

The heat doesn't build up on repeated sipping, like it would with actual clove, cinnamon, or ginger.  Instead it forms a continuous backdrop to the complex array of flavors balancing sweet and dry, sugars, herbs, spice, and wood essences in a shifting interplay from nose to opening to midpalate bloom to finish to afterglow over and over.  It's a highly engaging and thought provoking and richly flavored dram.  The heat might be a bit much for some (my wife, for example, didn't like it at all - but she's not much for whisky generally).  But those in for a bit of gustatory challenge will be rewarded by John Glaser's excursion in a totally new flavor direction.  This amping up of the wood note is an inspired and entertaining new direction for Scotch - another face card in the loaded Full House hand that is Scotch's extraordinary variability.  Not only is this the archetype of a new flavor profile - it's also a delicious and extremely drinkable success.  Loved it!

*****

Oak Cross Blended Malt Scotch Whisky from Compass Box - an absolute original.

I'm all over Compass Box this week.  Compass Box is an innovative maker of eclectic Scotch whisky blends.  Many of these are on the gentle and sweet end of things.  I'm a big rough tough man who takes his whisky big and neat and preferably undiluted cask strength and my first instinct is skepticism.  I like my whisky to shoot cannons.  In that spirit, let's proceed.  First up, the remarkable Oak Cross:

Color: glittering light gold with amber tints.

Nose: soft sweet vanilla floral notes lead off. Sweetness joins from below to yield a hard candy quality. A touch of veal aspic. Some distant sherry. Some nice mature oak. The nose is a little like Grandma opening a nice old fancy wooden box of hard candies and offering you one. A gentle and soothing nose - but not a lush fragrance that invites deep extended exploration.

Entry is initially soft and sweet and then zowie - a big midpalate explosion of spice hits. My initial notes described berry acids like jujubes and also bright candy and plum brandy flavors. Those notes were from a pour from a half full bottle (extensively aired). Today, from a fresh sealed miniature I'm getting spicy wood. Maybe that's because now I know what it is.

Oak Cross is, according to info from Compass Box, a blend of 10-12 year old single malts from Teaninich, Brora (they must mean Clynelish) "for fruitiness" and Carron "for weight" (Dailuaine - I imagine). It is blended from malts aged in first fill ex bourbon white oak casks and American oak casks specially fitted with caps made of a spicy french oak called Quercus Petraea - Sessile Oak. (Robin Robinson, US Brand Ambassador for Compass Box, explained this part to me personally) This mixture of oak types is the "oak cross" - as in mixture of oak types. This Quercus Petraea is the "spice tree" in the darker, bigger Spice Tree expression Compass Box also offers. So the explosion of spice in the midpalate is wood - Quercus Petraea oak. G-LO on the Booze Dancing blog calls this spicy aspect "cinnamon altoid" - but the heat I'm getting isn't cinnamon - it's clove, and allspice. Maybe some Mace or even nutmeg in there too. These spice notes mingle with the entry's prominent vanilla floral sweetness and join a honeyed lightly sherried malt richness in the yummy heart of the midpalate glow.

Give this one a lot of time to open up. The entry becomes richer and more honeyed and the spicy explosion becomes bigger and more spicy and aromatic. Those jujube notes are dancing on my tongue now but it took a half an hour of air for them to bloom out of the sealed bottle.

The finish is gentle and brief - a feature of most of the Compass Box offerings that alternately delights, mystifies, and frustrates me. The rich spicy oak fades for a moment into a sandalwood scented incense and lingering sherry sweetness and then as the tannins almost form a bitter note - poof - like a sorcerer - it's gone. There's a faint whisper of flavor after two minutes, like after you've taken chewing gum out two minutes earlier. But the palate is left clean and refreshed - almost as if such a potent dram never happened. Is this a plus? A minus? I can't decide. It's a bit of both. I have the ingrained bias that a "good" whisky has a titanic long finish. Yet clearly Oak Cross is quite good indeed across all phases of it's game; yet it has packed its gear and fully left the field while I'm still panting from the last play... I've wrestled with this and decide that no penalty is called for here. So much of Oak Cross is new - utterly unlike any malt I've had before - that I must treat it as its own animal. The relatively short finish is, at worst, a sin of omission. At it's best it makes it easy to drink, easy to pair, and easy to live with.

Oak Cross is gentle lamb in the beginning, a raging tiger in the middle and a vanishing artist at the finish. It is graced with a delicious and very unusual flavor profile. Will you like it? I did. How do you feel about cloves and mace? How do you like cinnamon altoids?  Ultimately, Oak Cross is true to the gentle and floral "family DNA" of Compass Box but gives me some cannons!

Four stars. Bravo Compass Box! Original, ground breaking, and very very tasty.

****

Update - I neglected to mention how Oak Cross plays from a value perspective.  Oak Cross is $44/750ml at Shopper's Vineyard (a deep discounter in the NYC greater metro region - the source of all the following prices).  This is the low midrange of malt pricing; the same price class as The Macallan 12, Balvenie Doublewood 12, Dalmore 12, Highland Park 12, Glenfarclas 10, Tomintoul 10, Glen Goyne 10, Isle of Jura Superstition, Arran 10, etc...  In my opinion Oak Cross is a solid fit, value-wise, with this crew.  There are awesome malts here - but these tend to be the introductory expressions in their lines.  In the Compass Box line, Oak Cross is the 3rd most expensive expression behind Spice Tree ($65), and Peat Monster ($50) and ahead of Asyla & Orangerie ($40) and Great King St. ($37).  The whole lineup seems well priced - good value for what you get.