High West Bourye and Pappy van Winkle 15

High West is a new distillery in Park City, Utah.

So far they have released "only" unaged stuff, their silver oat, silver barley and vodka.

But they also bottled a range of ryes and bourbons, sourced at different distilelleries

This is the third High West I review, the other two can be found here :

http://danishwhiskyblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/3-ryes-and-bourbon.html

1. High West Bourye 46%

This is a blend of bourbon and rye whiskey. As far as I know this is a blend of 10yo four roses (their 20% rye mashbill), 12yo LDI (95% rye and 5% barley) and 16yo Barton (53% rye, 37% corn and 10% barley)

Nose : Treesap, spice, sweet wood, delicious rye, one of those whiskies you just want to keep on nosing

Palate : Sweetness, quite woody, but bourbon and ryes do appear woody to me as I started out as a single malt drinker. There's a reallly good balance between the wood, vanilla and spicy rye. 95% ryes can be somehow synthetic and one-sided, but the flavours are really well blendend together here

Finish : medium-long

Rating 90

Comment's : This whiskey isn't a traditional blend, but being vatted together of casks from three different distilleries it actually is. American and scottish blends are used to describe different kind of products.

But this IS blended together really good. My favourite High West so far!

2. Pappy van Winkle 15yo 53.5%

Nose: Wood, solvent, vanilla, cinnamon, cardamom

Palate: Intensen: Very woody, creamy vanilla, tobacco, liqorise

Finish : medium-long

Comment : This is a wheated bourbon. If you like woody tastes this is for you

Rating 85

Sherry and more sherry

This morning I decided to give myself a couple of heavily sherried whiskies, to counterbalance last weekends peat. This post will be about a couple of shop bottlings.

1. 35yo Glenallachie 46.9%, The Single Malts of Scotland

This is a label of The Whisky Exchange

Matured in sherry butts, 685 bottles

Glenallachie

Glenallachie is one of the unknown Chivas distilleries in Speyside, just founded in 1967-1968. Very hard to find

Nose: Sweet, some spice, very fresh, little cumin but most of all sweet-sherried fruit juice 

Palate: Again sweet, very fresh and very sherried. In the sweet woody fruitjuicy sense, I get no dried fruits like raisins

Finish: short medium, but this gives away the age with a very delicious woody-spicy afterburn 

Comment : A very nice bottling!

Rating 91

2. Balmenach 32yo Flying Pigs 55.7%

Bottled by Juul's wine and spirit, Copenhagen

Distilled 29th July 1977, bottled 3rd September 2009

Now this is a cask from Gordon and MacPhail :

But the danish importer, Juul's bottled in under their FLYING label and stuck this nice label on the side:

Nose: Dried Fruits, wood

Palate: Whisky with a good part of dried fruits, very heavy liqorice. Intense and very flavourful. Very nice to drink dropwise to expereince the intense flavours explode in your mouth

Finish : Medium

Comment: A heavily sherried dark sherry. Very clean and simple in its expression. Liquid liqorice

Nice with two good unadultered sherried whiskies

This specific bottle was also reviewed by LA Whiskey Society, as usual I am behind on my own bottles

http://www.lawhiskeysociety.com/whiskey-profile/1436/Balmenach-Flying-Pigs

Rating 88

Cleaning out my samples - part 2 of 5

Japanese whiskies can be somewhat difficult to relate to distillery wise. Some of their distilleries have a set of different stills and produce different styles, so it takes an in-depth research to really get acknowledged

1. Karuizawa 12yo 40%

Karuizawa has more or less been closed since 2001, but has reached legendary status in Europe due to a series of excellent casks being bottled by Number One drinks

Nose: Powerful sherry, cherry, sweet wood, tropical fruits

Palate: Roasted nuts, almonds

Finish: Short and nutty

Rating 81

Comment: Powerful on the attack but thin and a little bitter on the finish. ABV ?

2. Inverleven 26yo 53.7% DTC
Duncan Taylor rarest of the Rare
12.1979-11.2006, cask 5662 193 bottles

Nose: Sweet marcipane, slight nutty and solvents

Palate: Weird nutty flavours with being that good nor unpleasant. Some sweetness and a bit rough

Finish : Medium

Rating 81

Maybe there's a reason Inverleven hasn't become cult!

Cleaning out my samples - part 1 of 5

This summer I want to clean out my samples.

This is maninly from swops, there's a few miniatures purchases and 1 or 2 gifts.

I'll aim for 5 parts and see if I can get some room in my cupboard for future swops and maybe get some nice drams in on the way

1. Hankey Bannister 12yo

Nose: Gentle citrus mixed with apples and pears

Palate: A lot more tasteful than I expected. Am I prejudiced against 40% whisky, against 12yo's and against blends? I have to admit this got more bite and flavour than expected, and if given blind I wouldn't have guessed it to be a blend, but rather one of the non-sherried Flora and Faunas. It's better than those thou, but same style. Ends with a slight bitterness

Finish : Medium

Comment : Very enjoyable and it's what you expected, just better. 

Value for money +++

Rating 83

2. Octomore Futures 2002
Distilled 16.10.2002, bottled April 2008 46%
80.5 ppm

My sample flyer

Nose : Peat, babypuke. The babyvomit dissappears fast and gets overwhelmed by a dominant citrus 

Wow this wakes up my senses, I am in my living room and outside there's a balcony..Four apartments down the building there's a guy on his balcony, one floor below smoking a cigarette, and I can detect the smoke clearly. 

Palate: No babypuke. Peat, vanilla and citrus. Being a peathead for a decade or two I am getting more and more immune to peat so I actually note the other flavours more. But don't get me wrong, this IS peaty. And intense. And the peat do climb up from the glass and hit me. 

Finish : Long, slightly acidic and bitter

Comments:

Going back to the nose I can detect the babypuke for a few seconds. 

This is very young and somewhat suffers from that. 

At 80.5ppm this could be described as a lightly peated Octomore :-)

Comment : after a dramming sessions of 15-20 drams where your tastebuds are getting numb I bet this will be the best whisky ever!

Rating 80

Double Single

Double Single by Compass Box 53.3%

This was my whisky of the year 2010,

http://danishwhiskyblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/danish-whisky-blog-awards-2010.html

and here is a wee formal review. Not being the most prolific blogger I try to catch up a bit this summer!

Nose : Bubblegum Jenka style. Once I get used to the unusually nose I can really dig into it

Palate : The nose travels over into a dry spicy touch which is kind of a rollercoaster experience tastewise. Very much a bourboncask whisky, with woodspiced vanilla topped up with candy

Finish : Medium-long and spicy/sweet

This is an unusual whisky, and as a prolific whisky DRINKER, I really like when daring bottlings like these are released. It's something unlike everything else I tasted. This says something about a company like Compass Box, who likes to thread paths noone else is going and at the same time make great whiskies. This will not be everybody's cup of Gevalia

Rating 87

I just love bottlings like these

5 Peated Whiskies

Well, time for a flight again, it has been a long time. I had a look through my open bottles and found 11 I haven't blogreviewed before, and as there were 5 peated amongst, I decided to have a go at them.

I love the smell of peat in the morning.

The Agenda

Being a long time peated whisky drinker, I have found that I sometimes, or very easy get immune to peat, so if I say a whisky isn't too peaty, don't trust me! (necessarily)

1. The Hakushu Heavily Peated 48%

A Japanese distillery with a range of different stills. This makes them capable of producing different styles. Another expansion of possibilities is to use peated malt.

Nose : The peat isn't dominating, but it's present, fruity, like the fruitiness of apples and pears.

Palate : Very drinkable, easy going and delicious, also somewhat subtle in its expression, making me think of older Islay's more than the younger smack-in-your-face ones. The peat emerges into a spicy vanilla lemony finish, which is very delicate. 

Finish : Short/medium with the sugarly lemon being dominant

Comment : I wouldn't have named it Heavily Peated, it's much too delicate for that description. This is a NAS whisky, but if i'ts young it seems like the hotter climate of Japan has matured it very well. I am glad I chose this as the first whisky of the day, it would most likely not benefit from following other whiskies, peated or not.

Rating 85

2. Bruichladdich Mòine Mhòr 3D 2nd Edition 50%

This is a vatting of different styles and ages of whisky distilled at Bruichladdich supposedly from three different decades and three different peating levels

Nose : Some peat, and some solvent like immaturity is just present if you look hard enough

Palate : Feels warm in the mouth, with a lot of wood, spice and lemon under the peat.

Finish : Medium

Comment : This has got some punch, not due to the peat alone but also from the youthness of the whisky, or some of the whisky in the vat. This is really well vatted together and an enjoyable dram

Rating 83

3. Lagavulin "Available only at the distillery" bottled 2010 52.5%

Nose : Sweet, spicy, fruity, dark fruits

Palate : Great full bodied mouthfeel and texture. The sweet PX  mixes real well with the peat, but the sherry influence is a lot lot less than in the DE Lagavulins. Peat and vanilla in the end

Finish : Long and very spicy

Comment : This has got some leftover casks for the 91 DE batch in it. PX finished. Bottling Lagavulin at full strength is a very clever idea!

Rating 88

Finally a couple of Ardbegs bottled in 2010

4. Ardbeg 1994 Cadenhead 16yo 55.6%

Nose : A lot of imminent immaturity on the nose, acid like. Not the best nose

Palate : lemon, peat, classic Ardbeg'ish, but the cask didn't have the strongest influence, seems younger than 16- After the nose that did put me off the nice peat-lemon combo is welcoming. The acidity is still here

Finish : Medium

Rating 78

5. Ardbeg 1994 Cadenhead 16yo 57.0%

Quite similar to the above

Nose: Slight acidic as well, but less than the above

Palate : More wood, texture and body, lemon again and a hotter immideate finish 

Finish : Medium-long with a hint of coconut

Rating 80

Comment : Mark from Cadenheads told me to get the Laphroaigs instead as he thought they were better. But I wasn't going to Laphroaigeddon. I should learn to listen to advice from wise people

Kornog, Glann ar Mor Distillery, France

Thanks to Steffen for inviting me on board. The wonderful and neverending world of whisky is a great place to share experiences and point of views and, first and foremost, enjoy a dram with new and old friends. Please take my reviews and ratings with a pinch of salt - they're just one man's personal opinion :-)

Now, let's get to it. Summer has arrived and Tour de France is underway. Recently the riders went through Brittany. Let us see what this area has to offer when it comes to whisky. Kornog is the peated version from Glann ar Mor Distillery, located on the northern coast of Brittany.

Kornog, Glann ar Mor Distillery, France, 46%:

Nose: Young and silky. Wine gums, grass and exotic fruits. Quite interesting and good.

Taste: Grass and exotic fruits such as mango and pineapple. Grape also comes out to dance. Although this one should be around 35 ppm the peat is at first delicate, then makes some twists and turns and remains in the warming finish. I like it!

This whisky is like a flat stage in Tour de France. Not too demanding but with interesting turns along the way including a nice finish for the sprinters.

Rating: 83