Danish Whisky Blog Awards 2014

Distillery of the Year

Deanston

Bung hole sniffer spotted at Deanston

The last 3 or 4 times I have visited Scotland, Deanston Distillery has been the most popular distillery in my groups when it comes to amount of bottles purchased. It's a distillery not on the radar of most entusiasts and that's a shame

The distillery itself is very interesting to visit as it is quite different to other distilleries. The buildings used to host a cotton mill, but was rebuilt into a distillery in 1966. The distillery also produces it's own power. It's a waterturbine where water from the river Teith is giving it's powerful contribution to the whisky lovers

Beside the interesting tour, the distillery buildings, which may not qualify as the most pretty in Scotland is situated in a very beautiful spot on the river bank. They do have bottle your own whisky available and usually there is a special bottling available as well if you are lucky. It may be a festival bottling or the latest batch of Deanston Toasted Oak. Especially the Toasted Oak has been a major hit in our group. Beide a range of tours, there is a shop and nice cafe. The only thing I miss on the tour is the guide opening a cask and giving us a wee taster

Independent Bottler of the Year

Smooth Ambler


Smooth Ambler is a distillery in east West Virginia. It is very limited what they have bottled from their own production still. When it comes to whisky that is. But until they are having aged stock from their own distillery they have set up a very succesful independent bottling range called Smooth Ambler Old Scout. Beside being totally open about this as sourced whisky (which not everyone sourcing whisky in the states is) they also manage to bottle a range of excellent and well vatted bourbon and ryes. And these are available in Denmark as well. The whisky is sourced from the distillery in Indiana that someone need to name. But it is usually referred to as MGP or LDI. Some of the whisky is also originating from Four Roses, probably barrels left by Seagram's in Indiana. This is the whisky of today that people will regret not have bought in five years. Unless you bought some off course

Bottling of the Year

SMWS 39.97 
23yo distilled 1990 45.7%

My whisky of the year. It has to be something good, I purchased a bottle and it have to be bottled in 2014 (or late 2013). At least it has to be something I got my hands on in 2014.

This is from Linkwood

The nose is delicate and fruity. I am talking apple and pears here. It's one of those whiskies where you can nose and dream away forever. The whisky itself is quite woody, maybe too much for some but I like this profile. It's a little bit weird whisky, it's delicate on the first taste but woody on the finish.  The whisky changes like a snap when I drink it. 

Easydrinking, complex, and my impression from when I first tasted this, was that this tasted like good whisky used to taste before the (whisky)world went crazy.. This has been the highest scoring whisky from all over blind tasting runs we have done (and that made it to a blog post, not all did)

Score 90/100

Tasting of the year

Cadenhead tasting at the Malts of Campbeltown whiskyfestival.
With Mark Watt and Grant Macpherson

In 2014 I went to the festival in Campbeltown. That was a very positive surprise. There were tours, tasting and events covering all three Campbeltown distilleries and also tasting and warehouse-tours with Cadenheads. My two favourite tastings were the Cadenheads warehouse tasting and the Cadenhead tasting. The Cadenhead tasting was presented by Grant Macpherson and Mark Watt in a very good shape. The first dram up was a blind, which caught quite a few. It was the delicious bourbon from Heaven Hill. Aged for 17 years and in Scotland since 2015. It was a cask sample but it was bottled just a couple of months later. In the tasting were a range of Cadenhead bottlings, including the very good Tomatin 1979 35yo. The highlight was a cask of 25yo Rosebank, rolled into the room (It was held in the maltings room) and sampled straight from the cask. And anyone who wished could purchase a bottle, which was drawn with a valinch straight into a your bottle on the spot. Tastings like this, or a festival like this is what it still makes it worth for me coming back to Scotland

Cadenhead will release a bourbon

This May I went to the Campbeltown whisky festival with the whiskylassie. A festival I can recommend highly, it was an excellent couple of days, and the organisers did things that makes it worth to travel for this event from all corners of the world. Music, ales, whiskypeople and the most important, a lot of whisky to taste

One of the tasting consisted of a some high end releases from Cadenhead, accompanied by some cask samples. A cask of 25yo Rosebank was opened, gauged and tasted, and anyone who wanted a bottle could purchase this for 150£. This was an excellent malt and offcourse I bought this.

A cask of Rosebank

Another cask sample was a bourbon. This was served blind and caused some puzzled faces amongst the attending whiskyentusiast, I guess most wasn't that experienced with bourbon

Here is my review of the cask sample drawn a few months before bottling.

The bourbon was distilled at the old Heaven Hill just before it burned down in 1996. In 2005 the barrel was transferred to Scotland. This bourbon has been maturing half it's time in Kentucky and the other half in Campbeltown. This makes quite a difference as the temperature differences is much less in Scotland than in Kentucky. This bourbon is a lot less woody than you average bourbon. 

Nose: Sweet, corn, solvent. Does this sound good ?. Maybe not, but it is. Deliciously good. This noses like a sweet grain, but with a lot more body

Palate: Strong, this do for sure have a high ABV. Loads of butterscotchy vanillaed flavours. Remarkable lack of wood compared to what you expect from a bourbon. This reminds me of ryed version of Jefferson's Stitzel Wellers, which I found less woody as well.

This benefits a lot with a bit of water. The alcohol burn, both on the nose and palate dissapears and makes the whisky come to it's true right. Quite surprisingly, a little water makes this whisky more oily, actually remarkable more oily, and the wooden flavours hidden inside comes out

Due to the "double maturation" of this bourbon. 8 years here and 8 years there, I wonder why Cadenhead hasn't claimed they have invented a new whisky catagory. They have done this before. This isn't the first bottling of Heaven Hill to be released from Cadenhead! My suggestion would be to call this kind of bourbon for outland whiskEy, but I think that name has allready been taken by a World of Warcraft realm 

Rating 88/100

There won't be many bottles of this, less than 150 I would say

The festival had many other nice events, like the one shown blow here:

The Springbank Warehouse tasting

With Distillery Manager Gavin McLachlan

Danish Whisky Blog awards 2013

Distillery of the Year

Four Roses

Four Roses is one of the few distilleries that just do it right. An almost endless set of releases of single barrels and small batch bourbons in various price ranges. Apart from their standard yellow label bourbon, they have an ongoing set of cheap single barrels that is not much older than the barrels they use for the yellow label. They also have more expensive, but still very affordable single barrels, some of which have been in the barrel for longer than 15 years. Everything is not just single barrel, Four Roses have their "Small Batch" range, which, as the name implies, is a vatting of of barrels. The speciel edition of this, "Small Batch Limited Edition" has been named the favourite bourbon the last couple of years by several of my bourbon entusiast friends. An eyeopenener for me in 2013 was visiting the danish bourbon/cocktail bar Salon 39 in Copenhagen, which makes a fantastic Old Fashioned based on Four Roses Single Barrel Bourbon

Here is my review of one of their cheap single barrels:

Four Roses Single Barrel 50%
Warehouse QN, Barrel 36-3T

Nose: Fantastic balanced bourbon nose, where the sweet corn and rye parts are very well integrated, with a lot of spice, archetype bourbon floor varnish lacqeur,

Palate : Very creamy, vanilla, rye and spicy all at once. Great oomph factor and a bit of wood, quite intense on the wood and rye and the creamyness is profound. The youth of this is showing with a faint alcohol burn

Finish : medium and creamy

A somewhat simple, but very delicious bourbon

Rating 85/100

Unfortunately the european releases don't have the recipe information as the US releases have. My guess for this would be OBSV. When you look at the price for these single barrels, it's one of the best bargains in the big world of great whisk(e)y.

Independent Bottler of the Year

Cadenhead

Cadenhead has totally revamped their line up here in 2013. The line up is turning toward small batch bottlings of single malts and a series that is called "Creations", which is blends, small batch blands that is. The small batch bottlings is actually very small batches of 2-4 casks. So far I have tasted several really great malts Caperdonich 1977, Highland Park 1988, Glenlivet 1970, Tomatin 1978 and a great Creations 20yo consisting of of 4 casks (Mortlach 1992 butt,  Bruichladdich 1993, Cameronbridge 1989 and Invergordon 1991 hogsheads)

So far I have liked everything in this range a lot, apart from a Clynelish that was too sulphury for me. If the new Master Blender of Cadenhead, Mark Watt, can keep up this quality I think we are all in for a lot of good treats in future

Caperdonich

Caperdonich 35yo 50.2%
Cadenhead Small Batch

Nose : heavy sherry, musty and earthy
Palate : Sweet, sherried, raisins, faint medicinal, quite robust and earthy
Finish: Long, and here the oak spicyness hits with a touch of vanilla

Rating 90/100

It's a very lively whisky, very intense and powerful

Bottling of the Year

SMWS 35.71

Like a hug from your mum 47.7%

40yo Distilled 11th October 1971

To be honest this was actually bottled late in 2012, but came to my attention in the summer of 2013 and was one of the 2 best whiskies I had in 2013, the other being Martin Mills which was botled in 1999. SMWS is right now sitting on a range of splendid casks of their distillery # 35, and this is just one of three 35's I purchased in 2013. If you are looking for a whisky and haven't really decided, try one of the SMWS 35's!. Expect a review early in 2014 of 35.71 

Tasting of the Year

Diageo Tasting with Donald Colville, Spirit of Speyside

There is various ways to set up a tasting at a whisky festival, where you know that most of the people have tasted a lot of whisky. I think Donald Colville nailed it here and brought us guests a nice tastings. It was a perfect mix of what Diageo has bottled, past, present and also in the future

The setup was

Inchgower 1976 Rare Malts Selection 27yo 55.6%
Talisker Port Ruighe 45.8%
Caol Ila Feis Ile 2012 60.40%
Cragganmore 21yo 56%
Mortlach SoS Festival Bottling 48%
Talisker Storm 45.8%

A good mix of brand new releases and rare bottlings is what makes coming to Scotland and doing festivals worth it.

Spirit of Speyside 2013 - part 4

This is a holiday report

Monday morning our group took a detour out of Speyside and visited Tomatin Distillery. We were welcomed by distillery genereral manager Graham Eunson, who took us around the distillery. 

Tomatin might not be the most beautiful distillery in Scotland, but it has one of the most interesting tours. The giant warehouses when you enter the distillery grounds under the too small railway-bridge is almost breathtaking. The distillery has a feature I haven't seen in any other distillery. Back in the 70's, Tomatin had 23 stills and 2 mash-tuns, and were more like a twin distillery, two almost identical distilleries in the same building. After 1980 some of the stills were cut down and one of the mashtuns became redundant. It is now set up for display for people taking tours. There is a big hole in the side so you can actually climb inside to touch and see how a mashtun is laid out and works

Climb inside a mashtun at Tomatin

Tomatin Spirit Still

The stills at Tomatin has a peculiar setup. The wash and the beer stills are identical. The spirit safe is placed beneath the stills and the top of the stills are out of sight. So no windows on the washstills as you can't see them from the spirit safe anyway. From below, the stillman can ring a bell-like string to check the sound of the washstills and the corresponding head of the boiling wash.

Tomatin also features a small cooperage for repairing casks.

Casks ready to be filled

After the tour we had a tasting of the Tomatin core range, one of the strongest core ranges in the industry. Graham told us that it was the 18yo that convinced him to move to Tomatin. I totally agree, the 18yo was the eye openener for me as well. A bottle that draw my attention to this distillery. We had a wee taste of the new Legacy, which is a NAS Tomatin. It is a mix of ex-bourbon and virgin oak matured Tomatin. This is a very good complement to the core range. We also had a cask sample of a 6yo virgin oak matured Tomatin. Give me some of that please! That was delicious. Fresh, crispy, vanilla and minty

Thanks to Jennifer from Tomatin for arranging the tour and to Graham for taking the time to show us around. 

After the tour we drove back to Speyside, having lunch in Muckrach Lodge near Dulnain Bridge on the way, it's a fantastic restaurant and absolutely worth a big detour.

Muckrach

Best lambchops I had in my life

Returning to Dufftown we had a couple of tasting left. The two tastings I had the biggest expectations for on the whole festival. And I wasn't dissapointed. These two tastings are essentials of why it's worth coming to Dufftown and Spirit of Speyside. The first tasting was presented by Donald Colville, Diageo's Global Brand Ambassador who brought some special treats for us. Donald, being a participator himself for many years, new enough about the festival to satisfy his customers for sure.

Mortlach SoS 2013 bottling

Donald served the following for us

Mortlach SoS 2013 festival bottling

Cragganmore 21yo 2010

Inchgower Rare Malt 27yo 1976

Talisker Storm

Talisker Port Ruighe

Caol Ila Feis Ile 2010

Way to go! Donald, 3 very new releases and 3 hard to find limited releases.

The Danish Drinking Team are tough to beat as we allready had a sample of the Inchgower in our cottage :-)

After this we had a wee break, which as usual was spent in the Royal Oak (They ran out of beer!).

The next tasting was a world premier, or something like that, of the new Cadenhead range. Cadenhead are going back to dumpy bottles and everybody knows that dumpy Cadenheads taste really good so I think it's a very clever decisison...

The tasting was presented by Mark Watt, who in an earlier life had hosted tastings for another company that always were among my favourite events. I wasn't dissapointed this year. From what we tasted the excellent Cadenhead range is getting even better

Look out for:

Craigellachie 1994

Camenronbridge 1989

Creations 20yo Blend 

Glenlivet-Minmore 1970 (Why not Glenlivet-glenlivet ?)

Highland Park 1988

Bowmore 1998

After this we went to the dram party at the Whiskyshop Dufftown which is the perfect end to a great festival, it's a mini fair with last chances for some purchases, last chance to taste some whisky and talk to the other festival goers, at lot of usual suspects as always.

Sleepy tuesday morning in Dufftown