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

Whisky online part II of II - Smooth Ambler

This spring I got approached by Smooth Ambler Spirits when I randomly published on twitter I was driving around Kentucky visiting distilleries. They invited me to come visit. Smooth Ambler Spirits is one of these many new small distilleries shooting up all the world, particular in the USA. They are often named craft distilleries, a term I don't really like as I don't necessarily consider bigger, well established distilleries as non-craft distillers :-)

John Foster and Smooth Ambler stills

I really like Smooth Ambler Spirits. 

The days we had in Kentucky were extremely hot. The neighbouring states were more or less flattened by an unusual summer storm, putting areas in West Virginia, Ohio and Virginia out of Power. It was very very VERY nice that John emailed med in the morning before we drove from Lexington, Kentucky, that we better fill the car with gas as his area was powerless and they had no idea when it would come back.

John told me, that one of the reasons it's nice to live in West Virginia, is that they are not normally exposed to harsh weathers and storms. Hills, forests and small mountains usually do the job of calming down winds and weather. Not this time.

When we approached east West Virginia we saw what happened

Many fallen trees around Smooth Ambler.

There were no power around Smooth Ambler. It was very hot, above 40C. A gas station with a generator had a line of cars waiting half a mile down the road and then as far as my eyes could see down a side road. If John hadn't advised us to fill the car up with gas, we would have been stuck. Thanks!

Lexington, Virginia

Out of power also means no air condition. No fridges, no lights, no distilling, no nothing. There was kind of a ghost town feeling around the distillery that day. And very very hot.

 On this hot sunday, we were greeted by John, and had a small walk around the distillery and than sat down in their bar and had a little presentation of their products. We also managed to find a little sample of Mortlach for John, the last drops of travel goodies :-)

John lines up Smooth Ambler products

So what do a new distillery do ?. They won't have a 10year old ready until some years, 10 years to be precise. There's a few things to be done to generate income. Smooth Ambler do most of these

A. Make some white spirits like gin and vodka. These more or less comes straight of the still and straigth into the bottle and can be sold  right away. Smooth Ambler bottle a vodka and a gin. I really like their gin by the way.

B. Bottle some young whisky. This can be dangerous. People are used to drink older, well matured whisky and might not like whisky aged for just months or a couple of years. Look at the appendix below for more on this subject

Smooth Ambler Spirits do this and they also have a bottle aged gin!

So how are they doing

1. Smooth Ambler Yearling 46%

Aged for 1year and 10 months

Nose : Bourbon light. It got the bourbon characterisitc, with wood, quite a lot of vanilla, but also floral touch. Also a hint of north european vegetables, mainly fresh boiled potatoes-

Palate : A little rough, but not much. Very creamy and vanillaed, with a slightly somewhat bitter wood finish. A hint of a floral perfumedness. But in the end the creaminess, the vanilla and the youthful spirit stands out as the dominating flavours.

Rating 82/100

This is actually surprisingly good. It is what it is. A very young bottling of whiskey. But also very drinkable. This is a wheated bourbon, so there is not a heavy rye flavour for the young spirit to hide behind. The decision to make a wheated bourbon seems to be a brilliant decisison, as I reckon the quality of this bourbon is also a good balance between the wood and the soft creaminess of a wheater.

If a new distillery present their young whisky at overpriced inflated prices as special unique products (I've seen this happen in Denmark and Europe) I loose respect for the producer. This can be hard for them to regain :-)

If a new distillery is a little more humble about their products and has a more realistic view of their own products, I, as a consumer, will also have some confidence they know what they are doing. Smooth Ambler are aiming to make older bourbons.  It was pretty clear from my talks with John that these guys know what they want to make. Their ware house is full of normal sized barrels. Smooth Ambler is a distillery that wants to make whisky tomorrow, not just today.

Yearling and Old Scout

C. A third way to promote your brand and earn some cash is to bottle sourced whisky. High West gained fame by bottling sourced whisky, mainly ryes. Sourced predominantly from LDI

Smooth Ambler Spirits has also sourced barrels from LDI, but mainly, if not all bourbons.

Cask end at SAS. Looks like Four Roses to me :-)

Smooth Ambler doesn't use the term "sourced", but use "scouted" whiskey and they bottle it under the Smooth Ambler Old Scout Label

2. Smooth Ambler Old Scout 6yo 49.5%

Nose : Floor varnish

Palate. Woody, Liqorice. There is definetely a rye component here. This has got some of the same components as those total black sherry whiskies. This is a well balanced whisky. It means the major flavour components are balanced out and none of them heavily dominantes the other. It's the licorise wood, rye spice and creamy sweetness. It is more woody and less sweet relative to other bourbons. And my guess is that it is a high rye mash bill of some kind. 

This is a hardcore bourbon. The flavours are intense. Anyone who thinks Jack Daniels is rock'n'roll haven't tasted the real stuff

Rating 86/100

3. Samples

I am very thankful for the gifts I received from Smooth Ambler. Especially three cask samples of sourced bourbons aged 12, 19 and 21 years old. All three labeled "Very Old Scout" together with specific cask data. I was told that these casks will be somehow vatted together. So far I have seen labels of a 11yo and a 14yo when googling the internet. My favourite of the three is the 12yo, the two older ones are quite woody. I get the best results when I add a little of the older ones into the 12yo. It's always fun to do your own homevattings and not that hard if you got components with basic flavours. Smooth Ambler has done the same with their 14yo which has 15, 17 and 19yo whisky in it as well

Appendix

One of my favourite bloggers got into trouble with a new distillery recently:

http://recenteats.blogspot.dk/2012/09/hell-hath-no-fury-craft-distiller.html 

All I can say, is that at least Sku tasted the whiskey before mildly critisizing it. I think Leviathan should have read Sku's blog before ciritizing Sku :-)