Mon Sherried Whisky: The Balvenie SIngle Barrel 15 Year Old and The Glenlivet Nadurra Oloroso Edition

There is something quite glorious about a summer’s day. To be honest, here in London, it isn’t quite summer just yet, but we are at the start of a rather warm snap which will, fingers cross, will last across the weekend.

In the UK, this is the sign for women to raid their wardrobe for flowery Laura Ashley dresses and for men to bare their legs; but when it comes to whisky, our thoughts turn from heavily peated numbers, to lighter whiskies (grains and blends), served up in a highball glass with ice, topped up with soda water and a slice of something zesty.

And herein lies the exact reason why we all need a cabinet of drinks: there is no one ‘cure all’ spirit for that moment when you want to pour yourself a dram or mix yourself a cocktail.

Our advice for putting together a basic drinks selection is to build up your cabinet from the basics, making sure you have a good quality gin and vodka in your freezer, with plenty of ice and some glasses, too (if you don’t have a lot of room, then make sure you have four Martini glasses at the very least). If you can store highball glasses too, then a top tip is to put a small amount of water in the bottom of each glass, so you have a natural layer of ice in each one; brilliant for G&T’s.

Moving from the freezer to the fridge, ensure you have some cans of tonic and soda water, as well just some filtered water too.

Topping all this off, a good drinks cabinet should contain a nice brandy (go Armagnac for better value than Cognac), a good rum (two if you can afford it- one for sipping, one for mixing), some Tequila and cocktail bitters (Angostura at the very least). And then some whisky.

You’ll notice here that, save for the rum where you can reach out over several varieties and Tequila / Mezcal where you might want a sipping option as well as a mixer, whisky is where the greatest variation is to be found. If we were being honest, you probably could do with having the following in stock:

A Smoky Whisky: Preferably a single malt with a good level of peat smoke. Example: Lagavulin 16.

A Sipping Whisky: Not everyone likes peat, so have a non-peated offering, too. Could be a blend, single malt, a bourbon, Irish or Japanese whisky. Example: The Balvenie DoubleWood 12 Years Old.

A Sunshine Whisky: A grain whisky or blend helps for those summer days when you want a long drink. Example: Cutty Sark Original.

So, in a basic cabinet we’d look at three different whisk(e)y offerings; quite a lot more than the others, but all playing different roles in the team.

In this blog we focus on all styles of whisky, trying to review them with their purpose in mind. As became evident in our look at flavoured whiskies recently, you can’t review something like J&B Urban Honey in the same way that you would a 40 Year Old Brora. Equally, as with Dave Broom’s new book The Manual, you shouldn’t be ashamed of mixing a ‘sipping single malt’, either.

When it comes to these single malt sippers, there are more and more appearing on the market all the time; some brand new offerings from indie distillers, others being released from major distillery names as range extensions.

One distillery who is undertaking a re-jig of their more niche offerings, is The Balvenie who have recently launched a couple of new single barrel expressions. It was a year ago when we reviewed their ‘new’ 12 Year Old First Fill American Oak Single Barrel, and the time has come again for another release from them, this time a 15 Year Old Oloroso Sherry cask.

The Balvenie – 15 Year Old Sherry Cask – Single Barrel – Cask Number 4440 – 47.8% avb – each batch has no more than 650 bottles – RRP £79.99

NOTE: These tasting notes are for one specific cask release, no. 4440. Other casks may differ.

Nose: Certainly a sherry cask whisky, this gives ginger and honey up front, some dusty oak and golden syrup, this isn’t hiding its roots. There is a slight Piri-Piri sauce element which develops over time. Returning to the nose after a while, the key elements have died a little and the spirit remains, giving a punchy youthfulness to the dram, but always with that Oloroso backbone of sweet spices.

Palate: Fresh apricots drizzled in honey sit atop cinnamon spices, some over ripe banana and rum and raisin milk chocolate. It is powerful with a hint of complexity, and some spiritus elements. Mouthfilling, the wood influence shines through towards the back of the palate giving plum chutney and more raisins.

Finish: Lots of ginger, runny honey and spices, which develop into nutmeg and cardamom.

Overall: This is a very tasty dram, which packs in big flavours with a good ABV balace, too. My preference is with a splash of water, which opens up the dram to reveal red cherries and heather honey, giving a better example of the smooth Balvenie spirit for which it is famed.

Another giant of the Speyside distillery world, who is also expanding a diffusion range (if you will) with an Oloroso matured edition, is The Glenlivet who welcome the ‘Oloroso Matured’ batch to the already popular Nadurra line. This will be the first ever 100% sherry matured offering from the distillery, under their own label. At the moment this is only available in Global Travel Retail, is a No Age Statement and is bottled at 48% abv but, as with other Nadurra releases, will see a ‘full strength’ edition hit local markets in the future.

The Glenlivet – Nadurra Oloroso Matured (batch OLO314) – NAS - 48% abv RRP TBC

Nose: More tropical fruits than the Balveinie, which is focuses more on ginger and honey. This is a fresher dram (I’d wager a touch younger, but not by a lot) and gives peach melba, fruit cake, cardamom and mango on the nose. A hint more summery than the Balvenie.

Palate: Cinnamon and Cardamom come through with a sprinkling of nutmeg. Blood Orange and fresh mint are backed with cigar box and a distinctly meaty tone of well aged rare steak, slightly peppered. It sits well on the palate, with the pepper and sweet sherry partnering well together.

Finish: Bloody orange meets vanilla macaroons to give a hearty, sweet finish which is mouth watering with a back drop of gala melon.

Overall: Again, this really opens up with a drop of water, smoothing it out reflect the distillery character and would be my preference to serve with a splash of H2O. It is going to be interesting to see how this works at an even higher abv. Bring it on!

These two new expressions are both excellent and with a splash of water both reveal their true distillery characters, which is pleasing as it is easy to lose track of the true DNA of the base spirit once sherry casks are involved. Both are perfect examples of ‘sipping whiskies’ which make themselves available for team selection in your drinks cabinet. Now it is up to you to decide which you want to be part of your team...

  

The InFamous Grouse - Famous Grouse 40 Year Old Blended Malt Scotch Whisky

Those of you who are regular readers of this blog will know that I'm not the biggest fan of flying.

Despite a large proportion of our time spent in Scotland on business, I would always rather take the four hour train ride to Edinburgh, than the 60 min flight. In my eyes rail is the greatest way to travel, but it does have its drawbacks.

Lengthier than flying (I wouldn't want to train it to Aberdeen or Inverness, unless on the sleeper) it can be hot, cramped and smelly. But at least, unlike flying, you get it sit in one place for an extended period of time; valuable writing time for me.

So well loved and so well priced, it is interesting to find this Famous bird releasing a very old, ultra-premium blended Scotch whisky. A far hoot (is that the noise a grouse makes?) from on tap ‘pints over ice’, they’ve gone and added a First Class carriage, in the form of a 40 year old blend, to their express train.Otherwise we could be left with a ‘what if’ situation on our hands, a generation later, as we were with the railways.

Somehow, and I'm never sure of the exact economics of this, flying can actually work out cheaper than taking the train and when we're organising our own trips up, which happens a lot, this is a vital consideration. It is also more exciting and more contemporary; the modern way to travel.

However, if one has a long lead time on a visit, the greatest travel of all can be achieved by booking early: first class rail travel.

Just that little step up from the norm, travelling first class to Scotland from London (or vice versa) gives you what basically amounts to a serviced office for 4/5 hours: internet, unlimited tea and coffee, beers or wine and two good meals. For £65 (very much in advance), it isn’t half bad.

The Famous Grouse is the most popular Scotch whisky in Scotland. Ubiquitous in both the local bar and supermarket, it tends to be consumed as a mixer (mostly) spawning off-shoots such as Ginger Grouse (mixed with ginger ale and available on tap in some outlets) which have seen the brand capitalise on its brand awareness, to take on the long drink market as well winning the race in the short drink field. 

276 decanters of the stuff have been produced at 47.3% and fall under the banner of a ‘blended malt’, so no grain whisky in the mix. It carries an RRP of £2,000 a bottle.

The Famous Grouse – 40 Years Old – Blended Malt Scotch Whisky – 70cl – 47.3% abv – RRP £2,000

Nose: The first thing to say about this whisky is that the aromas are incredibly vibrant for a liquid carrying this age statement. And we don't mean 'young’ by this, just jam-packed with flavours which dance around in a really great way. Everything you'd want from an old blend here: black cherry, antique furniture, rose-hip, slight cassia bark and some liquorice (blue liquorice allsorts). Aniseed, too. A hint of very old, lightly peated whisky.

Palate: it's up there in terms of strength for a 40 year old, so you get some excellent, moist Christmas cake at the start, then the delicate aniseed balls followed by the dark cherry and hints of Dr. Pepper and some very well aged peat.

Finish: Real liquorice comes to the fore and some oak spices appear as the flavour starts to dissipate.

Overall: Famous Grouse is a whisky which doesn't usually play this game- the biggest selling Scotch in Scotland, it tends to be a high volume, supermarket blend. However, this whisky is (and we're going to say it) exceptional. Like the Tam O'Shanter from the same stable, the very old blends leaving the Edrington blending room at the moment seem to be unstoppable.

A quite remarkable dram, but the big question is: will anyone travel first class, when they can fly? Let’s hope the typical Famous Grouse drinker isn’t Dr Richard Beeching and embraces this for the quality drink that it is. 

Caskstrength & Carry On 'C'... REVEALED!

Here it is folks... Caskstrength & Carry On 'C'

Hello tender folk.  Two years ago, Caskstrength embarked on a fairly ambitious adventure.  Looking at the landscape of the whisky business, we set a long term plan to try and bottle something whisk(e)y-related from every letter of the alphabet.  We began with Arran and the reaction to the whisky was certainly overwhelming.  So we moved on to BenRiach, which was equally well received.  Yippee we thought.

Next up and our search for a suitable 'C' was a little bit tougher.  Whilst there are no shortage of distilleries beginning with the letter C, none of them felt quite right and we decided to focus our attention on the world of blends.  Let's not forget folks that blended whisky is FAR more important in the grand scheme of things than the humble single malt. In fact, without the buoyancy of blended whisky internationally, many of our favourite distilleries would simply cease to exist.  As a result we feel that it's hugely important to take a sledgehammer and smash the snobbery against blended whisky squarely in the face, banishing it to the world of the beard (ok, not all beards), the sock/sandal combo and the anally retentive whisky bore, who won't drink anything else save for the most obscure single casks.

So with all that in mind, we decided to approach one of the most popular and enduring names in blended whisky to see if they'd be up for letting us have a tinker with our own version.  Amazingly, they said yes and thus began our fantastically educational journey into how to put together a limited edition Cutty Sark Blended Whisky. Below is a short film giving some background into how much fun we had putting this together.

Caskstrength 'Reveal' Video from Caskstrength Creative on Vimeo.

**for those of you reading this via our mailing list, you can lick here for the video**

Our Caskstrength & Carry On Cutty Sark will be officially unveiled on the 25th March and on sale from the 27th March, once again through our dear friends at Master Of Malt.  Bottled at 51.4% (UK 90 Proof) the release ties in with the 90th anniversary of the blend, which was officially born on the 23rd March 1923.  Just 500 bottles have been blended by Caskstrength alongside the totally brilliant Cutty Master Blender, Kirsteen Campbell.

The price for this limited edition, high strength blend will be around £35 RRP and the first 100 bottles sold will come with this attractive-yet-functional-Cutty-coloured-double sided-tote-bag AND a special commemorative newspaper we've had printed to mark the release!  Can't say fairer than that, can we!!

As this is a relatively robust whisky (cask strength, in a sense) it works well with a dash of water, in a cocktail, as a highball or just on its own, hopefully proving that the blend is the all-round superstar of the whisky world.

We hope you enjoy drinking it as much as we have putting it together.

Cheerio, Neil & Joel

Independently Minded: Glenfarclas 1981 31 Year Old Port Cask

I always admire an independent spirit. Coming from a music business background, there are examples upon examples of people having a passion, starting a business and watching it grow and flourish, mainly through taking risks which major companies simply could not take.

Examples abound in the world of recorded music, from Berry Gordy’s post-Tamla project of Motown (whose logo I had the distinct pleasure of having on the back of my business cards for a while, opposite) through to Richard Branson’s signing of a young group called the Sex Pistols, who had been thrown on the scrapheap not once, but twice by both EMI and A&M. Onwards into the 1990’s, would Britpop have ever happened if Creation hadn’t taken a punt on a band from Manchester that no one else wanted to sign...?

Today, indie labels still do a fantastic job of bringing us albums from the likes of the Arctic Monkeys (Domino) and Adele (XL Records), to name but a few.

This isn’t to say that being a ‘major’ is a bad thing. Heck, I worked for a major record company for a long time and, contrary to popular belief, we signed a lot of acts which wouldn’t have seen the light of day otherwise, with varying degrees of success, it has to be said!

Taking a risk was what it was all about for me and sometimes you have to wear the scars of failure with pride. In fact, scars just show experience and experience shows learning. And we should never stop learning. So get used to having scars.

But as for Scotch, one of the greatest ‘indies’ of all time is Glenfarclas. Forget Dufftown, this is Motown with Glenfarclas’ production values more a ‘wall of flavour’ than a ‘wall of sound’.

Throwing out releases as they please, from ancient Family Casks, to small quarter-cask release (tbc), these guys have been at it for years, gaining respect from every quarter for their ‘because we can’ approach. 

And the latest release from these little giants is a port cask offering, just for the UK and France. Only 480 bottles were taken from a cask laid down in 1981 and bottled in July 2012 and it is about to hit the shops now, with an RRP of £280.

Glenfarclas – Port Cask - 31 Years Old – 480 bottles – 42.8% ABV

Nose: Treacle toffee and hazelnuts are mixed in with the aroma of toasted pine nuts and olive oil. Over time in the glass (and this needs time) it opens up to reveal ginger ale, ginger snaps and sultanas.

Palate: Rich at first, with crème brulee topping of caramelised sugars, which finds its feet quickly, settling down to a creamy yet robust palate of ginger and lemon grass, with hints of red apples, summer fruits and, latterly, figs.

Finish: Spices abound with cinnamon and nutmeg the most prominent. White pepper springs forward to give a long and lingering finish to this warming dram.

Overall: Spices crash all around you in this dram, with ginger on the mid-tones and a creamy top end. A whisky which is at the same time both rich in flavour but not big and oily; more relaxed than that. A real drinker, not a sipper. Think Glenfarclas, but with added spice.

It’s great to see a distillery in the heart of Speyside (despite correctly having ‘Highland’ on their label) producing whisky of excellent quality yet at a price point which, quite frankly, puts others to shame. With a 30 year old at £123 here (yes, really) and a 40 year old at £274, here (honestly!) why would you not consider Glenfarclas to be the quintessential independent spirit.

First of 2013 - Mackinlay's Blended Whisky - The Journey Edition. All At Sea?

Welcome back folks. We trust you had as much fun over Christmas as we did and of course tasted some sterling liquids.  After indulging fairly ferociously on NYE, we thought it wise to take a little break this week, have a few long walks and give thought to the first dram of 2013, which has actually been nestling in a pile of whiskies at our office awaiting discovery.  And how ironic seeing as its inspiration was pretty much encased in ice, awaiting its own discovery many years ago.

Now unless you really aren't interested in major whisky stories (or have been encased in ice yourself), the tale of the lost Shackleton whisky will be fairly old news to most readers. In short, Antarctic explorer Earnest Shackleton abandoned his base camp back in 1909 leaving behind a case of MacKinlay's blended malt Scotch whisky.  In 2007 the case was rediscovered surrounded in thick ice.  After painstaking research Whyte & Mackay's master blender Richard Paterson recreated the whisky using a recipe including a few rare, long lost malts and the Discovery Edition, eventually released in 2011, received widespread acclaim from most of those who tasted it- including ourselves, the bottling making the shortlist of our 2011 BiG Award.

So you thought the story was over and that this ship had effectively sailed into the sunset?  Oh no.  Why let a golden opportunity pass by.  Another batch of the whisky, the Journey Edition, has been prepared, this time to mark the recreation of one of Shackleton's famed journeys from 1916: 800 nautical miles across ocean and deep ice from Elephant Island off the coast of Antarctica to South Georgia.  This time around, to help raise funds for the Antarctic Heritage Trust, the treacherous journey will be repeated later this month by polar explorer Tim Jarvis using a recreation of one of Shackleton's original vessels and it is hoped that sales of the whisky, (the 'official' whisky of the expedition), will contribute £500,000 to the Trust.

The Journey Edition takes its influence from the
 original straw inner packaging

Now, the cynic in us would say -  guys, why not let it lie?  The original Mackinlay's recreation was sensational - does the world really need (or indeed care about) another batch?? This edition apparently uses different malts to the original recreation but aims to capture the exact same flavour profile as the original 'Discovery' batch - and therefore be as near to the original discovery as possible.  So it's potentially a little bit different, but the same...at the same time.

An Antarctic Hula girl?

Confused yet?
Don't  be. The great thing is that despite the packaging looking more like a bottle of Italian Chianti cross-dressing in a Hawaiian grass skirt, the liquid inside is yet again a masterpiece of blending.  And as there is a genuine cause being supported here we'll chloroform our cynical side, restrain him and put him back in the angry box until the next questionable whisky launch comes around.

MacKinlay's Blended Scotch Malt Whisky - The Journey Edition - 47.3% - 100,000 bottles

Nose: Stewed pears, vanilla pods, a touch of white wine, creamy custard and rich toffee. Wonderfully light, but with a darker side lurking in the background.  Alongside some toasted almonds and a touch of straw lies some delicious wafts of peat smoke - not medicinal, but floral and balanced.  Superb stuff.

Palate: Bang... and we're into unchartered territory here. The fruit from the nose remains, bringing some green apple tartness, but the peat is much more pronounced, spicy and rich.  A tingle of liquorice starts to develop alongside some creamy, sweet malt (barley sugar), dairy fudge and a touch of menthol on the death.  Mouth coating and oily, this is a rugged whisky but the high strength (the whisky was originally bottled at 47.3% to supposedly stop it freezing in the Antarctic conditions) doesn't make it too spirity.  In fact, the palate is as perfectly balanced as the nose.  

Finish: The smoky notes subside and we're left with an orchard fruit freshness, the creamy malt and a touch of dryness. 

Overall: Whilst the concept of part deux smacks a little of sales & marketing over-enthusiasm, you can't fault the liquid here. Hard to say if it is EXACTLY like the original recreation, but on reading our tasting notes for the Discovery Edition after tasting this version, it seems that Mr Paterson has done Shackleton proud once again.