Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Blind samples from WhiskyIsrael

I am battling Whisky Israel :-)

Gal Granov, one of the guys behind Whisky Israel has supplied me with a couple of samples - and I am supposed to review them blind. And I will do that !. At the end of this post I will add Gal revealing the truth, which I don't know yet
Gal 


I allready had Keith Wood of Whisky-Emporium having a bit of fun with 4 samples supplied by me, which he described here : http://www.whisky-emporium.com/Blogs/2010-07-July/Blog.htm

So now it's my turn, here we go.

Gal Granov's sample no 1


Milk-acidity (you need to have been in a cowbarn with newly milked milk to know what I mean!), floral perfumes which leaves the colour purple on my braind for some odd reason. Peaty ? I am getting associations to Bowmore, but the spirit is lighter than what I would normally associate with Bowmore. I would say the floral fruity perfumy taste of this dram is origined from some kind of wine-finish

My first guess would be a Port Charlotte wine finish, 2nd Longrow, but these are also the 2 peaty malts most associated with finishes. The finish isn't affecting this malt to a major extent, but more gives it a soft touch. I also feel the peat is underdeveloped or restrained somehow, but hey--I have been known to be immune to peat :-)

Rating 80

Gal Granov's sample no 2

Cocoa, dusty, reminds me of a vatting of Amrut and Scapa, how clueless can you be ? Fruity, dry, slightly woody-spicy, vanilla. I really like this for its sharp freshness and the vanilla. I got no clue what it is, reminds me a bit of Imperial

Rating 85

Here is the verdict by Gal :


The 'Peaty' sample is indeed a Bowmore as you initially suspected... It's not finished in any cask AFAIK. It's the Bowmore Tempest 10 year old, Cask strength. quite a new expression, and a nice one, though it's not one of my favorites when it comes to Islay peaty delights.


The non peaty one is a very special type of Arran malt. yes, Arran! It's a very limited bottling of a single cask Arran aged 2 years on Arran and then shipped to Israel for additional maturation in the city of Jerusalem. Then bottled at CS by  the Israeli whisky society. A very young Arran, but maturation in Israel in hotter temp is quite fast.
you can find a post of mine detailing it and the story of this special cask : 


Well done Steffen. ;)

Now it's my turn. Next week i shall nose your samples and post mine.... exciting and quite intimidating as well.

Slainte!

PS Gal told me on twitter that the Arran is almost 4 years old in total!

My own final comments : Amrut is a whisky that is matured under high temperatures in Bangalore, India, so it's not totally clueless I got associations to it, as Gal's Arran has been matured for almost 2 years in Israel. Amrut is also a young whisky. I wouldn't say the Arran is similar to Amrut but it just had this thing to it that gave me associations


3 comments:

  1. Good fun! I'm hopeless when it comes to blind samples. It's almost as if my entire olfactory system becomes overly sensitive to every taste and aroma and so every distillery remains in play!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I know exactly what you mean :-)

    I sticked to my very very first impressions. I tasted this over 2/3 days and the impressions I had the last time I tried these was further away from the truth than the first days dramming. It's a fun exercise

    Steffen

    PS Soon it's your turn :-)

    ReplyDelete