Glenlivet Nadurra - Dumbed down whisky ?

So this is actually my 19th bar visit for my 24 Bars in Aarhus advent calendar

But it's also time for a rant. The NAS rant - every whisky blogger just has to go there I guess.

I went down to an irish pub in Aarhus called Tir Na Nog for a Glenlivet Gueardian event. The purpose of the tasting was the introduction of 1 or 2 new versions of Glenlivet Nadurra

Let me start from the beginning. What is NAS whisky ?

NAS means No Age Statement

Quite often a whisky will have an age statement. Like 12 years old, or 25 years old. This means the youngest whisky in the bottle has matured at least 12 or 25 years in oak casks. Or whatever the label says. Other whiskies have age statement by letting you know the distillitation and bottling dates. Somethng like: Distilled 25th October 1990, Bottled Spring 2012.

NAS whisky has no indication of the age of the whisky, or not much. It can be 25 years old or it can be 3 years old. You don't know. 3 years is the minimum age for scottish whisky, so that is guarenteed.

The setup for this tasting was Glenlivet Founders Reserve, 15yo, 18yo, 21yo, 25yo and 3 different versions of Glenlivet Nadurra. The First Fill Nadurra, Nadurra Oloroso and Peated Nadurra

Let me focus on Nadurra here. The very first Nadurras were cask strength and had an age statement. 16 years old. They were fantastic whiskies. And very popular. Nadurra means natural in gaelic and I was told that Glenlivet wanted to bottle "natural" whisky. I assumed this is why they bottled this at cask strength and the casks choosed were first fill ex-bourbon. No messing around with the whisky from winecasks.

But then the dumbing down of an excellent product started. First versions bottled at 48% appeared, then no age statement oloroso versions came, and now we see releases of NAS cask strength and NAS 48% versions of Nadurra First Fill

And it doesn't taste anything like the original batches

The whisky of the new 63.1% Fist Fill Nadurra is nothing like the Age Statement 16yo original cask strength versions. They were vanilla-oak-citrus bombs and fantastic whiskies. The new version is perfumy, newmaky and hot. So what happened? Glenlivet builds up a fantastic brand of quality whisky. And now they try to sell much yonger, not as good whisky, for the same price. Caveat Emptor

This is one reason I don't like NAS whiskies. It usually goes as above. A great brand. It used to be good whisky, but the good whisky is replaced with younger whisky, and the quality declines. The price usually doesn't

I do know that an age statement doesn't mean the quality for a whisky stays the same, but at least the consumer got a little bit of guarentee of what they buy

And don't get me wrong. I don't dislike NAS whisky or young whisky. There is plenty of examples of good whisky that have no age statement and there is plenty of examples of good whiskies that are young and has an age statement. Unfortunately, the main reason that producers change a version from an age statement to NAS is so that they can dumb down the quality

I don't have to go far to find another example. Glenlivet Founder's Reserve. This is slowly replacing Glenlivet 12yo in many market and retail shops. It was the first whisky of the tasting at Tir Na Nog, and it tasted like Glenlivet with added New Make. Another Dumbed Down Product

Go back 5 years and read this press release from Chivas Bros

http://pernod-ricard.com/files/fichiers/Presse/Documents/201006028%20The%20age%20matters%20UK.pdf

How ironic

Now back to Tir Na Nog

Tir Na Nog is another irish pub in Aarhus. They have an excellent selection of irish whiskies

I don't recall beeing in another bar with so many different irish whiskies. 

Beside the irish whiskies there was also a lot of scottish whiskies. A lineup of OB's from better known distilleries, Glenlivet included

The main problem with the whisky here is that it was terrible overpriced. 250Dkr (25£) for 1999 single cask 2cl ?

If you buy 4cl you get 50% of the last 2cl's. Still expensive, and I am not a big supporter of volume discounts. Doesn't really fit into my drink responsible, drink less - drink better pholosophy for the concerned whisky entusiast where taste matters more than volume.

The beer selection was mainly standard stuff

A lineup like this scares me

But there were a few good alternatives for the beer entusiast

!

Ok, You might still not be impressed but I found this gem in the bar

Which was a very good stout from Porterhouse

I had to try a whisky and my choice went on

It was ok to try a cask strength irish whisky and it had a somewhat sensible price of "just" 90DKR (9£) for 2cl

Would I recommend Tir Na Nog. Not really. It's a party place and more "corporate" than "entusiast"

After the tasting most of the people went to the bar and one of the staff asked us what we thought of the tasting. Our answers were in the line of. Good Whisky, but the Nadurra was a pale shadow compared to the original version. (I probably said "The new Nadurra is crap, I want the old one back, which was excellent")

The guy behind the bar started arguing with the group "It's all a matter of taste"

I was about to bang my head down the bar and answer "No, it's a matter of you don't have a clue about what a good whisky is" but I was luckily "rescued" by a colleague who tapped me on the shoulder

"Hey, Steffen, Are you here?, what a coincidence"

Saved by the bell

I could say that Johnny Walker Red is just as good as Brora 1972. It's all a matter of taste!. Aye, it's a matter of taste. But would you trust my other whiskyrecommendations ? or buy whisky from me? No. You would go somewhere else, somewhere where people makes more sense

PS I really liked the 15, 18, 21 and 25yo. Especially the 25. Age Does Matter. Sometimes

Tir Na Nog has a website here

24 Bars in Aarhus MAP

Whiskybrother Glenlivet

Whiskybrother is located in Johannesburg, South Africa. According to their website it's Johannesburg's first speciality whiskystore.

Whiskybrother was started by Marc Pendlebury, whose adventure from a whiskyentusiast into running a whiskyshop I have been following on twitter the last several years. He kindly supplied me with sample, which will be my first review in more than 6 months! 

Here we go:

Colour:

In my glass the whisky actually appears darker than in this promotional photo.

There is no doubt this is heavy on the sherry. Slight hint of rubber on the nose, With my sensitivity to sulphur I doubt many others could detect this. Maybe a gnome could, but I bet most humans wouldn't.

The nose rather quickly turns into a cold soup of raisins. That's dried fruits. Basically this is essential sherry whisky. Below this sherryfruit, there is a faint nice spicyness, vanilla, licorise, almond, marcipan and cardemom

The palate is not that sweet, it's dry and nutty. A solution of dried grapes. This is semi-heavy on the sherry side but I also find a really creamy nice butterscotchy compliment when the finish is approaching. 

The finish itself is long, spicy and the dried fruits keep lingering in my mount

I tried adding a bit of water, just a drop or two, and the whisky benefits from this, the alcoholic burn is lessened and the flavours enhanced.

A very delicious whisky, and this is gonna be hit with sherry fans, and a nice little treat for the South African whiskyentusiast

Score 88/100

It's the finish I like best with this whisky. By now I am used to a lot of sherried whisky having a sulphur approach on me, but the creamy finish followed by dried fruits makes this something I enjoyed drinking. If it makes sense saying a finish can be followed by something else :-)

This whisky has also been reviewed by Dramming and Malt Fascination , I'll add more when I get aware of them!

Spirit of Speyside 2013 - part 1

This is a holiday report!

Together with 7 friends, we had a group of 8 hardcore whiskyfans visiting this years festival - 7 danes and 1 american.

We based ourselves in Dufftown, where we stayed in a couple of farm cottages, Parkmore Cottages a couple of miles out of downtown Dufftown.

As we did in 2011, we started the festival thursday night with a little dram party, where we had invited a few people over. Teun and Dick, the Maltstock representatives and a couple of Canadian guys, Graeme and Dave, who are contributors to the Bladnoch Forum

Dramming at Parkmore

We started out with our first event friday, where I had signed up for a little bit more than I wished. The 6 hour event, which was advertised as two distillery visits, a lunch and a tasting + a smugglers walk, turned out to be 4 hours hill trekking up to the summit to Carn Daimh (570m), which was a little more than I thought. The weather turned out to be not very good, with rain, sleet, snow and wind.

Luckily the organisers decided to give the participants the choice the shorten the walk to "just" a couple of hours, which we gladly accepted.

We started out with a standard tour around Glenlivet distillery where we had a chance to see the new extension of the distillery

Glenlivets new extension

After our group had finished raiding the visitor centre shop, the rest of the hikers were anxious to start the hill trek. It was vet and windy, but after a couple of hours, which did indeed give us a few good views between the clouds, mist and fog we arrived at the top of Carn Daimh. Wet and dirty up to our knees. I was happy to be met by this sight !!

A dram at the summit, 15yo Speyside

After a short walk down, we took a ride with the Glenlivet Estate Rangers to Tomintoul, where a very nice lunch awaited us at the The Clockhouse Restaurant. This is one of the best restaurants in Speyside in my opinion. After the lunch we were directed over to the Whisky Castle, for a few drams and some more shopping, with the always entertaining Mike Drury, before driving over to the final distillery visit of Tomintoul distillery where we were greeted by Robert Fleming  and  then Tom Gerrie who gave us a very good in-depth tour of the distillery, finsihed by a wee tasting of some samples of some of their products.

This is a distillery is not normal open to the public, and a visit like this is exactly one of the reasons it's worth travelling to Scotland for this festival.

Tomintoul Stills

 Racked

Palletised

Angus Dundee Distillers plc., which owns Tomintoul and Glencadam distilleries has specialized in customer specified blends. But both distilleries produce a nice porto folio of single malts, Tomintoul even produced a nice peated version named Old Ballantruan, named after the water source of Tomintoul Distillery. Personally I have always considered Glencadam one of the hidden gems of scotch single malts.

After the Tomintoul visit, we were running very late to judge the roving whisky awards at Forsyth's Coppersmiths in Rothes, where we had to blind pick our favourites from three sets of whisky:

12 yo and under
1. Aberlour A'bunadh (#)
2. Strathisla 12yo (*)

13 - 20 yo
1. Glenfiddich Distillery Edition 15yo 51.5%
2. Balvenie Doublewood 17yo (*) (#)

21 and over
1. The Glenlivet XXV (#)
2. The Glenlivet 21 (*)

I marked my favourites with a (*) and the final winners with a (#). My overall favourite was the Balvenie.

Our group of 8 were split even between two of the sets, but in the 13-20yo group, we were 7-1 for the Balvenie.

Apperently the sets were pre-chosen by a panel, but I find it a bit suspicious that it was three sets of intra company competions, with just two companies present. I do think Speyside has more to offer...but then, I probably have tasted more whiskies than most :-)

After this we finished the night with a dinner at the Highlander Inn in Craigellachie, a very nice inn with excellent food, and extensive selection of single malts and real ale on tap. Highly recommended

Simple whisky from the big boys

The big boys in the whisky business tends to focus on 40% mass market whisky or silly overpriced whiskies in excessive packaging. But there's a few bottlings out there worth a notice for those of us who like to add the water ourselves and releases sold at a sensible prices!

Time for 4 short reviews:

1. Glenfiddich 15yo 51%, Distillery Edition


Going through Schiphol I spotted this whisky on the shelves of a whisky speciality store.  1 liter at 45 euros. I couldn't resist the temptation and bought a bottle

Nose : Dark fruits and candy toffee and a touch of red wine/ grapes

Palate : this whisky is rather complex. fruity, grapes, nutty and woody. Quite hot (alcohol) and a somewhat bitter finish.

Finish : short to medium

Rating 82

2. Balvenie 15yo Single Barrel 47.8%
6/3-95 -> 31/3-10 Cask number 2800

The 15yo is an "endless" set of releases which all are around 15 years old, but slightly older casks have been seen. It's not cask strength as the they all have been reduced to 47.8% as bottling strength. The whiskies are from different casks but very similar in styles

The nose is reminding me of armagnac and apples which are dominant, then a hint of citrus and malt

Palate : a very light dram, with speyside-nuts, some maltiness, and a hint of citrus

Finish : Medium

Rating 84

3. Glenlivet Nadurra 16yo batch 1110L 55.1%
Natural Cask Strength

Nose : Vanilla, Woodspices, joining together in a warming welcome

Palate : Fruity (banana?), vanilla, spicy, what a pleasant mouthfull. This whisky got loads of pleasant wood extracts. I wonder if any of the french oak casks went into this as this is more like the french oak than the standard 12yo

Rating 87

Lagavulin 12yo 56.5% bottled 2010


Walking trough Edinburgh Airport last around a year ago I picked this up at 41£


Nose : Heavy Peat, Earthy


Palate : Clean Peat, Malty, Some sweetness, cod-liver oil that isn't fishy (Don't ask, I can't explain it myself)


Finish Medium-Long, the peat lingers


Rating 87


Old fashioned peaty whisky, this just reminds of the way Laphroaig were when I first tasted a peaty whisky back in the nineties. Or maybe how I was back than. It's good to be back


End of the day, 4 nice no-nonsense bottlings of good quality whisky, and the last two are now on my favourite shelf

A couple of bottlings from Falster

Two months ago, when I did a wee Bunnahabhain vertical I was very delighted with the Falster Bunnahabhain

I actual have a couple of other Falster bottlings, no need not to have a little sip of those as well

Both are bottled via DMWA and Creative as well

These whiskies are bottled at the annual Wild Whisky Weekend which is hosted at Hotel Falster. Falster is a southern danish island, which has the southernmost point of Denmark. Hotel Falster is also partly owned by the famous danish whisky entusiast Hans-Henrik Hansen.

1. Glenlivet 33yo Falster 2010 51.2%
Bottled by Creative (David Stirk)
Distilled 1976

Metal label

This malt appears as quite woody, so I added a wee bit of water which made wonders. I don't normally add water to my whiskies, but if I feel the whisky is somewhat restrained or onesided (as this one were), I do

Now I suddenly have a whisky where there's something to write about!

Nose : Fruit, Vanilla, Wood
Palate : Spicy, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, wood and brandy
Finish : Powerful and medium length

This is a fine whisky, but it doesn't live up to the magnificient Bunnahabhain. I always had trouble with older Glenlivet's which somehow dissapointed me. Nothing wrong with them, but when you get into the $$$$$ whiskies you start to expect something- Gimme a Nadurra please :-)

Rating 83

2. Caol Ila Falster 2007 52.7%
Bottled by Creative (David Stirk)
Distilled 1984

Caol Ila

Nose : Some slight milk acidity which reminds me of younger islays. then the typical of old Caol Ila robust sweetness-spicyness appears, peat of-course, but I am getting immune to that :-)

Palate : Typical Caol Ila. Round, sweet, full bodied, heavy, spicy, citrus and vanilla

Finish : Medium strength but long

Rating 84

This is another good Caol Ila. Caol Ila is almost always a sure hit, and this is no exception. As Mark Watt says "I never had a bad Caol Ila", and I do agree on that statement.

Edinburgh : Bottler's and SMWS

1. Balmenach 1984 21yo 57.8% 
cask 3056, refill sherry butt

The Bottlers is a small independent bottling company based in Edinburgh. The amount of bottlings this company has released recently is very limited, but the quality has always been exclusive in my opinion. I don't recall anything new coming out from them the last couple of years. A company like this that for some reason releases so few casks and are very selective about them, can afford to wait for the best of the best.

 Balmenach is a hidden gem of a Speyside distillery and is owned by Inver House, which also owns Knockdhu (AnCnoc), Balblair and Old Pulteney which is getting the company's main promotions. I find the general quality of their bottlings well above average for standard OB's and  I hope they will extend their range to Speyburn and Balmenach as well.
 Visiting their distilleries has always been a great joy for me, it has always been more about whisky and people than big company marketing which isn't always the case when visiting distilleries. I had a range of very fond memories from them :

 - Bottling Old Pulteney straight from the cask in Wick for some of the best whiskies I ever tried
 - Visiting Balblair in 2007 around the time they released their vintage series (1979 and 1997 are also favourites of mine)
 - Visiting Knockdhu at the 2010 SoS festival for one of the the best distillery visits I ever experienced (great whisky as well)

 Inver House is a company that just seems to do it the right way  (well.. the way I like it) and I really hope they get the success they deserve !!


Back to the whisky...
The nose is sweet, with a sourish touch which just screams to me that this is gonna be fullbodied - its like inhaling oils and not alcohol vapours. The palate is creamy, musty, minty, spicy with a big touch of vanilla

This is a very good example of whisky you get from a refill sherry butt and its clearly distinguished from malts that has been on fresh sherry butts. Wood has more impact in refill butts whereas the sherry has more impact on fresh butts (usually).  The colour is brown with a orange glow. I enjoyed this

Rating 90

http://www.thebottlers.com/

2. SMWS 2.61 16yo 1988 59.0% (Glenlivet)

SMWS, Scottish Malt Whisky Society started as a small group of friends sharing one cask, and developed into a society with a membership restaurant and bar with club rooms, apartments etc.at the Vaults in Leith, with similar locations in Edinburgh center and London and quite a few overseas departments. The first cask bottled was labeled as 1.1 and this 2.61 is cask #61 from their distillery number 2. The number of distilleries that SMWS has bottled has passed 120, and includes irish, grain and japanese whiskies.
 - If you're a peathead it's compulsary to know that 33 is SMWS'ish for Ardbeg :-)
Their bottlings doesn't reveal distilleries, by not putting distillery names on the labels, they have easier access to trading with the distilleries. The distilleries of origin is not a big secret, here's one list available online :

http://www.whiskynyt.dk/index.php?module=htmlpages&func=display&pid=10

When visiting their staff has no problems with revealing distilleries either, here's a video where 3 of their bottlings are presented, and I have to admit that video made me want a 33.84 :-) and I wasn't alone on that

http://www.connosr.com/videos/when-connosr-met-smws/

Today the society has thousands of members, releases around 20 bottlings every months and has been bought by a big multinational company LVMH  -MOËT HENNESSY - LOUIS VUITTON who also owns a couple of distilleries (Ardbeg and Glenmorangie), so they have moved quite a bit from the start - a huge success

SMWS are also wellknown for their maltporn : their exaggerated tasting notes and bottle descriptions, a bottle of Laphroaig I bought recently was labeled "Kissing a Balrog's Bum" !

SMWS Haggis (yum yum)

Now to the 2.61 !

Nose : fruity, apples and pears

Honey, more apples and pears, quite musty ash and dust, bitter on the finish

Feels like having an older dram that it actually is, there is a bit of warehouse feeling about this, the wood bitterness is a little bit to much

 Rating 80

http://www.smws.co.uk/