First one I got aware of was The Whisky Exchange's bottling. The Whisky Exchange is celebrating its 10 year online anniversary and has been bottling a few very good botlings.
Whisky Exchange's Amrut is called Amrut Special Reserve and is bottled at 63%
Just a week later Amrut itself released Intermediate Sherry Matured. It's Amrut whisky that has been transfered from ex-bourbon casks to ex-sherry casks and then back to ex-bourbon. Bottled at 50%
This one I tasted and it's a magnificient dram :
The nose is spicy, tropical fruits, very Amrut :-)
Palate is sherry-woody, coconut, iodine without the peat. The woodyness is intriguing as it evolves around a great complexity, to which is added the Amrut chewiness I also found very present in the Double Cask bottling, Fusion and the regular unpeated Amrut especially. Coconut is very dominant, probably one of the most coconut whiskies I ever had.
Coconut isn't an uncommon unusual tasting notes, try read this thread about unusual tasting notes on the whisky magazine forum: http://www.whiskymag.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=13056
Finish : very long and mouthwatering, very tropical finish. When I say tropical I mean a mix of all those sweet fruit that's usually grown far south of Denmark
The most weird tasting note I found in this taste similar to the stuff thats sometimes used to flavour medicine here, especially vitamine pills. I got no clue how else to describe it :-). Sweet, Iodine, fruity is the closest. It adds to the experience of this whisky being Indian and it differentiates it from Scottish malts
End of the day I will rate this very high, it's possible the best Amrut I had so far, if it isn't the Fusion.
Rating 89
Last bottling just out is the Amrut Kadhambam also bottled at 50%
Kadhambam means mixture in Tamil and is the result of Amrut being matured on three different cask types- Ex-oloroso, ex-Bangalore Blue Brandy casks and finally ex-rum casks, the latter two cask types has been used for Amruts own brandy and rum products
Now this tasted a lot different than I expected. It actually reminded me of a typical 12yo OB speysider somehow, which is usually a lot of ex-bourbon casks with a small mix of other cask types, typical ex-sherry.
The difference is that this is still typical Amrut and it got the typical Amrut chewiness. This reminds me mostly of the Double Cask release, without the vanilla, and it seems a bit more tropical. For all the different cask types used this is still very distillery typical. I really think there's some kind of distillery signature to Amruts, which I get as a chewiness, plasticine (not sure if this is right word, but it's something I played with as a child and it had a nice smell). The chewiness is here again on the Kadhambam
Rating 85
I do like the fact that that all this very innovative cask management isn't used to disguise anything but used to enhance the whiskys original charatcer. While I often have problems with finishes, which I feel is usually used to enhance bad whisky, this is the total opposite. I really think Amrut has done a great job. Having a whisky that will alwas be bottled around 5 years old, take or give 1-2 years, it's things like this that has to be done, if you want to put out a range of whiskies and just can't do a 12yo, 15yo and 18yo and a cask strength-
I also liked the head to head dramming of the above two drams. The ISM and the Kadhambam is a very good example of a woody whisky versus a non woody whisky, which basically shares a lot of common things. It's a couple of very educational drams and they go very well head to head as the similarities and differences is very interesting
Sometimes when you have two very different representants from a distillery the differences are there but the similarities lacks to the extend you never would have guessed them as being from same distillery. Not here. The differences are there, but so is the similarities.
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