Aarhus

A tribute to Aarhus

This year, beside my traditional whisky advent calendar, I will visit 24 bars in Aarhus.

If you have never visited Denmark or Aarhus before, I can tell you that my city, which might be somewhat unknown to the international tourists, is well worth visiting a couple of days as tourists

The three main attractions are

Aros the art museum. I am not the biggest fan of art museums, but this place is really nice. Try photo google it and you might get a hint

Another great place is MOMU, the Viking museum, at the southernmost end of the suburbs. Did you know the one of main sources of roman time armoury (swords and that kind of stuff) was just outside Aarhus ?. And have you ever heard about the Grauballe-man ? The best preserved body from the milleniums back. Forget about mummies in Egypt!

Last fine museum is The Old Town which is a museum the size of a whole neighbourhood

But beside this, Aarhus has a great city centre. It's not that big, as Aarhus grew big quite late, but it does accomodate our 300000 citizens excellent. Shopping centres, shopping streets, the latin quarters (Small, but cozy) and an abundance of good restaurants and waterholes. Mind you, Aarhus is a student town, and we don't get that many tourists, so most places have to rely on locals, which means returning customers. So you have to be good and cheap (Cheap on the danish scale). And we also have Michelin restaurants if that's your turf.

Now, this is a whisky blog, so the next 24 days I will present a local bar to you, here on my blog. Visiting all 24 is my advent calendar this year. I do have my handful of regulars, which offcourse will be included, but I will also visit some alternatives and some new places. The focus will be beers and whisky, but some of these places serves delicious food as well. I know a lot (most) of my visitors are from abroad, so now it's time to present my hometown

And trust me, we do have a few really great bars here. No dress codes, this is a relaxed town

All the links are to google photoes

4 from Compass Box

Compass Box got a lot of press lately, but how is these whiskies that got all over the news last month ?

Here is my take on 4 of them, with 4 short reviews. I want to check out a new colour setup of the blog. So I am doing a speed tasting of 4 whiskies and soing some short notes and thoughts

1. Hedonism Quindecimus 46%

A blend of grain whiskies from 5 distilleries at varying ages.

Soft laid back grain nose, with custard vanilla. The palate is quite woody for a grain, not very spicy as some grains can be. A very nice an easy drinking grain, with

Rating 84/100

2. "This is not a luxury Whisky" 53.1%

A blended whisky 10.1% Strathclyde, 6.9% Girvan, 79% Glen Ord and 4.0% Caol Ila

The nose is warm with a hint of peat. A bold and nutty flavoured whisky. There is not much Caol Ila in this blend but the peat is always lingering in the background. There is a bit of dried fruits, a box of raisins come to the mind. This is more power than delicate. The finish comes in with a little creamy vanillaness

Rating 85/100

3. Flaming Heart 15th Annivarsary 48.9%

A blendend malt. Caol Ila, Clynelish, Teaninich and Dailuaine. Married for a minimum of 2 years in active new french oak hybrid barrels

The french oak is the first thing that hits me with this typical virgin oak crisp vanilla both on the nose and the palate. Another nutty flavoured whisky, with a nice spicy dry woody mouthfeel. Quite delicate compared to the first two. This is also a tad more sweet than the first two offerings. So far this is my favourite. The sweetness adds a nice balance to this whisky. The finish is fantastic, where suddenly medicinal notes appear, and medicinal, thats my favourite tasting note :-). Think old leather Ardbegs,

Rating 88/100

4. The Peat Monster 10th Anniversary 48.9%

A blended malt of Caol Ila, Clynelish, one of the Kildalton malts and another Highland malt.

This is a whisky designed for the sophistaced peatjunkies. Some will say that's an oxymoron, but there is a few of us out there!

Peat, vanilla and spice. There you go. Quite a bit of oomph and the alcohol burn do tell me this is probably younger than the other 3 I have tasted tonight. While the approach is a little fierce the finish is where the complexity hits and I end up in a very feelgood mode

Rating 85/100

This was a nice session. It's fun to taste this blends where the whisky gets a chance to pull their weight, as the whisky is bottled at a proper strength

Are the new owners of Bladnoch stupid or arrogant ?

Sometimes I have a hard time understanding other people

I own a 5% share of 2 casks at Bladnoch which I bought through the previous owners. Last weekend I received this letter:

Short story is that the initial payment covered 8 years of warehouse rent and those 8 years have now passed.

If we don't remove our cask before 30th November the new rental charge will be 5£ a week, increasing to 10£ March 1st. 2016

The alternative is to have the casks moved to whiskybroker.co.uk for bottling or further storage

Whenever the cask will be moved there will be a 25£ "standard movement charge"

Other cask owners have received a similar letter

Here is my opinion on Bladnoch's initiative towards their old fans and customers

First a little fact. I also own a cask with Bruichladdich. With their new owners they increased the weekly rent to around 40 pence a week.I just paid for further 5 years storage of a cask that was 10 years old.

Here is a quote from the letter:

"As a goodwill gesture we will not be charging any rent up to 30th November"

This is 4 months free rental, since the cask was filled 27th July 2007. Something similar to 18 weeks free or 90£/180£ saved. If I choose to trust Bruichladdichs rates as the going costs of warehousing whisky (I know whiskybroker charges even less) they are really goodwilling us 7£. As I own 5%, they just gave me around 35 pence. Fantastic, I feel really goodwilled there. The cost of sending this annoying letter was 1£ so you can say they spend 3 as much on annoying customers than pleasing them.

Seems like I have to get hold of the other shareholders and decide what to do with these 2 casks. My vote is to get them moved to whiskybroker as fast as possible. When we hopefully agree to do this, we will have to get in touch with whiskybroker and have them move the casks. This will have to fit into their schedule I am pretty sure, and I have no idea when this is going to happen. Probably not within the next 2 weeks, so I wouldn't be surprised we will have to experience the new rental charge, which is more like a heavy fine. Lets say it takes 4 months. Then the charge will be 10-15£ for me, which is probably something most people with our hobby can live with, but it is still a lot of money, The experience of getting robbed is probably worse. So this is at most annoying. On our side

But from Bladnochs side I think this is stupid. Very. All distilleries have a fan base. It's great for a distillery to have fans. They are loyal customers. They are also mini brand ambassadors. I think it's stupid to piss off your old fans. They might have been fans of the former company, but it's still the same distillery. I would have chosen to nurse these people (of which one was me!). Get them to work for me. They would be my first target for new products. They would buy them naturally.

I would also have kept their casks in my warehouse. Think of all these fans coming to the distillery to see their casks. Off course you would have to work a bit to take these guests to their casks as they surely would like to, but these guest, and the friends they probably bring along, would be happy. They would also go into the shop and buy things. Whisky. Merchandise. They will take photos and post it on socail media. And they might go home and say how wonderful Bladnoch is, what a good time they had, how nice the people were, and how much they look forward to visit again. And as a side bonus they would stay at local B&B's and guesthouses and eat at local restaurants.

Instead they build up a somewhat big group of grumpy former fans. I can quote one reaction I have seen on the internet concerning this exact letter:

"I would suggest a boycott of the new Bladnoch bottles, whenever they appear, I know I will. There is no room in our small country for fools like this man, take a look in the mirror and ask yourself some serious questions - to the new owner P Craig"

In my opinion the new owners of Bladnoch have started things stupid. Maybe. Or maybe not....

I have also heard that the new owner is going to market Bladnoch as a premium luxury whisky. This means high prices, fancy bottles, wooden boxes and big time advertising, but usually not better whisky in the bottle. With the advertising a new segment of whisky consumers will be reached. I am pretty sure the now former fans won't be customers after a move like this. They wouldn't be interested in packaging over whisky. They are also pretty immune to marketing gimmicks as they know a bit more about whisky then the average consumer. So Bladnoch is actually just getting rid of people that would have left anyway. I don't know if this will be true, but if it is, then the new Bladnoch isn't stupid. Just arrogant

So are the new owner of Bladnoch stupid or arrogant. What do you think ?. 

Ailsa Bay - the first bottling

Ailsa Bay

Grant's owns 5 distilleries, The best known is Glenfiddich and Balvenie, but they also run Ailsa Bay, Kininvie and Girvan (Grain). Ailsa Bay is located at same place as the Girvan distillery. It is one of 8 operating malt whisky distilleries in the Lowlands, if not more, as new ones seems to open all the times these days!

Ailsa Bay is the big one, it has a capacity of 12 million LPA, more than twice of all the others combined. Ailsa Bay started production in 2007

According to the Malt Whisky Yearbook, 4 types of whiskyspirits are produced, and the aim for this whisky is more or less exclusively Grants blends

2 of these spirits are peated, MWY mention the heavy peated one as being 50ppm. As this is 21ppm as written on the bottle it must be the "lightly" peated version. 21ppm is similar to Bowmore if I have to class this with an Islay distillery

Also on the label is mentioned SPPM as being 11, and it means Sugar PPM, it must be a way to quantify the sweetness of the whisky. I don't know when SPPM is measured. PPM is measured in the barley, I suspect the SPPM is measured either in the spirit, or it could be in the whisky itself

Precision Distilling

Another new term for me is "Precision Distilling". It probably means everything is run by a computer, but my initial thought was that it could mean the stillman wasn't drunk when this was made

Here is my opinion of the whisky:

Ailsa Bay 48.9%

Quite peaty, sweet, oily, a little hot, a little sour socks youthness, but the body balances this out a bit. It is on the sweet side. Still too young for my taste, but I look forard to try some proper aged stuff from this distillery in the future. 

This Ailsa Bay reminds me of an oily version of a very young Ardbeg and this whisky could be popular with peatheads

Rating 78/100

Giving Bourbon a finish

It doesn't happen often. There is a reason for finishing to be a technique that is more used in Scotland than in Kentucky.

As bourbon is matured on new wood, the individual barrel is more or less affecting the bourbon the same way. Things like age, mashbill and warehouse location matters a whole lot more than the barrels, as the barrels are similar. Not so in Scotland where all types of casks are used and they are used many times. So in Scotland you do sometimes see tired casks that doesn't really influence and mature the whisky. One way to repair a whisky from a tired cask is to empty the cask and fill the spirit into another casks. Giving a whisky a huge shot of flavour from an active wine casks is very popular and just months in such a cask can have a huge influence. It's called "finishing", and it's done both to repair tired whisky casks, but also as a flavour design.

But for bourbon, finishing is not very common. The lack of tired casks, and the fact that bourbon itself is fast maturing and very intense is the explanation of this. But finished bourbon do exist and I just happened to have a couple of them in my possesion

Malts of Scotland Bourbon

Heaven Hill, Malts of Scotland, Port Cask finish. 52.8% 

distilled 2001, bottled 2015

This is a little bit weird as it tastes more like a cocktail than a bourbon. It is fruity, a bit like bourbon with a dash of blackcurrant. It's very easy drinking, the alcohol is very well integrated. It's a bit more watery than my average bourbon, but also quite woody, which is a bit of a contradiction tastewise. The tasting experience is very unusual for me as I get woody flavours above my tongue and fruity flavours below. I all ends with a sweet finish.

Rating 87/100

Finishing a bourbon, the effect is much less than when finishing a single malt. This is a bourbon most of all with a little fruity twist. The whisky hasn't lost its soul