Again too busy with work so today, again we’ll have to be content with a  quick whisky review. This time: Macallan Select Oak from the 1824 series. Upon release it was destined at the Travel Retail market, exclusively at first although now you can find it in many online stores.

The Select Oak is a combination of first-fill European oak casks seasoned with oloroso sherry, and American oak casks seasoned with oloroso sherry or bourbon.

Macallan Select Oak (40%, £55.99 / €54.95 )

Nose : Sweet sultanas, whiffs of young spirit, lots of malt, vanilla, toast, weak nutmeg cinnamon, sourness of unripe...

A quick review today as I’m quite busy today. After the elections yesterday, it seems that lots of people around here do needs something strong and sweet to cover up their bitterness from the results, so I picked this review from my notes archive: Amrut Portonova Batch 3.

This whisky was matured in new American oak and ex-bourbon barrels, then it was transferred to port pipe barrels and then finally transferred back to ex-bourbon casks.

Amrut Portonova (Batch 3) (62.1%, £68.9 / €79.9 )

Nose : Sweet cherries jam from the port pipes, very bitter dark chocolate and a touch of burnt...

After yesterday’s review of the Tobermory, let’s review another bottling from the Whisky Broker, this time a 24 Year old Linkwood.

Linkwood distillery is owned by Diageo and most of what it produces goes into their blends, most notably Johnnie Walker (The JW green contains 15yo Linkwood) & White horse.

This was bottled from Hogshead #3540, distilled 30.04.1990 and bottled 25.11.2014, so without further ado, let’s try it.

Linkwood 24 Year Old (Whisky Broker) (51.7%, 293 bottles)

Nose : The distillery floral trademark is very evident here along with light honey sweetness, meadow flowers at sundown. baked pie dough. It’s very...

Time to divulge into a distillery I’m not too familiar with: Tobermory Distillery from the Isle of Mull. I’ve recently tasted and reviewed their official 10 Year Old bottling (see here ), but there aren’t too many officail bottlings to help exploring the distillery. They provide only 10yo and 15yo so we have to resort to indie single casks releases (Yeah, sad thing, I know… ;-) )

Let’s check a 20 Year old offering from the relatively unknown (yet a favorite of mine) Scottish bottler Whisky Broker.

The whisky comes from Hogshead number 188063, it was distilled 14th juni 1994 and...

Craft whisky is one hot buzzword and many small-scale distilleries pop-up around the globe producing said craft whisky.

Today I’ll review an american single malt whiskey from Lost Spriits comapny, the brainchild of Bryan Davis, the second batch of their Leviathan whisky, formally known as Leviathan II.

What we have here is American malted barley, peated with Canadian peat to a 110 ppm, distilled in  a wooden pot still and filled into Semillon (Late harvest Californian wine) casks and bottled at pretty young age.

Wow, that’s a very ambitious and mind boggling whisky, ain’t it? So many unfamiliar variables are involved here.

The peat is from a Canadian evergreen...

Last month I participated in a blind tasting competition. Yeah, again. I know, I should see a shrink about this but I don’t have spare $$ for it as I spend the money on whisky. Besides, if I stop buying whisky in order to save the money for the shrink, The problem will naturally get dissolved and I won’t need it so why bother? ;-)

Anyway, the competition was held here locally in Israel and contained 14 blind drams ranging from Glenlivet 12yo to Talisker 18yo with a few oddballs thrown in. Naturally I had many failures but too many revealed whiskies made...

Talisker distillery is restless and so it released another new release – Talisker Skye. It’s the fourth new release in the last two years. Yes, your eyesight is perfect. Read it again, it ain’t no mistake: four new Talisker NAS releases in the last two years.

For a distillery that used to have a very thin yet muscled core line-up, this is quite a big change, doubling their lineup offerings from four whiskies to eight. So what’s the reasoning of releasing yet another (NAS) whisky (beyond the growing demand for single malts)?

This time it looks like they are trying to target a new audience...

Just mention Glendronach Distillery to any whisky aficionado and there are good chances the words ‘Sherry Casks’ will popup in the discussion quicker than you can say Jack Robinson. After all, Glendronach are recognized for the fabulous work they do with Oloroso and PX sherry casks, either with the OB bottlings or with the single casks batches.

But it’s not a catholic marriage as Glendronach do Squint sideways  and ‘sin’ with different cask types and finishes. There are port finishes (like the 15/18yo I reviewed here ) and wine finishes. Lately Glendronach releases a few new interesting non-sherry finishes: Sauternes and marsala wine finishes...

Ardbeg 1999 10 YO Chieftain’s Choice, 57,6 % The last meeting in one of the whisky clubs I am a part of there was a smoky line-up of Ardbegs and Laphroaigs. It was one of the board members leading the tasting. We had Ardbeg 10 YO and Laphroaig 10 YO, and then Ardbeg Uigedail 2014 […]...

Bunnahabhain 1973 40 YO The Birthday Dram, 48,5 % Here’s a special treat! I have fondness for old Bunnahabhain whiskies (and young). I was therefore very happy when our friend Jan Petter wanted to share a dram of his Bunnahabhain 1973 40 YO The Birthday Dram. This is an independent bottling, single cask from The […]...

Invergordon 1988 “Caribbean Crème”, 26 YO, 46 % We can’t be drinking single malts exclusively. We have to venture a bit further out from time to time. One very natural destination then is grain whisky. Grains are for the most part used as a key component in blended whiskies (well that goes for most single […]...

The festival Whisky in Leiden 2015 is coming up in under two weeks, so it’s time to have a look at the festival bottling, an Arran Private Cask distilled in 2000 and bottled from a sherry cask.

Arran 14 yo 2000 ‘Private Cask’ (55,7%, OB for Whisky in Leiden 2015, sherry hogshead #128, 202 btl.)

Nose: starts in a dusty / waxy way. Quickly followed by lots of candied apples and hints of apricots. Honey. A rather subtle, fragrant and very jammy profile. Actually it reminds me of Balvenie in a way. Spicy notes (pepper) with some oak...

Last night I attended a Twitter tasting, which featured three expressions from the core range of anCnoc : the entry-level 12 Year Old , the recent  anCnoc 2000 vintage and the really new anCnoc 18 Year Old.

anCnoc 12 Year Old is mostly matured in ex-bourbon wood, with a bit of ex-sherry casks mixed in, and therefore a classic example of anCnoc’s house style, with lots of barley sweetness, honey and citrus.

anCnoc 12 yo (40%, OB 2015)

Nose: a rather typical, bright and juicy fruitiness. Honeysuckle, sweet and sour (green) apples and plenty of floral honeys....

Teerenpeli Hosa Black Cask Edition, 10 YO, 43 % Earlier this year we caught up with Jari Mämmi from Teerenpeli Distillery in Lahti, Finland. We were curious to see if he had any new products for us to try, and he certainly did! We have previously reviewed the Kaski in our Nordic Whisky series. The Teerenpeli […]...

Dalmore Valour is a true Dalmore : no age statement, low strength and a few tricks with casks. Like most of the new travel retail bottlings by the way, it’s not just a problem of Dalmore.

In this case, the trick is to mention ‘maturation in 30 years old Matusalem sherry casks’. Are the casks 30 years old, or does it refer to the fact that the sherry used to season the casks is 30 years old (on average)? While it maj make the whisky look better, what really matters is that the whisky itself is much younger. The other trick...

Bruichladdich Port Charlotte PC12, 12 YO, 58,7 % This is the eight release in the PC series by Bruichladdich. They started with the 5 YO Port Charlotte PC5. The Bruichladdich Port Charlotte PC12 is a Travel Retail Only bottling. Port Charlotte is the heavily peated variant of Bruichladdich, and the phenol level is said to be […]...

Highland Park 1997 Vintage, NAS, 40 % This is a Highland Park made for travel retail only. I have tasted the 1998 from before. The 1998 was not exactly my kind of whisky, so I was very curious about the 1997. I did call this one a NAS in the heading, but we do have […]...