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.

Glenmorangie Companta. The Master Comes Back To Red Wine.

Glenmorangie just came out with its fifth annual limited release.  This year it is titled "Companta" which means "Friendship", which Bill Lumsden, master blender at Glenmorangie, said refers to the ancient (1295-1560) Scottish historic alliance with France against England usually referred to as "The Auld Alliance".  The relationship with France is the central narrative with Companta as this is a red wine finishing barrel management story with wines from the Côtes du Rhône region.  Red wine finishes on single malt whiskies are tricky.  They can impart sour flavors, can overwhelm, and are hard to balance.  "I don't like red wine finishes" is an almost automatic response for some whisky enthusiasts.  But we should all keep an open mind.  This is a red wine finish with a twist - as executed by someone who really knows what they are doing.  I won't withhold the surprise, this one is yet another success.  It can't be as easy as it looks, but Lumsden's annual limited editions have all been interesting and worth drinking in one way or another and this is no exception.  I suspect this one will go over even better than last year's more purist Ealanta.

Lumsden introduces Companta

at The Brandy Library

Red wine finishes are familiar terrain for Lumsden and Glenmorangie.  In the mid-90s he started the mania for wine barrel finishing with Madeira, Port, and Sherry finished expressions. This led directly to the Sauternes finished Nectar D'Or and famous special wine finished editions from Chateaux Margeaux (a Bordeaux) and the legendary 1975 & 1978 vintage Tain L'Hermitage finished bottling made with casks from the Côtes du Rhône region. Later there was a regular OP Burgundy cask finished version and a more focused Burgundy edition that specified Côtes de Beaune cask finishing. That's a lot of history with using casks, or "Barriques", Lumsden specifies with characteristic precision and excellent brogue.

This fascination with red wine hasn't always been well received by everyone and, at a launch event for Companta at New York's Brandy Library, Lumsden alluded to the risks of tartness and possibility of the wine overpowering the delicate stone fruit and floral nature of Glenmorangie's distillate. With Companta, Lumsden has taken two dramatically contrasting wines from them same Côtes du Rhône Burgundy region.
60% of Companta is from a big tart pinot noir "Clos du Tart".  Lumsden took 1999 vinage ex-bourbon barrel aged Glenmo which was 9 years old in 2008 and then aged it for an addition 5 years in Clos du Tart for a total age of 14 years.

Clos du Tart 2004 Burgundy

Then he tempered it by using an older sweeter 1995 vintage Glenmo and finishing it in barriques that held a sweet fortified grenache graped Côtes du Rhône called "Rasteau" for an additional 8 years, totaling 18 years. At the Glenmorangie launch event we were poured each of these.  It was fascinating to taste the wine flavors that contributed to the cask finished flavors.  And the combination of these two contrasting flavors with mature Glenmorangie distillate has produced something greater than the sum of its parts.  It's hard to taste and discuss this without considering the larger issues swirling around lately: NAS bottings, and the use of fancy barrel finishes to hide younger whisky.  Obviously, in this case where the youngest whisky is 14 years old and the rest is 18 that isn't a pressing issue.  This one feels like a real exploration of the flavors for the flavor's own sake: an artisinal effort and not an exercise in covering things up.  I suspect people who don't like red wine finishes will find aspects to the tartness to the object to.  Others who decry the loss of hyper-mature extremely estery glut stock single casks might grouse about the wild showy flavors of Companta as wood management pyrotechnics in the place of the complexities of extremely mature whisky and maybe that's true.  But the wine finish game is Lumsden's innovation and it's a defining aspect of Glenmorangie so if anyone is going to be playing the wine cask finishing game it's going to be Lumsden - and he shows a deft touch here.  If anything he seems to be upping his game year over year.

Glenmorangie Companta 46% abv.

Color:  russet medium amber, with pink, copper, and gold tints.  It's brick red and pink and honey caramel color.  One of the more appetizing colors in the bottle and the glass that you'll ever see.

Companta's color is extraordinary

Nose: Creamy berry tart with darker notes of chocolate dipped raspberry on rich honey malt.  Undertones of forest floor loam, strawberry jam, and earthy sweet and elegant oak.  It's an interesting an involving nose.

Palate:  This isn't a whisky where the nose outshines the palate.  The opposite is true. At 46% there is enough intensity for sweetness and fruity acids to pop brightly on entry.  The entry is full of  milk chocolate, tart raspberry acid-sweet with notes of currant and malted milk with floral vanilla and creamy fudge.  The raspberry tartness deftly evokes the rich acid fruit of the Clos De Tart. There's a good balance between sweet and dry going on.  The creamy vanilla floral raspberry tart fruited entry opens into a taut and elegant mid palate expansion full of darker malt, dark chocolate, cocoa, and black currant fruit notes.  Thanks to the wine tasting portion of the launch event I can recognize the black currant herbal sweetness as coming from the rich port-like Rasteau (which really comes off as a Port that tastes more of currants than of grapes).  In the mid-palate expansion you can clearly taste the nectarine stone fruit flavors of the Glenmorange distillate itself.  Plus undefined additional notes of herbal brush and animal musk.  The finish is medium long with lingering fruit skin tartness, pepper heat, cocoa dust, and tannin that reads both of oak and wine.

Companta needs air to open, and takes water well.  Water increases the estery, sweet, and fruity aspects, and the milk chocolate covered raspberry note even while upping the spicy finish.

Companta is a Valentine.  A red fruit covered in chocolate - a kiss of sweet from a taut lithe body.  This might be the best one yet.  Bottom line - as soon as I saw a bottle I bought it and cracked it.

*****

(Sample provenance disclosure:  The bottle tasted for this review was purchased at Bottle King, Bloomfield, NJ with my own funds.  I had previously attended the launch event as the guest of the BA.)

FYI - the prior 4 limited Glenmorangie editions:

• Sonnalta PX (Pedro Ximinez, 2009), 
• Finealta (kiss of sherry and of peat 2010), 
• Artein (Italian "Sassicaia" Super Tuscan cask finish, 15 years old, 2012), 
• Ealanta (virgin toasted oak - 2013)

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/

Master of Malt Glenturret 1977 34 Year Old: Tangello Cream and a Puzzling Lack of Rarity.

There were at least six casks of Glenturret distilled in 1977 bottled in 2012 at 34 years old by four different independent bottlers.  I find that remarkable.  The consensus was that there was a "pallet" - whatever that is.  I've noticed this kind of thing before.  For example all of a sudden there are 3 different meteorite apocalypse movies in one year.  The next year there are multiple volcano apocalypse movies - in the same year.  Zeitgeist?  More likely competition or cooperation among rivals.  That doesn't explain a whole bunch of whisky of identical vintage - somehow being bottled at the same time.  The story we are told is that casks are aged and periodically tasted until someone very knowledgeable about whisky determines that it's ready.  It sounds like a pretty approximate decision: is it getting over oaked?  Can it be pushed further?  What are the odds that 34 years in, at least 4 different whisky professionals spontaneously decide to bottle their separate independent casks at the same time?  Yet that's supposedly what happened.

Four separate bottlings alone were reviewed by Reuben of Whiskynotes: Maltbarn (48.4%), Malts of Scotland (47.4%), Whisky Agency (46.7%), as well as the Master of Malt bottling (47.9%):http://www.whiskynotes.be/category/glenturret/
(spoiler alert - he likes them all and gives them all 90s and 91s).

There were also two casks of 1977 Glenturret bottled in the same years by Berry Brother's Rudd (Cask #1 at 46% and cask #2 at 47.6%):

http://www.masterofmalt.com/whiskies/glenturret/glenturret-34-year-old-cask-1-berry-bros-and-rudd-whisky/

Cask #2 of the BBR version was reviewed by Oliver Klimek:
 http://www.dramming.com/2013/05/29/glenturret-34-yo-berry-bros/
(he gave it an 86 - but he's notoriously tough).

Berry Brothers also bottled another cask of 1977 Glenturret the following year as a 35 year old at 46%:
http://www.thewhiskyexchange.com/P-20981.aspx

I presume that "pallet" means that a single independent bottler owns and ages a bunch of barrels of the same vintage and then, rather than produce 6 different single barrel offerings, chooses to sell a number of them to other independent bottlers.  If you have any specific information about this practice, please let me know.

Glenturret, by the way, is the distillery expression at the heart of The Famous Grouse.  Because of this, the Edrington Group runs The Grouse Experience there.  Glenturret is well known as a sweet and lively Highland dram with some acid bite that typically reads of peaches, apricots, or oranges combined with a creamy quality.  Single malt expressions are offered by Gordon and MacPhail - particularly a MacPhail's brown label 11 year old which I've had the good fortune to pour and taste many times (review to follow).

Glenturret is particularly famous for its distillery cat Towser.  I'll let the epitaph on her monument do the talking:

TOWSER
Glenturret Distillery, Crieff, Scotland 21 April 1963 - 20 March 1987
"Towser the famous cat who lived in the still house Glenturret Distillery for almost 24 years. She caught 28,899 mice in her lifetime. World Mousing Champion. Guinness Book of Records"

That's a very good kitty!  As for the 1977 vintage Glenturret whisky: after 34 years in oak, a lot of maturation effects should be in evidence.  The one that really excites me in very mature whisky is esterification.  Acids and alcohols combine to form chemical compounds called esters which give additional fruity notes.  Consumption of acids lowers the pH of maturing whisky as well.  Angel's share evaporation further concentrates the sugars and flavor compounds that remain.  Oak influence and chemicals from the oak, including flavorful lactones, tannins and lignans infuse the whisky.  With hyper mature whisky you get all these maturation effects in greater abundance.  The question - as always - is balance.  Is this Master of Malt bottling a good kitty?  It's hardly news that it is.

Glenturret 34 year old 47.9% abv.

Master of Malt Single Cask bottle #3 of 247.  Distilled 28 October, 1977.  Bottled May 2012.  Refill Sherry Hogshead.  Non chill filtered.

Color:  Full Gold

Nose:  Rich estery malt: honey comb, ripe melon, paraffin wax, ambergris, tangerine, bourbon-like peach compote, mineral dust, and, deep within, some musky sex smells.  Basically - an orgy in a candle shop.

Palate:  Intensely sweet and fruity opening with honey drenched over-ripe apricots, tangellos and mangosteen.  Then a big broad mouth filling expansion with malt cakes in cream, tart citrus rind, overripe melon, paraffin, ambergris, and roobios tea.  The turn to the finish brings old oak tannic bitterness - but just a hint.  It's surprisingly light on oak for such as old dram.  The finish is malty and gentle and of moderate length - perhaps surprising it isn't longer given how intense the earlier phases were.

Whiskies like this tend to be swimmers.  A half a teaspoon of water enhances the spiciness - but but doesn't take the sweetness higher until substantial time is allowed for integration.  When it happens it integrates the added spiciness with the creamy citrus estery wax honey show.  It's pretty stunning. But, the achilles heel is the tartness can trend into bitterness in the finish.  You must experiment with water with this whisky - but it's not a grand slam winner over neat.  It's a bit deceptive in this regard.

It's a magnificent whisky overall - although you could nitpick that it's a little bit tart, the finish is a tad short, and it doesn't fully open with water.  But that doesn't detract enough from its considerable strengths to make me take any stars away.

*****
     
Enjoy these old glut whiskies while you can.  The hot market is sucking them down quickly.  This is the topic of a rare diversion from tasting notes on Reuben's whiskynotes - a very thought provoking article you should check out concerning the end of the era of affordable hyper mature glut whisky:
http://www.whiskynotes.be/2013/whisky-news/whisky-is-dying/

Glen Grant Five Decades: A Mature Beauty With a Baby's Face. A Deceptively Simple Malt With Hidden Depths.

Glen Grant Five Decades is a deceptive dram.  A visual twin for the entry expression it also shares a similar nose.  But that's not the full story.

A limited edition Glen Grant is about to be distributed in the USA (September, 2013).  It is a special vatting of selections from the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and 2000s, by Master Distiller Dennis Malcolm.  This occasion of this special blend is the anniversary of  Malcolm's five decades with the distillery since he began as an apprentice cooper in the early 1960s.  It's meant to be a statement expression and is priced accordingly.  MSRP in the USA is $250 for 750ml.

I'm a big fan of Glen Grant.  The Major's Reserve is a solid low cost single malt.  Recently, I've been plumbing the depths with an amazing sherried 12 from the 80s, and more complex refill sherry 16 and 37 year old single cask expressions all from independent bottlers (reviews to follow).  Glen Grant achieves classic Speyside white pear and honey flavors that take brilliantly to sherry and to aging.  Hyper mature Glen Grants are floral fruit baskets that just hit my monkey bone.  I was very excited to try this interesting blend of mature and young whiskies.

Glen Grant Five Decades 46% abv.

Color:  Pale gold - straw.

Nose:  Gently floral magnolia, heather and honey with fresh breezes of linen.  Deeper nosing reveals a bit of musky waxy ambergris way underneath.  It's lovely but rather shy nose.

Palate:  Sweet and lightly malty on opening.  There is vanilla, and florals, and treacle sugar and bit of honeycomb - but very light.  There is some white pear and melon too.  The expansion is gentle and brings an underlying structure of fresh malt, barley cakes, and white tea.  The finish is warming and gently malty, with some hints of oak and seed cake, but also of cardboard.  It's overwhelming light and feels more of immature malt than mature malt.

Adding two drops of water makes the nose even more shy - but amps up the sweetness and richness of the palate.  The entry fairly explodes with juicy treacle sugars.  The floral, vanilla, honey, and lightly waxy aspects are enriched and it becomes quite a tasty dram.  But it still feels quite a bit on the light and young end of the spectrum.

With some extended air things open even further.  I begin to get sherry notes: jammy fig cake, leather, olorosso woven into the honey and grass sugars.  This is delicious - but this extreme degree of evolution is, frankly, a little weird.  In my initial tasting the color and light balance on the palate and, in particular, the nose made me grab my bottle of Glen Grant The Major's Reserve (a whisky that goes for about 1/8th the price of Five Decades).  Initially I was finding a lot of similarities: youth, honey, treacle sugars.  But with two drops and water and more time to open the Five Decades, despite looking identical in the glass, achieved a dramatically richer, denser, and more complex palate.  The nose, however, remains strikingly similar.

****

My initial impression was 'this is way too light and young to be worth this price'.  However, time and water take Five Decades to someplace special.  It's not like the rich, mature, Glen Grants - and it's not like the young sprightly Glen Grants.  And it's not like what you'd expect a straight mixture would be either.  The result of Dennis Malcolm's efforts is a decepticon that comes off as young and simple when first poured - all the way from the light color to the gentle nose and the light creamy flavor balance.  But time, air, and a few drops of water unleash depths of richness and complexity that take their time to show up.  Then Olorosso sherry flavors and big sugars and honey floral aspects enliven the palate - but not the nose.  I found this coy fan dance delightful - like a color change gem.  But I won't be surprised if some folks are disappointed - particularly if they jump to conclusions.  Light and nimble isn't normally what people want from their expensive limited edition drams. It's confusing, but ultimately beguiling.

(2 oz sample provided by Nicholas from Exposure - Thanks!)

Glenmorangie Ealanta delves the heart of American White Oak

Glenmorangie just launched the latest in their limited "Private Edition" line, Ealanta, following up on such issues as Sonnalta PX, Finealta and Artein. Bill Lumsden was in town at the Flat Iron for it. No doubt he told the joke that starts: "What's the difference between a bonus and the male organ?" (read to the end to get the punchline - unless you've ever caught Dr. Lumsden's act, in which case you already know). There are "only" 1,500 cases for the US market.

Ealanta is aged for a long time (19 years) in virgin bespoke American white oak casks. As the PR line says:

Scots Gaelic for "skilled and ingenious," Ealanta is a 19 Years Old Glenmorangie, matured exclusively in virgin American white oak casks from the Mark Twain National Forest in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri.
PR Newswire (http://s.tt/1ytn0)

Now Dr. Lumsden and Glenmorangie are famous in the modern era (since Lumsden arrived at Glenmorangie in 1995) for innovating the craze for exotic wine finishes that is the fashion across the whole whisky world. Glenmorangie continues to push those boundaries (their Nectar D'Or expression, for example is the one of the few standard editions to feature sauternes cask finishing). Yet, admirably, Glenmorangie has continued to pursue the flavor potentials of the naked oak itself. The base OB 10 expression and excellent 18 year old expressions are aged in ex-bourbon oak. And a few years back they added a cask strength NAS expression that featured special bespoke white oak casks from wood taken from the northern facing Ozark hills: Astar. Of Astar I wrote:

"Glenmorangie's Bill Lumsden is famous for introducing secondary wood finishing to the Scotch whiskey marketplace. With Astar, however, the focus is purely on first fill American ex-bourbon oak casks and the base whiskey distillate - there are no other sources of flavor going on. But like a great artist who can express much with a single line, Lumsden coaxes an incredible complexity of delightful flavors from these two ingredients."

http://www.cooperedtot.com/2012/02/glenmorange-astar-cask-strength.html


With Ealanta things are taken a step farther. The casks are new charred oak, not ex-bourbon. New oak casks are seldom used for ageing Scotch because new oak adds a spicy note which isn't usually considered desirable. New charred oak is a legal requirement for bourbon - which sits well with bourbon's powerful corn distillate. It's a particular reach with Glenmorangie's extremely delicate juice. But just as Bill Lumsden has been fearless in experimenting with wine casks for finishing, he has been fearless in pushing this experiment in the flavors of pure yard age bespoke oak casks. Now, Ealanta isn't the first Scotch whisky to do prolonged ageing in virgin oak casks. BenRiach has had a number of limited expressions aged for as long as 32 years in virgin oak: http://www.benriachdistillery.co.uk/Limited-Releases.html Deanston also makes a virgin oak 12 year expression (and there others out there - slipping my mind). But there is something special about Glenmorangie's performing such an experiment. Partly it has to do with Glenmorangie's extremely high stills - which yield a very delicate spirit - but it's more about Glenmorangie's legacy of wine finishing under Dr. Lumsden.

I'm tempted to make an an analogy with Clint Eastwood. Clint did spaghetti westerns where minor characters were disposable victims of casual ubiquitous violence. In later years Eastwood has made spectacular amends by crafting films that show the devastating effects of violence - even a single violent act - down through generations.

In Ealanta, it's tempting to say that Lumsden has thrown off the frills of secondary flavors and gets to the heart of his distillate and the naked oak itself. However, the fact is that this spirit was laid down in these bespoke casks in 1993 and Bill Lumsden didn't start with Glenmorangie until 1995. However the decision to rest these for 19 long years was his - certainly. Between Astar and now Ealanta, no one can accuse Lumsden of hiding behind fancy wine flavors. Glenmo's distillate flavors are front and center in these expressions where unadorned oak is the frilly negligee. Indeed, I had heard good things about Ealanta. The first review out of the gate was Tim Twe and Billy Abbot's in The Whisky Exchange Blog:
http://blog.thewhiskyexchange.com/2013/02/glenmorangie-ealanta/
But the one that really grabbed me was Josh Hatton's in JewMalt: http://www.jewmalt.com/glenmorangies-ealanta-a-19yo-scotch-whisky-matured-in-heavily-charred-missouri-oak/

Glenmorangie Ealanta 46% 1993-2012

Color: Dark Gold to Light Amber

Nose: Ripe bananas sauteed in butter and vanilla floral oak in prolific rich abundance, with honeycomb and bees wax. Underneath lurk tangy notes peach/nectarine stone fruit, ambergris, and fresh sawn oak. It's sweet and bright, yet lush in it's own way.

The palate entry is delicate in mouth feel but potently floral sweet on the tip of the tongue, like a young whisky. But unlike a young whisky the sweetness breathes honey, florals, banana and peach fruit essences, and darker hints of mature rancio and chamois rather than grass. Then it tingles the sides of the tongue with stone fruit tang. The mid palate expansion is gentle, more a migration of tongue impact as gentle but rich tannins move back grip the back of the tongue. The finish is fairly long, juicyfruit sweet and tinged with grapefruit tannins and fragrant fruitwood sawdust. With repeated sips the spiciness that starts as a tingle builds up into spicy cinnamon-clove heat. It's new oak, after all, and plenty of it. Would more time have pushed it too far? Probably. I'll take Dr. Lumsden's advice and treasure this dram.

Water doesn't add much to this dram, btw. Repeated tastings have only underscored my impressions: it's not a paragon of complexity - but it is a beguiling play on sweet and spicy oak and sweet Glenmo distillate. I'm smitten.

*****
A word on value. This one is going for $110-$120 in the US. This is just about the same price as the excellent OB 18. Given that this is a limited edition and is aged for 19 years - this is clearly in line with Glenmorangie pricing. It's not a value priced dram - but it's a notable success as an experiment and an unusual and appreciated flavor signature.

Oh, and the punchline of Dr. Lumsden's joke? "She certainly knows how to blow a bonus!".

The Morgan Library's First Whisky Event: with Gordon & MacPhail

Chris Riesbeck, Gordon & MacPhail Brand Ambassador, presents in The Morgan Dining Room

The Morgan Library is a little gem of a museum and archive - more a jewel box treasure, really. It's not as well known as it deserves to be - in a New York City dominated by gigantic museums. It's financier JP Morgan's private residential library building - a grand beaux-arts masterpiece of turn of the 20th century architecture and a group of related buildings and exhibition halls that house one of the greatest collections of books, manuscripts, and drawings on the planet. The Morgan seems to continually reinvent itself through the ages. I remember the lovely verdant atriumed Garden Court being the venue of choice for work-time lunches with older relatives. The recent Renzo Piano designed incarnation is bigger, more monumental, if a bit colder. One of the cool things about the recent renovation, however, is that the dining room of Jack Morgan (JP Morgan Jr.)'s house has been made into the formal dining room of the The Morgan's concessionaire, Restaurant Associates. The Morgan Dining Room, as it is known, has period details, including JP Morgan family portraits. It's a cool place to eat, atmosphere-wise, and the food is pretty good.

I was very excited to be able to play a small role in RA's decision to begin hosting whisky events. Given JP Morgan's titanic reputation as a lover of fine liquor and cigars it seems particularly apt. I get the feeling that JP Morgan probably chose cognac more often than whisky in venues like The Morgan's fabulous East Room, but David Wondrich stated (in Esquire):

"When properly built, the Manhattan is the only cocktail that can slug it out toe-to-toe with the martini. It's bold and fortifying, yet as relaxing as a deep massage. J.P. Morgan used to have one at the close of each trading day."

The Morgan's fabulous East Room

At the advice of Michael Strohl of Lauber Imports RA got in touch with Chris Riesbeck of Gordon & MacPhail for the first event. Patricia Japngie of RA asked me what I thought. I was able to whole heartedly assent. Gordon & MacPhail is the oldest and most important independent bottler of Scotch. Not only do they have many bottlings of astounding quality, they have played an important role in bringing single malt expressions of distilleries that normally sell their output for blends. They also provide a deep repository of vanished distilleries and important whisky history in their vast Elgin warehouses.

It was originally scheduled for Friday November 2, 2012 - but that ended up being the week that Hurricane Sandy dealt such devastation to the Northeastern part of the US, and the New York metro area in particular. On that date The Morgan was without power - along with the rest of Manhattan from south mid-town down. But life goes on, and the event was rescheduled for Friday, December 7th 2012. Chris Riesbeck, the US Brand Ambassador for Gordon & MacPhail presented six excellent drams. I was privileged to make the introduction. I spoke about how The Morgan Library is a repository of knowledge's past and that Gordon & MacPhail fulfills this role for whisky. I said that I met Ardbeg and Caol Ila during those distillery's hiatuses via G&M issues, and that distilleries such as Glen Moray, Glentauchers, and Interleven were known almost exclusively from their G&M editions.


The selections that night were:

In order, from left to right

Connoisseurs Choice Clynelish 11 1999-2010 43%

Connoisseurs Choice Jura 1997 12 46%
Benromach 10 43%
G&M Old Pulteney 21 46%
G&M Imperial Port Finished 15 46%
G&M Cask Strength Caol Ila 1999 61%

The tasting notes follow. I had some special guests at this event. Dr. Peter Silver, the Jazz Dentist, Malt Maniac and PLOWED member was on hand. This is a guy who seriously knows his whisky. We also had Susannah Skiver Barton, blogger of http://whattastesgood.wordpress.com/ Also in attendance was Kate Massey, who blogs http://thewhiskeydame.com/

Top: Kate Massey, The Whisky Dame (left), and Susanna Skiver Barton of What Tastes Good chat with Malt Maniac Dr. Peter Silver. Bottom: Chris Riesbeck (left), Michael Strohl of distributer Lauber Imports, and Dr. Peter Silver

I also had the opportunity to meet some other lovely people. Highlights include noted Star Trek author and SciFi impresario Keith DeCandido and Belgian whisky enthusiast Jonathan Cornelus.

But the main attractions were Chris Riesbeck, who impressed me with his enthusiasm, knowledge, and polished delivery, and, of course, the Gordon & MacPhail whisky. Part of the G&M story is that they make arrangements to have distilleries use their own casks so their barrel management decisions start at the moment of fill. Ranging across the bottlings we see clear strategic thinking in evidence in barrel management. Some expressions are aged in old tired sherry cask. Others in sugary first fill ex-bourbon. Staves are recoopered from American Standard bourbon barrels (200 liters) into larger hogsheads (225 liters) in another bottling to reduce surface area contact for longer maturation. Benromach is aged in bourbon cask and then finished in cream sherry. This type of variety in barrel management shows a clear conscious attempt to tailor barrel management to achieve desired ends. None of that means a thing if the whisky isn't delicious, of course. My experience, however, is that G&M whisky usually is. This event's selections were no exception:

Connoisseurs Choice Clynelish 11 1999-2010 43%
Color: Very Pale Gold
Nose: Surprisingly rich with paraffin wax, rich estery melon, salt tang, and a slight whiff of peat.

Palate: Honeyed floral sweet entry with a silky mouth feel. Waxy, estery rich with a tang of acid at mid-palate abd wafts if the sea at the turn. Riesbeck reports the casks used as "Very old refill sherry". No sherry flavor was in evidence, which lets the distillate's flavors shine. This is a really nice example of the Brora-like flavor signature that the really good Clynelishes have. There is a freshness and a rich estery quality here much more marked than in the 14 year OP expression.

*****

Connoisseurs Choice Jura 1997 12 46%
Color: Extremely pale jonquil.

Nose: Gently floral with buttery notes and some pear/melon fruits.

The palate is surprisingly potent estery fruit basket with maritime salt, and a marked vegetal aspect which Riesbeck evocatively called "grilled Jalapeno". Of course, once he said that, you couldn't help but taste it. Also refill sherry cask - clearly very old multiply refilled casks. The flavors here are markedly richer than the OP10. The flavor density is close to the excellent OP16, although the signature is younger and fresher. Also interesting is the very pale color. OP expressions of Jura are all caramel colored and run a light amber. I got the feeling that we were privileged to see what Jura "really" looks like here (granted that color is almost always determined by barrel management when coloring isn't used). I found the pale color when combined with the rich flavor beguiling.

****

Old Pulteney 21 - 46%
Color: Gold
Nose, richly floral with a big vanilla component. Honeysuckles, butter, and salty air.

Palate: Huge creamy vanilla floral opening with a big melon estery hit. The mouth feel is silky and rich. At mid palate the floral and fruity sweet shifts into maritime salt tang, firm malt, and a bloom of gentle oak. The turn to the finish dials up the ocean air. Superb - and the consensus here is that this, with its cleaner pure bourbon oak cask aging is superior to the OP. Aged in refill American Hogshead (the standard barrels are resized to hogsheads to optimize the barrel size for long maturation). This was a real highlight.

*****

Benromach 10 43%
Speyside, peated malt aged 80% of the time in bourbon cask, then the last 20% in first fill cream sherry.

Color: old gold, with amber glints.

Nose: peat and herbal iodine meets mossy grassy malt.

Palate: Benromach 10 delivers on the score of mixing the traditional Spey flavor elements of fruit basket and gentle peat. There is some lovely vanilla floral on the opening. Then a gentle expansion with estery Speyside fruits. The peat shows up at the tail end of the mid-palate and drives through the finish. It's wonderful stuff.

****

Imperial Port Finished 15 46%
Color: amber

Nose: sandalwood, cantaloup, and earthy musk.

Palate: Port driven Spanish figs and loamy earth and moss. Sherried sweet opening, with that cocoa thing going on. Musk melon and apricot bark drive the mid palate. There's plenty of musk and loamy must and oak tannin in the turn. Then a long oaky and port wine finish that I found satisfying. Organic, earthy, yet with pretty good amplitude. This is my first Imperial - and it's very compelling. Aged 10 years in refill sherry then the next 5 years port pipe. In the denouement of the evening I wasn't above scavenging an additional dram of this off another table!

****


Cask Strength Caol Ila 1999 61%
Color: pale gold with olive glints.

Nose: Earthy damp tobacco, iodine, musk.

Palate: big and rich with unusually full mouth feel. The opening is sweet with tons of vanilla and intense wood sugars from first fill bourbon cask and a hint of mint. The expansion is classic Caol Ila with iodine, band aids (but in a good way :) and rich maritime sea airs. The finish is long, malty and peaty. Very familiar, but rich and well balanced.

****

Bottom line here: Gordon and MacPhail shows a midas touch in getting excellence out the distillate. These are all whiskies I really enjoyed. Many of them clearly outshine the distillery's own expressions - which is a remarkable feat and a testament to the expertise G&M brings to the table.

A bunch of happy campers.

This event was clearly a success. It was sold out, entertaining, and featured a very nice group of special drams. The folks who attended clearly had a good time. That bodes well for future whisky events at The Morgan. So does the fact that RA purchased the Glencairns rather than rented them. As it is, I am scheduled to lead a whisky-chocolate pairing event there on March 1st, 2013. I hope you can attend.

Ardbeg Supernova 2010 vs Octomore 2.1

Ardbeg Supernova - the extreme model from the maker of serious peat monsters. I miss a lot of Ardbeg special releases, sadly. They are all good and many are excellent. I've been reviewing Octomores and Gal Granov, the incredibly gregarious, intelligent, questing and amazingly active master of the Israeli food and booze blogging scene via Whisky Israel among others, asked me how the Octomores compared with Supernova. When I said I had never tried any of them we got busy setting up a trade and I recently received a sample of the 2010 edition from Gal.

Ardbeg Supernova barely there in the glass; huge on the palate

Ardbeg makes peat monsters and when Bruichladdich concocted Octomore, the most heavily peated whisky in the world, Ardbeg quite reasonably derived a competing version. Ardbeg has released fewer versions and less total volume of this intense fire water than Laddie - and they never quite got the peat phenol levels as obscenely far into the stratosphere as Laddie did (and continues to do) with Octomore. However, as anyone who has marveled at the heavy peat flavors of Lagavulin and Laphroaig (which taste mighty peaty at comparatively tiny phenol levels) the ppm number doesn't tell the whole story. I had to see which peat monster tweaked my peat freak tail the hardest.

Ardbeg SuperNova 2010 60.1%

Color: Pale straw

Nose: light and youthful spring meadow with floral vanilla and a kiss of lemon over a darker foreboding with spirit heat, clay, putty, and some distant petrol and auto garage.

Palate The entry is pointed and sweet with malt sugars, grassy and clean. There are gentle intonations of vigorous juicyfruit and jujubee berries on a thin light mouth feel. And then hits a roaring big expansion of spirit heat with vigorous big and classically maritime Ardbeg peat. The peat blooms into massive intensity, well melded with sweet. It is a huge, visceral, pulsating burn. At the turn to the finish it becomes massively bitter and ashen - like the gray end of a fine cigar. The intense ash fades over an extensive period of time progressing though herbal bitters and eventually into a gentle cherry and malty residual sweet glow on your blasted palate.

A dash of water ups the citrus lemon note in the nose and increases the angularity of the sugars. However the mouthfeel is noticeably richer and the pointy sweetness of entry rendered more honeyed. There more pepper and spice in the huge peat expansion.

Bottom line here, Ardbeg Supernova 2010 is a huge peat monster and a delicious dram with a lot going on flavor-wise.

*****

Read Gal's review of it: 
http://whiskyisrael.co.il/2010/08/16/tasting-ardbeg-supernova-2010-release/

The general consensus in the blogosphere seems to be that Supernova 2010 is more citrus and fruit and less phenol and slam than the 2009 edition.  That sounded a lot like the general consensus about the difference between Octomore 01.1 (phenol and slam) and Octomore 2.1 (more sweet and heather - despite higher phenol levels).

Given the sweetness of Supernova and the legacy of the turn to the light between the 2009 and 2010 expressions I decided to skip the heavy petrol of Octomore 01.1 for the head to head comparison.. It was a toss up, for me, between the razor sharp 4.1 or the slightly more rounded 2.1. It seemed like splitting hairs and I have a fresh full bottle of 02.1 and only a couple of ounces of 4.1 so I queued up a dram of Octomore 02.1 straight away.

Octomore 2.1 62.5% 140ppm 5 yo

Color: pale yellow - a tiny touch darker than the pale pale Supernova

Nose: grassy sweet over industrial putty, clay. But where Ardbeg Supernova features floral and lemon notes, Octomore features a darker nasal palate with grass and grain sugars rather than flowers and more peat (clay) notes in evidence.

Palate: Ardbeg opens with pointed malt sugars and young grassy grain too, but more a tiny bit more heft, a thicker mouthfeel, and a slightly bigger mid palate expansion of ash, and tar. Octomore 2.1 has lemon citrus in the turn to the finish. There are maritime notes, iodine, sea air, kalamata olives. With repeated
sips the peat burn builds, but so does a creamy vanilla quality.  This is classic Octomore: grassy malty heather sweet entry followed by a titanic mid palate expansion of explosive peat and rich maritime flavor elements.  The palate experience divides cleanly into two divergent and opposite halves like the twin nature of Man: light and dark; good and evil.  Sweet angelic honey sugar sunlight and monstrous burning ashy tar laden hellfire.

*****

Dramming them side by side I'm struck by how distinct the flavor profiles are: Ardbeg with more floral, citrus, and black pepper; Octomore with more honeyed malt, meadow, tar and cream.  The Ardbeg tastes so distinctly of Ardbeg and the Octomore is clearly in the peated Bruichladdich house style.  Yet I'm also struck by how similar they are to each other. Sweet and young up front with titanic peat wallops and huge tarry finishes. They are both true to what they are and clear Islay kin. Two different routes to the top of peat monster mountain. So, which is king? Octomore is darker and more convincing peat monster from the perspective of the density of burn. However Ardbeg Supernova is just ever so slightly more delicious from my perspective.  They are both monsters and both superb.  It's an academic question anyway.  Both are limited editions and both are long sold out in most places.