Review #51: Michter's Small Batch Bourbon Whiskey, 45.7% abv, Batch #13-42

more post-X-mas blogging

This is a "small batch" of a little while back, not the "sour mash" or the "unblended American whiskey". According to the label -- apart from all the crap about pre-Revolutionary War quality standards -- "it is further mellowed by our signature filtration." That seems like a bad idea, although, come to think of it, it does come without an age statement. The label also says it's bottled in Bardstown. So I guess that means it's from KBD, maybe with juice from Heaven Hill.

nose: honey, toffee, cloves, citrus -- very nice light and fragrant profile. some corn syrup, vanilla, and charred oak come in eventually, and if you have a lot of patience, some fruit. indeed, after 15 minutes or so, I get yoghurt, smoke, and dried apricots -- I think I had a Tomatin like that once.

palate: light and syrupy, but with a surprising amount of peppery heat. it's strangely sweet -- it would be cloying without the youthful heat.

finish: all sweet notes -- honey, vanilla, orange candy esp. -- except for just of bit of bitter, smoky oak.

I like this. It's an interesting, fragrant bourbon, but it becomes a little cloying and dull on the palate. The wood notes save it, but it can seem too young and too old (the wood) at the same time -- I can't decide if this is good or bad. It's (slightly) overpriced in any case.

score: 82

Review #50: Yamazaki Single Malt Whisky Aged 12 Years, 43% abv

post-Christmas blogging

Still away from my usual glassware, but I think I can manage to get by. This is the 12yr from Yamazaki, which had been a huge bargain in the States for the past few years. The price here seems to have converged with the prices in the rest of the world, though, so I better review this while I still can.

Nose is engaging -- linseed oil then citrus (candied orange peel), sweet and minerally sherry notes, and just a hint of smoke. Starts off like furniture varnish but ends very sweet and fruity, almost floral (orange blossom).

Malty, fruity, woody, smoky on the palate. Lightweight but nicely oily, persistent flavors. Apples join the citrus and dried fruit flavors, along with some spiciness.

Finish strangely turns back to the minerality of the nose, along with a mouthful of wood and some sweetness to balance it out. Still drying in the end.

I don't think I conveyed it well, but this really has a lot of complexity for a standard bottling. It develops nicely and has an interesting flavor profile. It seems older than 12 yrs, both for good (orange blossom) and bad (mouthful of wood). In the end it's a little too weak (43%) and drying, however.

score: 86

Review #49: Wild Turkey 101 Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, 50.5% abv

I wonder how old this is

I could probably look it up somewhere. Wait, here it is: "a marriage of primarily 6-, 7-, and 8- year old bourbons." There's also the issue of the mashbill. The high proof is self-explanatory.

Nose: spices on top, corn underneath. Lean profile, that is, with rye, orange blossom, dried fruit (raisins, plums), cinnamon, honey, and vanilla -- it's a spice blend with a little bit of creamed corn in the background.

Palate: Like sucking on the spice blend. It's hotter than I expected. Some anise I hadn't noticed before, and the oak tannins are pretty strong. But mostly this is about the rye spices.

Finish: very long, with candied sweetness, dry oak, and the rye really coming through.

The spiciness is powerful, but this is maybe a little hotter and drier than I'd like. Still, I don't think there's anywhere else to go for this much flavor at this price point. Outstanding stuff.

score: 83

Review #48: Elijah Craig 18yr, 45% abv, Barrel #3416

Man, this stuff disappeared fast. It was in stores last year, I think, and now it's gone. I hear it's coming back eventually (in <18yrs) but if it costs 6/7th as much as the 21yr old does/did, then it won't be joyously welcome.

If we imagine this, for a moment, as the 12yr with a bit more age on it, then it's become a little less expressive, on one hand, and somehow richer on the other: the butterscotch seems denser, and swirled with toffee and (good) caramel. The oak spices have become woodier, and corn has become roasted. Some sweet floral notes are starting to take off, too -- lilac cotton candy.

Nose: butterscotch corn pudding with cinnamon bark and lilacs. Some demerara rum notes, too.
Palate: more butterscotch and vanilla toffee. Custard. Very heavy and astringent oak
Finish: long -- sweet and very drying at the same time. It's not bitter at all, but really very astringent -- like a stemmy young Barolo if Barolo were made of corn.

I like this a lot, but it's not a huge advantage over the 12yr. There are some new flavors, but I don't think the drying oak suits them that well.

score: 84

Review #47: Elijah Craig 12yr "Small Batch" Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, 47% abv

I remember this dessert

This is the standard Elijah Craig, one of infinitely many labels produced by Heaven Hill. I'm sure I'll get around to writing up Evan Williams and Rittenhouse one of these days, too. Maybe even Larceny. I don't have much else to say except: ever since a big fire, they distill and bottle in different locations, I think, and everything they produce is a huge bargain. This is about $24 for a 12 year old ...

nose: polenta, and some spicy candy -- like those Brach's hard candies (cinnamon, butterscotch). huge amounts of butterscotch

palate: I'm not sure how I didn't notice this before, but this is a coconut rice pudding I once had. I sort of remember it: coconut, rice, maybe condensed milk, vanilla, some cinnamon and cardamom. This is that. Well, maybe this one has some corn to it, a bit of dried fruit, and woodiness, and well, it's a bourbon and not a rice pudding, but otherwise it's the same.

finish: long, on coconut rice pudding and oak.

I like this a lot, but I'm not sure how often I want to drink that pudding. (My almost certainly faulty sense-memory is probably getting in the way here.) I'll drink it often enough.

score: 83

update: with the bottle having been open a while now, there's less coconut cream up front and more rye on the finish. same score.

Review #46: Four Roses Single Barrel Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, 50% abv, Warehouse HE, Barrel 51-5H

I have a plan

My wife thinks, correctly, that I have too many bottles of Scotch open. Fortunately, I've developed a two-step action plan.

1. Finish more bottles of Scotch.
2. Open more bottles of Bourbon.

Step 1 has been going so well that I thought I'd make a start on Step 2.

This is Four Roses Single Barrel. According to the bottle tag, Jim Rutledge has "carefully selected one of the 10 recipes for Four Roses Single Barrel." I believe he has carefully selected OBSV for every single barrel. "B" is the higher rye mashbill (35%) and "V" is the "delicate fruity"yeast. I'm glad to know all this -- I find it a little strange that such things aren't usually disclosed, and even weirder that Scotch producers (more or less) all dump bags of commercial yeast in their wort. (of course, I find it a little weird that this is NAS.)

Nose: buckets of fruit, slightly sour wood, and then a rich creaminess that sits somewhere between vanilla toffee, yoghurt, and creme brulee. The sweet wood aromas are really interesting -- not just vanilla but I'd swear there's birch and maple in there. It's like wood candy.

Palate: lots and lots of black cherries, spiced with cinnamon and sassafras, and the woodiness becomes fairly astringent.

Finish: the wood candy again, and then spicy rye bread lingers for a while.

This is really delicious -- very fun to drink. At the same time, I can see why a blend would be appealing: this is cherry + creamy + wood, about as clearly and finely expressed as possible. I might get tired of it if it were the only whiskey I had opened, but that's not my action plan. As things are, I like it quite a bit.

score: 86

Review #45: Equipo Navazos/Palazzi Single Oloroso Cask Jerez Brandy, 2005/2012, 44.2% abv, 720 bottles (@375ml)

I'm nervous about this one.

I expect to like it a lot, but then again, I might not. I intended to buy an amontillado from Equipo Navazos, but it's a little hard to justify that for a single bottle of wine that neither my wife nor my friends have any interest in. That is my sherry obstacle. But maybe it doesn't apply to a half-bottle of spirits, so when I saw this I bought it instead. I'll drink it by myself if I have to.

Why not team up with a Scottish distillery? Navazos/Benriach? Navazos/Aberlour? And age it a little longer? Anyway, this is the same stuff as in this post, which is quite informative. Brandy from Alvisa Distillery in La Mancha*, aged for 6.5yrs, the last 4.5 of which were in an oloroso cask. So I guess it's sherry-finished Brandy de Jerez. Don't know much more about it.

(*Also don't know: how Brandy de Jerez can come from La Mancha)

Nose: I don't know too much about sherry, but I'm surprised it's oloroso -- I'd have guessed amontillado. There's a bunch of rich stewed fruit, but it also smells saline and chalky, with a lot of fresh apples and varnish. Juicy grapes and shoes polish and oak spices. Tiny hints of honey and peonies.

Palate: wow, interesting palate. I was expecting sherry at this point, but this, obviously, has a lot more weight, and it really develops. Starts on soft fruit, and then moves through a couple dozen other flavors. A bowl of mixed nuts and something grassy/tannic in addition to everything I noticed before. Some cocoa, some engine oil.

Finish: really, extraordinarily long. Maybe a little difficult: some of the mixed nuts are bitter, there's some astringent wood and engine oil in addition to the fruit and vanilla. But it's really good.

This is disappointing if you expect the best of oloroso and sherry-aged whisky all in one package. I was ready to go lower before I tasted it, too. But it turns out to be a good purchase on my part.

score: 90

Review #44: Ardbeg 'Corryvreckan', 57.1%, L11 157 11:31 6ML

it's cold outside!

for some reason, peat seems especially suited for this awful weather. it's not just an affinity of peat smoke and warm feelings, either. I had some Corryvreckan this summer and it was just flat: it tasted like sweet cream butter on burnt toast, with a maybe a little anchovy. now that the ambient temperature has collapsed, it's regained its form.

Corryvreckan is their best bottling right now. I guess its gimmick is: no age statement but 10yrs old, lots of new French oak, and high proof but consistently at 57.1%. It has, I think, the richest, tarriest peat -- it doesn't have Laphroaig's iodine or Bowmore's fruity/smokiness, but it's powerful stuff and it interacts in an interesting way with the sweet oak. (The sweetness in itself is a little odd, but seems to be engaged in combat with the peat.) Anyway, notes ...

Nose: tarry rope, camphor, herring, and laver. Dark sooty smoke. Some astringent notes and dried flowers. Wet clay, oyster liquor cotton candy, black pepper, bread baked with molasses. Develops well and very expressive for such a high proof.

Palate: toasty, briny, peppery, phenolic, sweet. seaweed candy, if there were such a thing. a smoldering wool sweater doused in seawater, but curiously rounded.

Finish: extremely long. Creamy vanilla ashy candy.

I sometimes forget how much I like this one, but then I drink some more.

score: 89

Review #43: Arran 2005/2011, OB for The Nectar, 55%, Peated, ex-Bourbon, Cask #124, 254 bottles

I need to sort my samples.

Unfortunately, I don't have quite enough samples lying around to make much organization worthwhile, but maybe things are getting a little messy. Anyway, this one was on top. And it's all good -- Arran is good! And consistently getting better. I'm a little worried at the youth of this one, but we'll see.

Nose: plenty of orchard fruit when I first picked up the glass, but now I can't pick up anything but peat (tarry smoke, licorice) and some granite. Ah, there's the fruit again: peaches and pears in syrup. Very nice, but it doesn't play well with the peat, I think -- I notice one or the other.

Palate: Sweet and creamy and then phenolic. Loads of vanilla. The fruit and peat mesh better here: it's like a mentholated compote rather than two separate things.

Finish: both ashy and candied, oddly enough. It works.

This is tasty and interesting -- I can see why they bottled this youngster.

score: 85

Review #41: Dalwhinnie Single Highland Malt 15yr, 43% abv

the Classic Malt with the dumpy bottle

I like the dumpy bottle. This is one of the original Diageo "Classic Malts," representing the not-Western Highlands, I guess. The new shelf talkers don't say "Highlands," though -- I think they have adjectives ("light and fruity"? "approachable and unscary"?). I have a completely vacuous attachment to this one because there was once a place where I ordered from the whisky list, but didn't know what I was doing; so on successive visits I went through more or less in alphabetical order. Made it as far as Dalwhinnie, about which I remember nothing.

The nose is nice -- like Clynelish, there's some honey and wax and a surprising amount of peat smoke. Apples and some sour yoghurt in the background. Ripe pears and wool.

Very creamy on the palate, and then the tart green fruit comes, and then bitterness. Oak, I guess. It all works well together. The finish holds up pretty well for 43% -- creamy and chewy.

This is pretty good! Nothing awe-inspiring -- and rather too light -- but it's flavorful for a standard bottling. Pleasant and non-boring.

score: 82

Review #40: Macallan 12yr Highland Single Malt

I thought they killed this.

I thought that this was being replaced by the color-words ('Ruby', 'Sienna', 'Cerulean'), but it seems to be living on, at least here in the States. (This is 'exclusively aged in sherry casks from Jerez', or something to that effect, and not the 'Fine Oak.') In fact, out shopping I saw someone loading up a (literal) shopping cart full of them not too long ago. Anyway, my impression is that it's been going downhill and simultaneously up in price for a long time now, so this is probably the only review of Macallan that I'll ever do.

But I have two open bottles, bought quite far apart both geographically and temporally. So I thought it might be interesting to compare them.

bottle #1 (I think this is older, bought on the east coast)

dried fruit and marshmallows quickly turn to vegetal and slightly rubbery sherry notes. a lot of aspirin and wet slate. a bit of smoke and some jammy/candied fruit comes in slowly. initially bitter and weak on the palate, but then becomes malty and sweet. there's a brief blast of sulfur, but then the finish is the best part: pralines, vanilla, wood glue, and chestnuts.

bottle #2 (I think I bought this ~2 yrs ago, on the west coast)

sweeter, more candied nose (Armagnac-type fruit), without any grassiness. Some bitter almonds and slate come through, but mostly it's just the sweet fruit. On the palate it's just cooked-fruit cotton candy plus bitterness. I want to say the bitterness is expressive (coffee grounds?), but I think it's just bitter. There's a little maltiness, but I get the impression that the malt is mostly just working as preservative for the sherry. Nothing special on the finish.

Bottle #2 is a completely undistinguished but unflawed sherried whisky. The first one is a little more interesting -- probably more interesting than a standard bottling deserves to be -- but not exceptional. They're certainly different, in any case. Let's average the two.

score: 81