Review #39: post-Thanksgiving roundup

Kanonkop Estate Pinotage 2000
really outstanding -- what 10 or so years ago was a simple, fruit-forward wine became something dark, deep, and profound: black fruit, tar, exotic spices, cured meat. Pinotage has a bad reputation, but this one became something amazing. maybe only a little thin on the palate.

score: 94


Cristom Willamette Valley Pinot Noir Marjorie Vineyard 1996
this one had plenty of life left in it -- I think the single-vineyards from Cristom (Marjorie and Louise) are as long-lived as anything from Oregon. Rich, plummy, and earthy, and all the tannins had gone to a velvety place.

score: 94


also:

Dios Baco "Baco de Elite" Amontillado
not super special, but really a nice wine for the price

Dolcetto d'Asti
is a nice wine with food -- the fruit-tart flavor holds up well

Review #38: Bowmore "Tempest", batch 4, 55.1%, OB

the turkey is brining; I need to be peated

This is "Tempest," the gimmick for which is first-fill bourbon, 10 years old, and cask strength. Those are fairly good gimmicks as far as gimmicks go. I believe this is the same stuff called "Dorus Mor" here in the States, where it costs about twice as much. (!!!) Of course, we get an extra 5cl in each bottle.

(It makes all the naming seem silly if the same thing could just as well be called something else. And I'm not sure how they figured out the U.S. pricing on this -- more than Laphroaig CS, Corryvreckan, even a bit more than Laga CS.)

Anyway, it smells good. Starts off with lots of peat, of course, moving between a creamy/earthy peat, a floral peat, and something a little mentholated. After a few minutes some candied sweetness, citrus, and then coastal notes come through. It takes a couple minutes to move past the wave of peat, but not too long. I find these fruit notes that I associate with Bowmore, too: rose hips and pickled plums. I'm fond of them. Some sweet floral notes, too -- I'd have guessed this was older if I didn't know better.

The palate seems too candied for me -- somewhere between toffee and fruit gummies. I suppose it helps balance out the peat -- and there are waves of peat -- but (I think) I'd be happy with something more austere. Some licorice and wood spices, too. Feels chewy.

I have to say I really like this profile. I feel like the sweetness is washing out some distinctness, but it's not cloying at all. I'd buy a bunch at the European price.

score: 88

Review #37: Redbreast 12yr Single Pot Still Irish Whiskey, 40% abv, OB

that's 'whiskey' with an 'e'

I never noticed that before: it's spelled "whiskey." Finally the orthographic payoff to writing these reviews.

So this is, I believe, a mix of malted and unmalted barley from the pot stills at Midleton -- i.e., Jameson without the grain whisk(e)y. Some of it is matured in sherry casks, some of it not. (I think most of it in old refill casks.) Even though it's a light-ish whiskey, my impression is that it goes all out of balance when the weather's warm -- it's a really a dead-of-winter whisky. We'll get started on it early anyway.

Nose: an almost estery fruitiness, which I can't help associating with Juicy Fruit gum. I used to really like Juicy Fruit, but I don't want it here ... then some fresh cereals, dried fruits, and some kind of oil. I've seen "linseed" in reviews before, but to me it's more of a machine oil, like the stuff that goes in a chain saw. Some oakiness, too.

Palate is soft and sweet, with the fruits really coming to the fore: some sherried fruits (raisins and prunes and so on), but then a blast of apples/apricots/Juicy Fruit. Ends on oak spices and lots of creamy vanilla.

What I like about it most is the cereal flavors that mix with the sweet vanilla. The oiliness gives it a little weight -- the whole would be cloying without it -- and generally it's pleasant without being particularly interesting.

score: 81

Review #36: Highland Park 21yr, OB, 47.5%

smokier!

This is the 21yr old, which doesn't appear on the great ladder of sherryvats from other day. It wouldn't fit -- it's less sherried than the 18yr, I think. This was, I believe, originally intended as a duty-free special, but it proved to be so popular that it became permanent. It got even got watered down to 40% briefly, but now we're back at 47.5%

Smoke is much more prominent even than in the 12yr, and then a wave of fruits and white chocolate. Not the fresh apple of the 12yr, but sweet cherries and peaches. (well, some apple, too.) Something floral, too: yes, heather, but also sweeter spring flowers. A nice minerality, but it's overwhelmed by the sweeter notes. The sherry flavors -- figs and dried fruits -- are here, and mix with the peat and the oak to make a dusty, greasy, oily (as in machine), meaty whole.

A little weak on the palate initially, but the smoke holds its together. Then wave after wave of sweetness -- orchard fruits, dried fruits, toffees -- balanced by some oaky bitterness. Very long.

Crazy good for a regularly-produced official bottling!

score: 90

Review #35: Highland Park 12yr, OB, 43%

this is the 12yr.

here is a picture that I found really helpful:

it is from The Malt Desk, here. (That whole post is good.) As you can see, the 12yr has only 15-20% of first fill sherry casks in the mix. I believe it is also 3 yrs younger than the 15yr and 4 yrs younger than the 16yy (which doesn't even exist, but if it did, it would be 4yrs older, more or less.)



really nice, room-filling nose: apples, typical heathery peat, minerals, and sweet sherry fruit (prunes and baked pears). a little rubberiness, but no big deal.

sweet but a little watery on the palate, and the rubber comes to the front. it holds up pretty well, but there's not a whole lot going on.

the finish is better, with candied fruit and nice heathery smoke. not super long.

really well-made dram that knows what it is and does it well. at a higher strength and without the recent price increases, it would be quite lovable.

score: 82

Review #34: Glen Scotia 1992/2010, Malts of Scotland, 53.3%, sherry butt, cask #429, 199 bottles

the other Campbeltown. no, not that one, the other one.

The new packaging is hilarious. It's supposed to be, right? But this isn't an official bottling; it's an MoS
from a sherry butt. Could be good!

Nose is grassy first, leaning toward hay, then some dried fruit and a lot of soot come in. There are a lot of medicinal notes -- cough syrup and antiseptic and aspirin -- which are mostly pleasant. It opens up after a while with some meaty/gamy notes, albeit faint ones. There's a strange sweet note -- like a combination of molasses and rubber tires. Slightest hint of cherries. I find this all interesting and promising, but I'm not sure it'll pay off.

Sweet smoldering rubber tires. Very weird. It's interesting, but not particularly pleasant. The rubber really lingers, too. I'm surprised at how dirty/sooty it is, and it doesn't really have the fruit (or much else) to stand up to all that. Some maltiness and a little generic sherry nutty sweetness comes in at the end, but it's hard to figure out how to score this. I'll have to make something up.

score: 79

edit: score lowered. the more I drank it, the less I liked it.

Review #33: Caperdonich 1992/2012, Berry Bros., 55.9%, Cask #121122

the cask number looks fake to me

Anyway, this is Caperdonich, the ugly stepchild of Glen Grant that had its brief moment of glory around 1972 and then became a housing block or something. Cool name, though -- it's the water source.

Nose: not much at all. Some unripe pears and apples, and a surprising amount of smoke. Maybe some crushed leaves and a bit of pepper. Mostly smells light and young, but after a while some cranberries and then some riper, more tropical fruit emerges, but faintly.

Palate is sweet and salty. Odd. Starts off on a mouthful of pear (as in: one big one, soaked in alcohol and then stuffed in your mouth), then moves to an interestingly spicy vanilla custard. The smoke and some oak tannins pop back in occasionally, but it's spicy vanilla on the finish.

This isn't bad, but it's a strange mix of young (pear, smoke, alcohol burn) and old (the riper fruit and the oak). Sort of Decades-like in that way, but it doesn't quite work for me.

score: 82


update: the finish is actually really, really good, in a rich fruit pastry kind of way. but how many points can you give to a whisky that you like best once it's gone?

Review #32: Chehalem Oregon Pinot Noir Rion Reserve 1995, 13.9%abv

so-much for an off-year

just opened a bottle of 1995 Chehalem Rion Reserve, and it's great. 1995 was reputed as tough vintage in the Willamette Valley, but the quality producers with more aromatic, more Burgundian, less Parkerized wines did fine. (Bethel Heights comes to mind.) I used to have a half-case of this -- not so much anymore -- and it's showing way better than anytime that I can remember. It's really started to open up, and still has enough fruity acidity for a few more years. So clearly the lessons are: the 95's can be great, and it's ok to start opening them now. (admittedly, I'm probably the only one with bottles left. but it was worth it! it's much more aromatic than it's ever been before.)

notes: loads of every kind of red and black fruit, brambles and herbs, exotic woods, and touches of steel wool and bacon

score: 95

Review #31: Imperial 17yrs 1995/2013, 52.7%, Signatory, C# 50135, selected for K&L, 168 bottles.

Imperial was of course the official distillery of the Death Star


I seem to have a lot of good stuff to drink right now, but duty calls ... here's another cask strength Signatory bottling from K&L, this time an Imperial. As with the Jura, there seem to be a lot of casks of roughly the same vintage floating around Europe -- such as this one, this one, and (with almost the same cask #) this one. They seem generally well regarded -- Imperial appears to be one of those things that is thought of more fondly once it's gone. In any case, I'm looking forward to this one.

Nose is buckets of juicy red apples, grassiness, and then a wave of sweet: cotton candy turning into white chocolate and jonquils. There's just a little bit of malt sugar seed oil (grapeseed?) just to keep things interesting.

The palate is powerfully oily, sweet, and then spicy. A sharp cinnamon really takes over and balances out the soft sweetness nicely. Finish is very long on spicy vanilla, with some apples creeping back in.

Compared to this one, the flavor profile is very similar but a bit simpler. On the other hand, this one is an easy pleasure -- even at 52.7%, I've just gone through a bunch of it. In fact, I'm drinking it right now and typing with my left hand. It's hard to imagine not liking this.

score: 86


an aside: out of all these Imperial casks, I hope against hope that someone saved some for another decade or so of aging. this one isn't dried out in the slightest, and is just starting to develop some floral goodness on top of the sweet apple ...

Review #30: Calvados Coeur de Lion Selection, 40% abv, NAS, and Calvados Adrien Camut 6yr, Pays d'Auge, 40%.

I want it to taste like apples

Here is the cheap stuff that I usually buy, and the opposite end of the spectrum, more or less.

Coeur de Lion costs almost nothing, is available everywhere, and is delicious. Adrien Camut is the prestige producer in Calvados, but this is, I think, the bottom of the line for him/them: the 6yr old. I prefer younger Calvados, in part because older Calvados often turns out to be a waste of money, but mostly because I prefer the taste of fresh apples. (One possible explanation: I'm allergic to raw apples, so this is my big chance.) Older Calvados is sometimes sublime, but more often tastes like generic spirit that's been in a barrel for a long time.

So, given that I prefer the young stuff, the question is whether it could be worth it (about 2.5x) to go for the fancier, estate-grown and estate-distilled bottling from the Pays d'Auge.

Coeur de Lion Selection (I doubt it's much more than 2yr old)(I think it's double distilled even though it doesn't have to be)

Spicy, winey apples on the nose, with a little lemon and gravel. (These are tart, green apples.) Mouthfeel is a little watery, but held up by some oaky bitterness and vanilla. Some barrel spices -- cinnamon, esp. -- on the finish, but mostly more winey green apples. Apples are good!

score: 81

(but what have I been drinking recently that 40% seems so watery?)


Adrien Camut Pays d'Auge 6yr

really, really annoying wax seal. darker color.

more intense on the nose, but not as winey. instead, it's more grassy and oaky -- almost maltlike, except for the intense apple smell. a little yoghurt, candle wax, and some minerals. a strange oiliness: linseed? and then a little bit of soot, I'd swear, and back to a complex apple-ness.

a lot more substance on the palate: it's rich and oily. the fresh apple notes are there, but mixed in with barrel spices and old, wet hay, buttermilk and pepper. the finish is all over the place: oat cookies and cheese, vanilla, oak tannins, sweet and tangy apples, even some plums. and it keeps going. and going.

this is a lot more interesting than my simple but beloved apple brandy. I'm not sure that I wanted interesting, but maybe I do. it's going to take some getting used to, but this is awfully good stuff.

score: 85, maybe more

in the news

I like this b/c it makes clear (to me, anyway) that the point of opening a new distillery is to swap barrels so that indy bottling can go on:
"It would also allow „swapping spirits“ with other distilleries to secure further single cask bottlings of the Cárn Mór series." 
http://www.whiskyintelligence.com/2013/11/scotlands-distillery-boom-scotch-whisky-news/


and this -- oh, come on now:

http://www.whiskyintelligence.com/2013/11/glenmorangie-ealanta-tops-the-2014-whisky-bible-scotch-whisky-news/

Review #29: George T. Stagg Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, 2013 release, distilled 1997,128.2 proof, OB

oh no, a lower proof.

Let's open the Stagg first.

I wish I understood how the barrel proof gets higher than the entry proof. That water evaporates faster than alcohol at high temperatures doesn't make sense to me. I thought about coaching my kid to write into the local paper's 'Ask a Scientist' column, but that might end up being more trouble than it's worth.

I thought last year's was a little disappointing. Good, no doubt. It had so many flavors -- the rye spices seemed unusually prominent to me -- and they were all very powerful. It was impressive, but I didn't want to drink it all that often.

This one is delicious. I want to drink it all the time, and it's not going to last long. It doesn't have quite the same power, but c'mon, it's still 64.1%. And it has depth -- it has that old whisk(e)y nose of overripe fruit, spring blossoms, and mellow wood, and everything intermingles. And it still has power: at first I thought it seemed like barrel proof Eagle Rare, but it does have some intense fruit.

nose: butterscotch, corn roasted on a grill, milk chocolate, pipe tobacco, sawn oak and cloves, maple sugar, dulce de leche, lilac and poached orchard fruit, even a little bit of a nutty rancio note -- noses well even neat

palate: corn pudding, tiramisu', cinnamon red hots, leather, red Lifesavers, rye, caraway, orange zest

finish: spicy vanilla pudding, lasts forever

score: 93

much better than last year's! indeed, stunning by any measure.