Archives Caol Ila 30yo

The last few weeks I have been travelling the southern parts of the USA and had the pleasure of meeting josh of joshziewhisky.blogspot.com.

We did a joint review of one of the recent Archives bottlings, a 30yo Caol Ila. You can read about it here

http://joshziewhisky.blogspot.com/2013/01/cross-continental-whisky-blogger-meetup.html

on top of this I had the pleasure of tasting a range of HIS whiskies :-)

As written, I was very positively surprised by the 1997 Bowmore.. Seems like Bowmore are back on the track of the great whisky they produced in the sixties. Adding to this is similar quality of a couple of 1996 and 1997 Bowmores I had the pleasure of tasting this weekend

Del Maguey

I also had the pleasure of finally tasting Del Maguey, I am sure that even if you hate tequila/mezcal (I do) this will change your mind, at least for this particular produce. A must for any whiskyfan

Danish Whisky Blog Awards 2012

A little belated, here are my favourites of 2012, based on personal experience and something I look forward to in 2013

Distillery of the Year

Balvenie

I really want to acknowledge a distillery that choose to put out something special at fair prices. This award is based on their tun 1401 range, which is magnificient whisky, a vatting of old and older casks, some really old. So far they are on batch#6. Keep them coming please. This is almost in direct contrast to some other bottlers who can't release a single cask without going 4 digits in price, and thats in £££. Balvenie do have some unreachable bottles for us drinkers, but as long as they give us things to buy and drink at high exceptional quality I am happy. A bottling like their 15yo is another example of this distillery doing the right thing. This is a constant output of single cask bottlings. Whiskynerds like bottlings like this. Variety over consistency. Adding to this, is the tour possibilities when you visit the twin distilleries of Balvenie and Glenfiddich. They have a range of tours, some of them quite special which is nice, especially if you have travelled quite a bit to visit Scotland

Independent Bottler of the Year

Archives

Late 2011, whiskybase opened their shop in Netherlands. At the same time they released their independent bottling range named Archives. They have been very prolific in 2012 with releases, I more or less lost track of the amounts of bottlings, but they should be well above more than 20 expressions by now. One of the owners is a long time whiskyacquaintance and friend, and also a PLOWED ringleader. You might think I am biased, but I reckon that when someone are in the same attitude circles of the whisky world as I am, and they stay there, I will naturally like what they do. I didn't like everything they bottled, but the few things I didn't like was highly praised by others. I did like a lot of what they bottled though, and I especially liked their pricing policy. A 50yo North British released at around 160€ is great value for money. Add to that some spectular Littlemills as well, great Caol Ila's and a range of quite old and exciting bottlings from a string of distilleries. Ooooh, the North British was a great whisky by the way.
If you look through the blog, I reviewed several of their whiskies and there is more coming up...one day

Whisky Bottling of the year

Glendronach 1993 single cask#26 UK market exclusive 57.1%
PX sherry butt. Distilled 15 January 1993, bottled October 2012

I am very pleased that the very first thing that happened at Glasgow Whisky Festival, was that Alistair Walker from BenRiach/Glendronach asked me to taste their new UK release. This is a dream sherry bomb, totally unadultered. This is like going back in time to whiskies you loved in your childhood. Figuratively speaking. It became an instant favourite. Thanks Alistair

The nose is classic full bodied sherry. Licorise. Semidried sweet succulent fruits, plums and prunes, dades in sherry and a great spicy woodyness. All very well integrated and balanced.

The palate is a dream for a lover of whisky from an sherry cask. This is the kind of whisky you hope to get when buy a bottle from a distillery that is renowned for their sherry bottlings. The palate is a direct follow up of the nose. Your mouth get exactly what your nose promised. Licorise, wood, oily, liquid dried fruits 

The finish is looong, sweeter and I get some classical fruityness

Rating 92/100

Tasting of the year

None. I went to less than 5 tastings in 2012, of which I conducted at least half of them myselves. I won't judge my own tastings and the 1 or 2 other ones was fine tastings but nothing earthshaking.

I did participate in several, quite a lot actually, private gatherings. These were usually themed, and often the participants each brought their own contributions. I also went to a few festivals, Juul's in Hadsten, The Danish Whisky Fair, Limburg and Glasgow Whisky Festival. I enjoyed all of them very much. Next year I allready planned to go Spirit of Speyside for the 7th time since 2001 and Glasgow Whisky Festival for the 4th consecutive time.

If I have to highlight one tasting it was a private vertical of Charbay, including some presamples and the bottled beers which brews were used for the destilate. That was a very fun, different, delicious, educating, intoxicating and "event". Thanks to Adam from PLOWED and LAWS for organising that

In the world of whisky there is a few things I look forward to in 2013. A handful (or more) new distilleries in Scotland. Fary Lochan's first release of whisky. Tasting matured whiskey from Las Vegas Distillery (I hope) and finally manage to schedule Maltstock. The festival I never tried attending, but I really want to..

It's also nice to discover that I seem not to be the only one drinking bourbon in Denmark. It's nice to see that the danish whiskey scene, which can be quite introvert and conservative, finally discovering that whisky can be something else than sherry and islay

A belated happy new year. I hope I get time for some more blogging in 2013 and especially finishing what I start. The advent calendar got lost in a busy christmas schedule. One of the reasons I am busy is, luckily, that I am out and around dramming, so no complaints here :-)

9. December Black Maple Hill

I bought a couple of bourbons last weekend from the danish online site whisky.dk and they added a sample of Black Maple Hill 47.5% in the box. I am spending December cleaning out some of my samples and this one I am actually a bit excited about as I have never tried Black Maple Hill before (at least not in a state remembering it).  So thanks for the sample! I look forward to tasting it.

Black Maple Hill is a brand of bourbon. It's not a distillery. The bottler has sourced the whiskey from a couple of places, but the last many years it was sourced from KBD Kentucky Bourbon Distillers, who themselves source whisky from other distilleries. But they do it big scale, and they have recently (2012) reopened their Willet Distillery in Bardstown. Rumours generally agree that most of whisky sourced by KBD is from Heaven Hill, their next door neighbour. According to their staff they have actually been going into other distilleries and using their equipment to distill their own spirit. They do have their own warehouses, plenty of them actually

KBD Warehouses in Bardstown, Kentucky

This is clearly a high rye bourbon. No doubt about it. Huge impact of minty spicy flavours on a soft creamy bed of vanilla and butterscotch. The mint is huge. I have always been a mint fan. This is like eating mint throat bonbons.It's a NAS bourbon but this juice surely has got some years on it's back, closer to 10 than 6 would be my verdict from the flavours - A really nice and distinctive bourbon

Rating 88/100

This doesnt taste like anything I have tried from Heaven Hill, so I wonder if it's from that distillery. It reminds me more of Wild Turkey or Four Roses. Being new to bourbon I wont cast any verdicts, and who knows what HH makes I havent tasted ?

8. December Bladnoch xmas 2012

This was yesterdays dram!

Bladnoch. 11yo. Matured in s sherry cask. 55% Bottled 2012

A Christmas Whisky

I visited the distillery last month and stocked up with a case of assorted Bladnochs. This was one of them. It's the same as the 11yo sherry casked they currently sell in their shop, this is just a different label in case anyone was looking for a christmas gift. It even comes with a Season's Greetings To and From card around the neck. This one was from me to me :-)

11 years old means this is New Bladnoch produce, made by Raymond Armstrong who reopened the distillery after Diageo closed it down in 93. There was 7 years without production as Bladnoch started distilling again in 2000. They havent distilled since 2009 but hope to make something again in 2013.

Short tasting notes says : Heavily sherried, dark licorise, but buried below is a delicious creamy, minty, vanillaed malt. Not that sweet a whisky. A bit rough on the alcohol so I decided to add a little water, which I often don't do to my whiskies. The faintest rubber hint I ever experienced in a whisky which makes me think I could as well be making it up. The complexity of this whisky  is unusual with quite different flavour components. A fun whisky to drink, but not for beginners...just add a little water if you aren't used to cask strength

Rating 86/100

7. December Longrow 12yo 57.6%

Distilled June 1996
Bottled April 2009
Fresh Fino Sherry Butt

Hit or miss. The words "miss" is something I often have to label Springbank bottlings when they try to go alternative with Gaja Barolo, Red, Tokaji or whatever barrel they happen to destroy their fine destillate with. I might not be pleased, but plenty of fanbois around jumping up and down in joy whatever crap they release. Maybe I am just a conservative boring purist, lets see how this sample fares, its a bottling for Springbank Society in 2009, bottles usually worth climbing a few fences to get!

Some of the stills at Springbank

Here is the verdict:

Nose sweet, with hints of rubber, the rubber is well packaged into the sherry sweetness, its a bit like opening a new box of wellingtons

The whisky is quite dry, with a good mix of latex and peat. The whisky is very oily, which kinda amplifies the rubber latex feeling, with the dryness and peat kicking in. While I don't reckon this is a bad whisky, it's actually quite well-balanced, but I couldn't sit around drink a lot of this. I don't mind the rubber kind of sulphur but I prefer some sweetness to balance it out. This is a malt in the catagory : Interesting

The finish is long, starts of hot and burning but ends up nice and with a lot of peat and fianlly a bit of sweetness

Rating 83/100

6. December - Highland Park 25yo

After yesterdays detour - I just had to drink Glenfiddich, I am now back on the scheduled dram

6. Highland Park 25yo 50.7%

The nose is gentle and very sherried. At least relative to the two other Highland Parks I had this week. The palate reveals a heavily sherried Highland Park. Dark licorise, bitter almond and spicy wood on a layer of peat. Other might be more fan of this kind of sherry but personally I prefer the more balanced 12yo and 18yo, but this do score some intensity points

Rating 86/100

5. December - Glenfiddich 15yo Cask Strength

Allright, this is a bit unusual. Not very, but just a bit.

I never really wrote about what I want to do with this blog and why I have it. It's probably because I don't know myself. One thing is sure, the aim is not to have a review site. And it's not a site with current whiskynews. Plenty of those blogs around and the far majority of them are very good blogs, I enjoy reading at least 50 blogs, when I have the time

And if something important happens in the world of whisky it will get mentioned a million time all over the internet.

Instead I decided that this is just a catalogue of what I happen to drink. Not a very consistent catalogue, as it's a far minority of the whiskies I drink I actual write about. Again, it's nice to be too busy dramming to actual have time to write about

But today I am going to do an exception. Here's a bit of whisky news. Tabloid maybe, but still todays news-

I simply have to pour a GLENFIDDICH, for the sole reason not to support Donald Trump. I can't recall seing anyone making a bigger fool of himself lately.

You can read a bit about it here :

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/12/05/trump-wars-with-whiskey-company-after-it-gives-an-award-to-one-of-his-critics/

So I ask everybody to join my and have a Glenfiddich today

My pour is the 15yo cask strength 51% which I wrote about last february here

http://danishwhiskyblog.blogspot.dk/2012/02/simple-whisky-from-big-boys.html

Ready for the asylum ?

(Photo from Rawstory)

My ratings arent particular consistent, ust consistent with a couple of points. That's how I am. Today I would rate this dram 84/100. At least...