Single Cask Nation: It's About Cask Selection

Single Cask Nation (http://singlecasknation.com/)  is a private members-only independent bottling business which is part of the Jewish Whisky Company founded by Joshua Hatton and his partners Jason Johnstone-Yellin and Seth Klaskin about 3 years ago.  Hatton is also a whisky blogger at http://www.jewmalt.com/ - a very impressive whisky blog.  Johnstone-Yellin is also a whisky blogger at the perhaps even more impressive  http://www.guidscotchdrink.com/

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of tasting the Single Cask Nation line with Josh Hatton (@jewmalt) and a group of very welcoming Jewish gentlemen in New Rochelle, NY.  This wasn't my first time tasting Single Cask Nation's line.  I had had parts of it at Whisky Live last year and at Single Cask Nation's second Whisky Jewbilee last autumn - their phenomenally impressive fledgling whisky show.  This time, however, with a smaller room and more intense focus I finally got it.  I had always wondered about single cask clubs like this.  "Why bother"?  You can buy single cask bottlings from independent bottlers like Gordon & MacPhail, Cadenhead, Wymiss, and a host of others.  Why do I need to join a club?  But with Josh Hatton walking us through the selections I finally understood.  It's not just that each selection is bottled at cask strength in a minimally fussed with way.  (Although this is real difference from a lot of single cask bottlings you find from IBs.)  It's that the selections each have a story - a particular angle on the flavors of that distillery.  This has to do with the palate of the people doing the cask section.  When you join a club like this you are putting a bet down on the palate of the people doing the cask selection.  The idea is that the payoff will be interesting whiskies worth drinking with the risk involved in making selections substantially reduced by the pre-selection going in.  This isn't just marketing talk.  It involves people you can meet, talk to, drink with, and come to trust;  a palate you respect.  It's not, as is the cask of, say, Gordon and MacPhail, a series of contractual relationships that give them access to rare distilleries you cannot get via an OB bottling.  Rather it's that only special casks that really impress the bottlers are chosen at all.  It's a curatorial thing.  You're joining someone on their whisky journey.  Obviously this only works if the selections speak to you.  Here I found each selection a cat and mouse game where there was a twist on some aspect of what you'd expect.

Joshua Hatton is a compelling presenter.

Arran 12 54.8% - Spanish oak pinot noir cask.

Color: pale amber
Nose:  Lush sweet floral rose, vanilla, and turkish delight (fruity with powdered sugar on it).  Rancio, figs, and sherry lurk beneath and some earthy loam and mineral dust beneath that.  Layers and layers in this nose.
Palate:  Sweet honeyed malt on the opening, with a rich beautiful expansion that brings out dense layers of nectarine fruit, fig jam, lemon candy, green apple, sherry, estery floral melon and yellow fruits, vidalia onion, sweet oak and sandalwood perfume.  The finish is long and gently spicy with tannin heat.  Layers and layers of fruit, wax, flowers, malt, tannins, heat, spice and oak.  This is a 12 year old?  This is an Arran?  And extraordinary cask.  It's more complex than any other Arran I've yet tasted.

With a drop of water things get more meaty on the nose, with animals and minerals more in evidence.  But things open up with more richness on the palate.  The mouth feel becomes more silky and the spice is enhanced.  This is a rich mouth filling experience balanced between unctuous fruity florals and black pepper spices and dark toothy oak.  This shows Arran squarely hitting mainstream Highland Scotch flavors (while, granted Arran is an Island malt), and achieving flavor density and balance in the process.

*****

Glen Moray 7 58.8%  Full maturation in a Fino sherry cask

Color: medium amber with coppery glints

Nose: Iodine, vanilla, oak.  The lingering note of iodine speaks to the youth of this dram.  If you let it air out a lot, it retreats and more mature aromas of figs and bourbony charred oak come to dominate.

Palate: sweet vanilla opening, sherry rancio fig expansion, turn has smoke and earth and rising oak.  The finish brings back the young note of the nose with a touch of iodine, lingering oak tannins with some sandalwood oak perfume.  Tartness and fruity sweetness vie.  With a drop of water there are white grapes and strawberries on the opening.  But the expansion is darker with complex spice, caramel, fig cake, and brown betty flavors in the mid-palate but the same drying finish.  Big - nay, hugely flavored with elements of wine cask, old oak, and some of the iodiney flavors of youth too.  This very young Speyside whisky turns most everything I thought I knew about maturation on its head.  Normally only peated drams are bottled this young in carefully selected single cask bottlings.  But this is not a young hot peat monster.  It's a young complex, sweet wine drenched dram that alternately tastes young but then very mature indeed.  Fino was an interesting choice here.  Fino is dry.  Indeed, this doesn't come off as sherried.  It comes off as fruited and regal.  Tasted blind I would be hopelessly confused.  It doesn't really taste like any recognizable genre of Scotch.

****

BenRiach 17 53.2% abv. 2nd fill ex-Bourbon barrel

Color: pale gold

Nose:  Putty, clay, peat, medicinal bandages, honey heathery meadow.  Deeper there are herbal vegetal notes.

Palate - opens sweet and lemony and then glows in to rich earthy peat.  This is superficially Caol Ila or even Port Ellen territory, but the lemony here waxes into a more fruity profile with air and time.  There are layers of tart apple,  pineapple, and quince  and white melon underneath.  The expansion shows a smooth, clean, earthy and warming peat.  This is a mature Highland malt whisky that drinks like a good Islay malt of decades past.  Tasted blind this would fool a lot of people.  BenRiach is known for its peated expressions.  Somehow this doesn't taste quite like any of them.  It's hard to say what this tastes like.  It's pretty unique.

****

Dalmore 12 46.1% 12 years in refill bourbon barrel then 10 months finish in PX Spanish oak cask.

Color:  Medium amber with gold tints

Nose:  A dry nose of sun baked earth, dried flowers, bresaola, alfalfa, and fragrant sawed yard aged oak belies the explosion that awaits.

Palate: a titanic blast of treacle sweet honeyed figs, fig cake, fig newtons and fig compote leap out a the opening and just get bigger through the expansion where notes of rancio, more black fruits and baked figs with port add up.  At the turn the oak asserts - lovely old oak.  The finish is long and sherried and oaken.  Wonderful.  This is 46%?  This is a true cask strength experience.  Why aren't all Dalmores this big?

A drop of water ups the air cured meats in the nose and adds an herbal undercurrent.  But the palate is sweetened and enriched further.  This is a lush, succulent, over-ripe candy-sweet dessert dram of high order.  This is a 12 year old?  An inspired cask selection.

*****

Laphroaig 6 57.8% 

Color: straw

Nose: Lemon, fresh grass (hay), putty, some fresh ocean air.  With more air, some goats in the distance.

Palate: big soft gentle lemon-cream chiffon opening, with some pointed grassy sugars and fruity acid that adds zing and salivation. After the soft creamy opening there is a strong expansion with heat and peat that shows you this is cask strength.  The peat is a clean earthy peat reminiscent of Bruichladdich's Port Charlotte.  Earthy, and burning, but not the usual cigarette note encountered on young Laphroaigs.  The turn is marked by the creamy lemony quality driving through the peat's gradual turn to ash.  The finish is long and gentle, alternately malty, ashy, and slightly herbal.  

Josh challenged us to some blinds later on.

Tasted blind I would guess Port Charlotte, Kilchoman, or perhaps a young Port Ellen.  I would never guess Laphroaig.  Unusually clean and pure and lemony for Laphroaig.  A really special cask.

Water amps up the animal and clay and putty of the peat in the nose.  But it adds a richness to the mouth feel and a honeyed aspect to the palate opening that are vital.  With water it's more herbal and creamy on the opening, bigger and spicier on the expansion with a peat that has become more polite, but also richer, with more spice less burn, enriched by a delicate chamois animal skin flavor.  Rich and ashy on the turn with a finish that lingers even longer on road tar, blowing ash and soft herbal bitters.  A grand slam.  With water this is drinking almost like a mid 1970s example of a young Port Ellen.  Powerful, yet poignant.

*****

Kilchoman 4 58.2% - Buffalo Trace ex-Bourbon barrel

Color: straw

Nose:  coal tar, road dust, sweet cream, a hint of mint.  Underneath there is some broth and some oregano.

Palate: explosive, sweet and instantly herbal with effusive licorice, verbena, and lemons.  The lemons wax towards the end of the opening, becoming creamy and sweet with white chocolate and buttery graham cracker smores.  The expansion to the mid-palate is big and prickly, with plenty of lemon acid, sweet cream, and a growing surge of peat heat that smolders with earth and clean anthracite.  At the turn the peat is turning to clean ash and herbal bitters with lingering black licorice, lemon pith and rind and a soft creamy aspect still carrying through.  This is classic Kilchoman - but with the intensity of cask strength.

Water brings up animal skins in the nose, like the Laphroaig before it.  But here it's more about the herbals and licorice and coal tar on the nose.  Water amps up the sweetness of the opening and adds viscosity to the mouth feel.  This is rich, creamy, lemony, and aggressively peated stuff with real Port Charlotte PC7-like anthracite coal notes in the peat.  This is high praise coming from me.  Rich, cerial sweet and creamy on opening it rapidly transitions to peat monster burn and then turns to ash, lemons, and burning earth at the turn.  The finish is long with ash, tar, licorice root and wormwood.  Sophisticated and rather august.  This drinks like one of the cask strength monsters of Islay - which, indeed, it is.

*****

Conclusions:  Impressive.  Each selection epitomizes something and also plays a twist on the expectations you'd have for each distillery.  A host of things jump out at me.  Most of these whiskies drink way older than their chronological ages.  Some, like the Glen Moray play with your head, exploding your notions about maturation.  They also tend to belie the usual flavor profiles for their distilleries or even their regions.  But the bottom line for me is that they are all good - really good.  I'm sold.  Indeed, I was sold.  I became a Single Cask Nation member that night.

Part of the excitement with the Jewish Whisky Company are the special bottlings associated with Jewbilee.   http://whiskyjewbilee.com/  Last year there was a 15 year old Heaven Hill single barrel bourbon that is extraordinary.  You can see the bottle to the right in the image just above and in the image at top.  We tasted it (and I have a bottle I bought at the Jewbilee last year).  It's very special.  Rather like you might expect an Elijah Craig 18 or 20 might be at full cask strength if they offered such a thing.  There were 87 bottles and they sold out instantly.  This year there is a special unique blend from High West that features rye whiskey vatted with an oddly flavorful oddity called "Light Whiskey".  We got to taste it too (blind).  I guessed it was a mature 6-8 year old rye finished in Sauternes cask.  I was wrong.  New society-only bottlings include a 2 year old single barrel rye from Cacoctin Creek in Virginia, as well as a 20 year old single barrel Scotch.  There is an effusive creativity and an American perspective going on with Single Cask Nation, beyond just some good Scotch whisky palates.
Disclosure:  Josh Hatton generously gave me samples of each whisky so that I could leisurely write formal tasting notes at home.  However I purchased a membership on the spot with my own money.

Laphroaig's Younger OBs considered. Cigarette?

Laphroaig is the biggest selling Islay single malt according to Bloomberg (accounting for about 44% of the sales of all the whisky from Islay (!)) and it's not a big mystery why.   It is tremendously smoky and peaty, maritime briney, and yet has beguiling stone fruit flavors and plenty of malty sweetness.  The 10 year old expression is fierce, and yet well balanced, and at around $40 one of the biggest values in the single malt world in the flavor density for the dollar equation.  I encountered it, like a lot of malt whiskey fans, very very early.  In the early 1990s after I had tried Macallan, Glenfiddich, and began tasting the Diageo Classic malts I immediately gravitated towards the compellingly simple and classic label of Laphroaig 10.  You can't begin to explore the world of Scotch Whisky without being either seduced or repelled by Islay - the Hebredian jewel where history, mystery, and peat and sea air come together in a magical array of malt whiskies.  Islay malts all tend to have a maritime influence and most have some peat (even if just by cross contamination) - or a lot of peat.  Laphroaig sets an immediate benchmark and it says it right on the label of the base 10 year old expression:  "The most richly flavored of all spirits".  Older Laphroaigs (the 15, which was the flagship OB until 2009 when it was replaced with the 18) are more estery and have a more elegant and polite peat flavor profile.  The younger ones have a forceful peat that is a polarizing flavor.  Some folks absolutely love it and some folks totally hate it.  The flavors of the peat are less about the smoldering earth, wet hemp, or raging wood fire like you get in other Islay malts.  Instead there's a very special almost spicy aspect to the peat's flavor.   And it was this aspect, I confess, that led me to steer clear of Laphroaigs generally for years.  What the heck is that flavor note?  I tend to describe it as a wet tobacco quality - like a cigarette that the rain put out and which you are now lighting up again.  It's a flavor note that I pretty much only get in young (NAS through 10 year old) Laphroaig.  But that's a whole lot of expressions in their line.

Recently I decided to tour through these expressions to reassess how I feel about the flavors of younger Laphroaig.

If you want to know more about the story of Laphroaig be sure to check out Malt Madness' profile:
http://www.maltmadness.com/whisky/laphroaig.html

A more effusive narrative, richly illustrated with period photography and some of the amazing tales - including the tale of the attempted Laphroaig replica Malt Mill is found here:
http://www.laphroaigcollector.com/history.htm

For photographs of the active distillery you can't do better than to visit Ernst Sheiner's  Gateway to Distilleries page for Laphroaig:
http://www.whisky-distillery.net/www.whisky-distilleries.net/Islay_L-P/Seiten/Laphroaig.html

Disclosure of the origin of the samples tasted:  the bottle of Laphroaig Cask Strength 3rd edition, and samples of Triple Wood 2012 and Cairdeas 2012 were generously provided by  Ryan of JSH&A Public Relations in November of 2012 (over a year ago!).  The bottles of Laphroaig 10, and Cairdeas 2013 are my own property, purchased at Park Avenue Liquors.

Laphroaig 10 (in front) and Cairdeas 2013 Port Finish (behind)

Laphroaig 10 43% abv

Color:  gold

Nose:  Putty, clay, lime, hemp.  Far beneath: distant melon, stone fruits, flowers and honey.

Palate entry is sweetness instantly eclipsed by dark oily peat burn with tobacco and tobacco ash.  Spicy heat and some meaty notes (salami) on the expansion and a long slow fade to ash and dirty malt glow on the finish.  Big rich big dark Islay flavor.  You'll either love it or you'll hate it.

With a few drops of water, there's more putty on the nose although the melon and floral notes (distant to start) seem to disappear.  There is more lemon citrus and sunny sweet on the palate.   Mouth feel is a bit richer too.   I'd say a few drops and 10-15 minutes of integration should be considered mandatory.

****  

An absolute landmark for value in an entry level single malt Scotch whisky.  This is an iconic flavor profile.  That said, I'm not in love with it personally.  The peat comes off as dirtier than I'd like.  I find the unadorned Laphroaig flavor profile not as satisfying as the varieties that gussy it up with some sweetness via some kind of wine finish.  I feel almost guilty saying so.  It's like saying you wish Jimmy Durante had a smaller nose.

Laphroaig 10 Cask Strength 55.3% Batch 3 Jan 2011

Color: Light amber with coppery and golden tints.   Looks like a young bourbon.

Nose: Honeyed quince, apricot, roobios herbal tea, and window putty are the dominant notes.  But the aroma is both big and subtle: Creosote and heather, cardboard and floral meadow.  Fresh unlit Virginia tobacco leaf and river clay.  A harmonious tottering of extreme contradictions of loveliness and ugliness.

Explosive on entry and huge on the palate.   Honeyed and stone fruit preserves sugar sweet melded from the first instant with a fierce radiant lit tobacco smoky-bitter peat with a kiss of library paste.   At mid-palate the expansion brings in stone and red fruits under the dusky thick smoke reek with covers all from first sweet piercing sip through the long aching ashy smoky finish.  At the turn there are sub rosa fruity notes yield to tar and ashes.

Adding a few drops of water adds some hints of stone fruit (nectarine) and whisks of floral perfume to the nose.  These meld to clay and putty to form a classic Laphroaig peaty sweet aroma.

The water thins the palate, gentles the sharp sugars of the opening adds a bit of thickness and honey to the mouth feel, and amps up the already generous spicy heat, but it shelves down the tar and ash in the balance.   More citrus tang and ocean air joins the fierce peat reek and yields a more approachable, more harmonious dram.   Slightly.  Water is recommended but it drinks just fine neat too.  This is a seriously fierce and peaty monster.  A flavor packed dram for the money.   I can see why so many people are wild for this one.

*****

A really delicious example of an Islay Peat Monster.  I've had the opportunity to try other batches (the current one is 5).  They are all good - Batch 5 perhaps best of all.

The bottle and samples shown here were provided by
Ryan of JSH&A Public Relations

Laphroaig Cáirdeas 2012 "Origin: 51.2% abv

From the cut sheet that came with the sample - this useful information about this expression:

Each Càirdeas Origin bottling has been crafted with whisky from the very first Laphroaig Càirdeas barrel, ranging in age from 13 to 21 years and boasting notes of white pepper and purple heather.  This full-bodied whisky has been blended with equal parts of exceptionally unique whisky, intensely matured in small quarter casks for seven years.  Laphroaig Càirdeas produces an extraordinary blend of hazelnut and earthy notes befitting of the 18th milestone.

Color:  Pale gold with amber glints

Nose: Gentle tobacco, earth, sweet grassy heather, meaty animal sweat, and a hint of stone fruit.

Sweet with the sharp pointed grassy malt sweet of a young Islay like Octomore, or Ardbeg 10.  The rich earthy tobacco burn of Laphroiag's characteristic peat attack comes on immediately.   There's juicy sweetness in the mid-palate with tastes of Sauternes, white sultanas, and fruit gums mixing among the ashy tobacco smolder meets anthracite peat reek burn.  It's a simple gastronomic trick, but I'm seduced.

A few drops of water increase both the apparent sweetness and the considerable peat heat.   The mouth feel richens a tad too.   It's almost a wash.

****

almost 5 stars.  A delicious peat monster with some elegance and finesse.

Laphroaig Triple Wood 2012 48%

The cut sheet that came with this expression's sample included these useful details:

Laphroaig® Triple Wood (96 proof) is the result of a distinct triple maturation process in American Oak ex-Bourbon barrels, 19th Century style quarter casks and specially selected European Oak Olorso sherry casks.  The finish reveals the perfect marriage of peat, oak and sherry notes.  Roughly 12,000 bottles have been produced for the U.S. market and will be available at participating retail locations beginning in October 2012.

Color: Light amber

Nose: Virginia tobacco, earthy clay, distant stone fruit, a farm animal's haunch, fresh sawn lumber.

The palate entry and bloom are dominated by lumber with some kiln dried "craft whisky" barrel flavors and tobacco and gentle malty sweet.  With some air and time cherry candy notes play underneath.   The interplay of fruity sweet with hot, darkly bitter peat is lovely.

Titanic ashy finish. 

***

borderline four stars.  This was my least favorite of the group.  The wood management's complexity left me tasting some barrels that didn't do it for me.

Laphroaig Cáirdeas 2013 51.3% abv. Port Wood Finish

Color: An extraordinary light amber and rose wine pink.   Salmon.

Nose: Virginia tobacco again, clay, honey malt, raspberry-cherry compote in a sawn oak box.

The palate is raucous and sweet.   It opens with sweet cereal sugars, berry and citrus tartness, honey and red fruits and then explodes into fiery burning tobacco peat and spirit heat.   The finish brings in grapefuit pith tartness and the fading prickly burn of peat redolent of potter's clay, hemp, salt air, and rock mineral.   It's a classic swimmer (at 51.3% abv it fairly cries out for a drop).   Water adds sweetness to the palate and honeyed richness to the mouth feel.  It also amps up the fruit acids and the dynamics of almost every flavor element.  Water and at least a quarter hour of water integration time are necessary for this whisky to open up and strut its stuff.   It's not elegant.   It's not sophisticated.   Heck, it's not even balanced.   It's a raging peat monster with a lovely fruity sheen added by the port cask portion of the double maturation (the remainder being bourbon barrel). 

****

Rich and big and with some lovely fruits.   I slightly preferred the 2012's more floral presentation, but there's little doubt that the port wine finish's zip and tang and extra sweetness take the Laphroaig flavor signature somewhere interesting.

Conclusions: young Laphroaigs are big aggressively peated flavor bombs.  The quality of the peat has a clear tobacco aspect that is polarizing.   I don't want it all the time - but when I do there is no substitute. What's missing in this review? Laphroaig Quarter Cask.   Introduced in 2004, Quarter Cask - a NAS edition that is younger, aged in more aggressively wood infusing quarter sized casks, is the second largest selling Laphroaig expression, accounting for about 15% of total sales.   I didn't taste it here because I'm not sanguine about the small cask shorter aging period idea.  Maybe I'm making a mistake? If I taste it and find it to be so I'll definitely update this review.

So have I come around to liking the tobacco flavor aspects of the peat in younger Laphroaigs?  Yes I have.  I have come to love it.  Just not all the time...

Note: a similar survey was recently performed by Terry Lozoff at Drink Insider: http://drinkinsider.com/2013/02/laphroaig-triple-wood-cairdeas-10-year-cask-strength/