Review #8: Glen Garioch 1990/2012, Archives, 54.0%, ex-hogshead (#252), 267 bottles

so how is this pronounced?

The general consensus is GEERY, I think. But in this Tim Morrison interview, he says it like it's spelled, and since he owned the place, you'd think he'd know. Maybe it's an Oldmeldrum thing.

Anyway, my impression of GG is that it's hard to say why it's good when it's good, but that that's usually besides the point anyway. Still, it holds out hope ...

The nose is interesting: it's orchard fruit, but in a curiously dry way, with lots of wet stones, malty/beeriness, hay, and even some pencil shavings and I'd swear even a fair amount of smoke. Grassiness takes over, but then the fruit comes back -- underripe peaches and apples. And faintly something else more tropical -- like cheremoya.

I get a lot of dark peatsmoke on the palate. I thought they stopped using peated malt before 1990, but I guess I'm wrong. (This page says 1994 they stopped.) It has a nice oily texture, maybe a little too minty/menthol, but I have to wait for the peat to clear before tasting anything else.

Finish is peaty, peppery, grassy, and then it becomes salty at the end. There's a little vanilla and apple sweetness, and some herbs, but to me it's very salty.

good whisky, but it never quite comes together for me.

score: 85

Review #7: Longmorn 19yr 1992/2011, CWC, 52.7%, cask # 71734, 298 bottles, ex-bourbon hoggie

did they take the bourbon out first?

well, they must have, since it's a hogshead and thus, I assume, a re-built cask. but you wouldn't know by tasting it.

it's very good -- that's the first thing to say. but the nose is toffee (or TOFFEE!) with some creaminess and a little whiff of, yes, corn. some soapiness appears initially, but blows off.

when I first opened the bottle, the toffee was so intense that I couldn't taste anything else. since then it's settled down a bit and more flavors have come out: flambe' banana, green banana, raw grain, butterscotch, apple peelings, lanolin, some grassiness. the corn is faint but still there. (I'm not sure which I like better -- toffee, vanilla toffee, and more toffee, or the fruitier and grassier version.) The toffee is cut by fairly sharp pepper and oak spices (cinnamon) and bitter tannin at the end. Vanilla, toffee, and juicy apples on the finish.

the other thing to say about this is that it's from the 1992 vintage (or whatever one calls the year of distillation), which, like the older 15yr bottling (or the 30), is universally beloved. but one never hears about more recent vintages (or the newer 16yr bottling) -- one might worry whether this has something to do with switching to indirect heating in '94, in which case we won't hear much from Longmorn any more. Either that, or there was just a really big batch of '92 lying around to pick through.

score: 85


update: people seem to like this 1996, so never mind. there must be some other reason why the 16yr seems to suck.

review #6: Tomintoul 43yr, 1968/2011, TWA Private Stock, 43.2%, ex-bourbon, 78 bottles

I think I missed the boat on this.

I don't know anything at all about Tomintoul, except that fair number of old casks -- all from '68 or '69, I think -- came on the market in the past couple of years, and they're probably all gone now. I never hear much about younger casks, but they're still around, even if most go into blends.

The nose is amazing in a way that only an old whisky can be. My first thought was that it's a sherry cask, with all the dried fruit and nuttiness, but I guess that's only malt, wood, and lots of time. It would take a long time to unpack all of this -- apricots, peach pie, tapioca, cinnamon, cloves, exotic wood, sawn oak, raisins, black pepper, marzipan, cashews, creme fraiche, honey, and so on and so on. It's fruit (mostly dried, maybe a little citrus) + perfume (amber) + spice + wood + some creaminess + a little grassiness.

So of course I expect the palate to suck (dry, bitter wood tannins). It's all right, but it just sort of disappears. It's tannic and oily for a moment, and then it's gone. Maybe some peaches, but then it's dearly departed.

The finish lingers: peach pie, vanilla, and tobacco. faint but very long.

score: 90

(higher for the nose, lower for the palate)

update: they have a current bottling called "Peaty Tang." they win.

update update: apparently the local bodega actually sells the OB 10yr old. It comes in a nice tube, but I didn't buy it.

review #5: Burnside Bourbon ("Eastside Distilling"), 4yr barrel aged straight bourbon whiskey, 48% abv

there's one thing I wonder about

This is just a curiosity. But it's not outrageously priced (msrp $27.95) and not awful.

My first impression was second-rate Buffalo Trace: a lot of creamy corn and sweet oak flavors -- vanilla, coconut. So not a big revelation, since BT costs about the same. But still, they managed to age it in new oak and put it in a bottle with a gratuitous age statement and it's not terrible.

It did turn on me though. But the pleasant flavors thinned out, some feinty edges came out, and there were some strange vegetal notes -- like overcooked vegetables or kitchen scraps that have sat around too long. Then on the finish, an odd, chalky/woolly/slatey taste that I associate (maybe falsely) with charcoal filtering.

So it's probably just remaindered LDI juice (where else could it be from? KBD, I guess.), but it would be interesting if someone is labeling Tennessee whiskey as bourbon. Or maybe they just did something weird to it. Oddly, it tastes like an even younger whisky trying to seem older.

And what's with 96 proof? I guess they rectified it themselves, at least.

score: 72

more:

here's an interesting write-up and comment thread on what "procured by" amounts to

also:

the picture on the bottle seems to be Ambrose Burnside, who has nothing to do with Burnside St and Bridge in Portland, but he did seem to have invented sideburns.

ha ha ha

suddenly the Brora looks reasonable ... well, no.

it's interesting to see a special bottling of Oban, though.

via: here

review #4: Aniversario Ron Anejo ('riserva exclusiva') , 40% abv

it's just too hot today.

It's September, but it's just too hot, especially for anything peated or sherried. But all the flavors go out of whack -- sweetness and graininess (and suplhur) come forward, and everything else wisps away, so subtleties are gone and nothing is in balance. (though Irish whiskey, oddly, fares the worst of all.) Anyway, the one thing that gets better is rum. So here's one -- nothing special.

(This is from a Venezuelan distillery. I bought it a long time ago, right after Diageo or someone took it over. Of course, they released one brilliant, much heralded batch that sold out immediately, and followed it up with other, nearly indistinguishable batches that were so-so. So goes the way of later batches. Like subsequent children. Not really.)

nose: BROWN SUGAR. also, brown sugar. some pencil shavings and sawn wood, grape stems, and some cocoa and dried fruit. it's mostly just lots of brown sugar, but with some armagnac-like fruit (it's almost grapey) and tannin on top of that. some mustiness, too.

palate: brown sugar, brown sugar, brown sugar. things that remind you of brown sugar, confections you make with brown sugar, things you put brown sugar on top of (but you put too much). and then it turns bitter with too much wood. yet somehow, in summer, it seems like a pleasant tempering of the candied sweetness.

finish: the dried fruit (raisins, prunes) come back and stay a while, still against the background of a lot of bitterness. oh, and brown sugar. but the dried fruit really stick around.

not sure how to score this, but I do enjoy it (in summer, right now), so let's say:

score: 80

Review #3: Tomatin 1991/2013, C&S Dram Collection, 55.7%

hoping for 1976-lite

I think that one tries Tomatin hoping for some approximation of the fruitiness of the older ones, and usually ends up disappointed, finding something without even a family resemblance. But maybe this time ...

nose: briny and winey, with some green fruit peelings and wood. I think this is Manzanilla I'm nosing.
[checks: "Sherry Butt", cask #12488. I didn't realize that. It's pretty light colored, and I guess I was expecting a bourbon cask. Anyway, it could be from a manzanilla cask. Why don't they say that? I'd find that desirable, but not if I were expecting a PX cask ... "Sherry butt" really isn't that informative ...] After a few minutes, still briny, and aggressively grassy, but with some faint floral notes (meadow flowers) and just a bit of candied fruit. A tiny bit of maltiness. And is that smoke? Barrel char?

palate: soft for a split second, but then the sharp grassiness takes over. very green fruit.

finish: very long and strange. it starts off oily, becomes weirdly vegetal at some point (like a strange mix of herbs and peppery greens -- might be a tiny bit of meaty sulphur there, too), finds some vanilla along the way, and ends up salty. the faintest hint of fruit after all that has faded.


this is not at all what I expected. I expected either fruity or boring, but got weird instead. it's an interesting weird, and I'm happy to find a flor-sherry cask, if that's what this is, but it's not quite what I was looking for.


score: 82