Three ol' Speyside/Highland samples from Whiskybase

Gosh, remember when Whiskybase Shop sold samples? Yeah they were tiny, but there were some gems. My three remaining Whiskybase samples are probably not gems, but they don't fit any other planned lineups and I need to consume my old samples, so here we are. They're sitting right here and I'm about to taste them side-by-side, and not in the order in the picture, instead I'll do 'em by age.

Deanston 15 year old 1997 Archives, hogshead #1959, 55.8%abv

So Deanston has become a thing. I know neither when nor why. Maybe it has something to do with Ian Macmillan's work? I dunno. If you were to go back in time 15 years and tell single malt geeks that Deanston and Edradour single casks would become popular someday, those folks would laugh in your face and exclaim, "Yeah, right after Ledaig gets overexposed."

Nose - It starts with a minty, sugary bourbon-like blast that gradually peels away baring toasted grains, dried herbs and hot cardboard. Adding water brings out more herbs, yeast and anise.

Palate - Vanilla, sugar and a hint of mint to start, again tilting towards bourbon. Some good herbal bitterness and a simple tartness adds character. It gets sweet, sour and papery once diluted.

Finish - Better than the palate. Vanilla, apples and lemon juice. Dilution turns it sour, bitter and papery.

WORDS WORDS WORDS

Not one of Archives's best picks. I think the hogshead is more of a problem than the Deanston spirit. Keep water away from this one and perhaps it'll appeal to your American whiskey-drinking friends or your American whiskey-drinking self.

Rating range - C+ (77-79)

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Speyside Region 18 year old 1998 Archives, butt #1034, 52.7%abv

These "Speyside Region" malts are often Glenfarclas, sometimes Glenlivet and probably not the actual Speyside distillery. That's it for the introduction.

Nose - Milk chocolate, dried cherries, black pepper and balsamic vinegar with smaller notes of vanilla and limes in the background. Not much change once water is added, it's just flatter, quieter.

Palate - Mildly sweet with dried berries, toffee, cocoa and bits of earth and woody bitterness. Dilution sweetens it up, brings in the flowers and vanilla beans.

Finish - Milk chocolate, toffee and vanilla ice cream. A little bit of woody bitterness. Once diluted it matches the palate.

WORDS WORDS WORDS

A good middle-ground sherried thing, the whisky could indeed be from any Speyside production facility. I love the milk chocolate, but could do with less woody bitterness. Again, it's better when neat, and the nose proves to be the most complex element.

Rating range - B (84-86)

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Cragganmore 20 year old 1991 Whiskybroker, hogshead #1146, 53.4%abv

There needs to be more Cragganmore on this blog, but there ain't much Cragganmore around. No one samples it out and I don't live near a Cadenhead shop in Europe. I don't live in Europe, period.

Nose - Aw yeah. Iodine, mango pits, fish sauce, cucumber skins. Hints of malt and industrial funk. It gets waxier and herbal with dilution and even picks up a toffee pudding note.

Palate - Lean and not sweet. Industrial, metallic and earthy. Limes and herbal liqueur. A bit of butterscotch appears after some time. Lots of soot and citrus appear once water is added.

Finish - Inky and herbal. Some dunnage. Hints of lemon and butterscotch. Stays the same after dilution.

WORDS WORDS WORDS

This whisky was such weird fun. I just adore this imperfect (or is it perfect?) dingy style, and I'm always on the lookout for it. But also, THIS BOTTLE WAS 46 EUROS. Eight years ago. I'm not saying everything in the world was better eight years ago but. 

Rating range - B+ (87-89)

A Pair of Glen Keiths

There aren't many Glen Keith reviews to be found on this site. The same goes for Imperial. Despite limited experience with both, I've already banded them together in my mind. The single malts are perfectly fine, and probably provided excellent backbones to a great many blends. I don't seek them out, even though they're defunct and/or newly reborn. Maybe they're not weird enough for me. I might have only one more Imperial sample somewhere, but I do have these two Glen Keiths supplied to me by doggo-lover and planter-of-hostas, My Annoying Opinions. I'm trying the two Keiths side by side just to prove to my palate that not every Glen Keith tastes the same.

Labels composed in middle-Sku style

Glen Keith 21 year old 1996 Single Malts of Scotland (Elixir Distillers)

Sherry butt 135908, 56.2%abv

pic yoinked
from Whiskybase

Nose - At first it's all fabric, nutty fino, black walnuts, mushrooms and an ocean breeze. Molasses, roses and dried apricots slowly emerge later on. Adding water perks it up, bringing out baked peaches and orange Pixy Stix, with hints of stones and wood smoke.

Palate - The nose's nutty fino shows up first with some very dark chocolate as its +1. Then there's lime zest and dried blueberries, essences rather than sugars. It gets zestier and mustier with time. It gets sweeter once water is added, bringing in cherry candy, mint extract and a bit of new oak.

Finish - Salt, minerals, limes and a hint of prune. Sweeter than the palate. With water it gets a curious mix of cherry candy and tahini.

WORDS WORDS WORDS

I love love the nose when neat, and probably prefer the palate the same way. Water does sugar it up, resulting in two whiskies for the price of one. Whatever that price once was. Though the palate and finish didn't rock me like the sniffer, this is still the best damned Glen Keith I've ever had (out of, like, six). Kudos to the folks, like MAO, who nabbed this bottle.

Availability - Sold out
Pricing - ???
Rating - 88 (neat)

THEN......

Glen Keith 22 year old 1995 Archives

Hogshead 171245, 56.0%abv

Nose - Much hotter than the 21yo. There's citronella, damp basement, something meaty/savory, brine, pilsner and nutritional yeast. More citrus and sugar emerges with time. It gets prettier with added water. Flower blossoms, citronella, vanilla and green bell peppers.

Palate - Whoa. Aqua Velva. I'm time warping back twenty-three years to a dirty-ass bathroom in Westwood, my blue bottle of AV Ice has tipped over into the bathroom sink and I'm out like $7.99 plus tax. Then I'm back in this dystopian future, and the whisky has ditched the aftershave becoming very sweet, very intense and very better. Think cantaloupe, oranges and candle wax. It gets even sweeter once I've added water, with notes of melon candy and citrus candy. Hints of florals, metal and herbal bitterness keep it from overboard.

Finish - Sweet and floral. Cantaloupe and tart oranges. A bit drying. Adding water doesn't change it much.

WORDS WORDS WORDS
I have learned something today. Every Glen Keith does not taste the same. My stars. I do prefer this whisky when it is neat......once it straightens itself out. It's difficult to stir my dormant sweet tooth with anything other than Kasugai candies or butterscotch budinos, so this whisky will appeal more to sweetie pies. Like MAO. But this is certainly not a generic Speyside malt.

Availability - Sold out
Pricing - ???
Rating - 82

Glen Scotia 25 year old

The private equity firm takeover of Loch Lomond Distillers in 2014 seems to have worked wonders for the subsequent quality of Glen Scotia's official single malts. It's just a damned shame they abandoned the delightfully hideous Disco Cow packaging. The Disco Cow potential was infinite, especially for the recent luxury bottlings. The $4K 45-year-old Glen Scotia would have been perfect as Cocaine Cow, complete with a complementary mirror. This 25-year-old could have been Amyl Nitrate Cow, with a popper-shaped bottle. I cannot be alone in seeing the potential here!

Truth be told, I don't know how appropriate that previous paragraph was. I just wanted to say Cocaine Cow.

Less importantly, I took part in a bottle share of the 25yo, an all-bourbon-cask release, bottled at a healthy 48.8%abv. It also comes with the required contemporary packaging of a wooden casket and a torture-device / neck brace. I don't know why this is considered normal yet Amyl Nitrate Cow is weird.

Distillery: Glen Scotia
Ownership: Loch Lomond Group (via Exponent)
Region: Campbeltown
Type: Single Malt
Age: minimum 25 years
Maturation: all bourbon casks, then married for a year in first fill bourbon barrels
Alcohol by Volume: 48.8%
Chillfiltered? No
Colorant added? probably not
(from a bottle split)

NOTES

The nose is hearty mix of (sorry for the list here) industrial smoke, ocean brine, green herbs, honey, apple pie, anise, bananas, tinned fruit cocktail, dunnage and farm. At first the palate is reminiscent of an even older Calvados, with lovely ancient oak, toasty spices, baked apples and mint. But then it switches to an old Highland style with an intense oily industrial side, tangy citrus, savory herbs and a gentle earthiness. Its long finish fills the senses with dunnage, earth, roots, menthol, umami and (eventually) fresh stone fruits.

WORDS WORDS WORDS

Within the modern packaging lives an excellent whisky of a very un-modern style. As a result of the limited tinkering, the 25 year old is more of a thinker than a drinker and one that may take time to fully appreciate. It's also much better than the two versions of the recent 25-year-old Springbank I've tried, to which one can thank Glen Scotia's faith in its whisky and that lack of late term futzing. Though I'd love to complain about the Scotia's price, it's about 1/2 or 1/3 of the Springbank's and with a smaller overall outturn. So I have no complaints, but for the cows.

Availability - Limited amounts in US, Europe and Asia
Pricing - $250-$375 in Europe, $350-$400 in US and Asia
Rating - 90

Tasting the Old Tailor Rye

You've seen pictures of the killer barrel and my hairy punim (from like three years ago), you've studied the evaporation rate and bought a bottle of the tawny port, you've lost faith in all other ryes and, as a result, are now sending me your unopened bottles of MGP-era Willett. So now you await the tasting notes, like you await the presidential election, with adrenaline-triggered indigestion.

First, there was a taste off between Old Tailor Rye, the new make and Midsummer Night's Dram 6.2 (High West's port cask finished rye). As youthful as OTR is, the original spirit's notes proved to be nearly absent. HWMND is a very different whiskey, with bigger tannins and fortified wine notes sitting deeper in the palate.

I will say this, Old Tailor's color is right.

But aside from a whiskey's origin story, its color can be its most misleading attribute.

The nose honks "Youthful Rye", though not necessarily baby MGP. The dill note is nowhere to be found. Instead there's rye bread, hazelnuts and ground mustard seed. Cherry lollipops, warm caramel sauce and a hint of grape jam. A good measure of toasted oak spice as well.

The palate is hotter and sharper than the nose. There's lots of tangy citrus and salt, along with the cherry lollipops. It softens up and sweetens after 15-20 minutes in the glass.

Sweet citrus, salt, black pepper and grape jam make up the finish.

It makes for a very reasonable Manhattan (2:1 rye:Antica), one of which Kristen found very acceptable. The port element does not over-sweeten the cocktail, instead a grainy/bready note sits right in the center of the palate.

Old Tailor is a weird success, as my few successes are. Sometimes the port peeks out, sometimes it hides. The palate is simple and may even need a few drops of water. I think it may work best in cocktails and will apply it to such endeavors once we've cleared out our other half-dozen open ryes.

Is the whiskey worth the $150+ I spent on it? Ha! But it is better than I'd expected. A higher quality barrel would have been nice, but I think my mini barrel maturation days are over. It's your turn now.

Old Tailor Rye and how it came to be

Kravitz was an occupational surname in Ashkenazi Polish, Ukranian, Czech and Slovak communities. We were tailors, a trade which continued in my family right up until my grandfather's generation. But one must generously tailor the definition of "tailor" to get it to fit me, as I tailor spreadsheets, screenplays, cocktails, blog posts and terrible whisky experiments. Meanwhile, National Distillers' Old Taylor bourbons are my favorite dusty American whiskies. And "Taylor" was the Norman occupational surname for......you guessed it, cash application senior specialists. A match made in Ohio!

So I made a whiskey. And when I say "made" I do not mean I distilled the stuff. Like any self-respecting American whiskey producer, I aged rye spirit that was distilled by Midwest Grain Products. The good stuff, in the key of 95/5. America's Eau De Vie.

I seasoned a 2-liter barrel with 10 year old Tawny Port for two weeks, leaving a good drizzle of fortified wine in the cask.

Then I deposited clear spirit into the wooden vessel, bunged it up and waited.

The setting

One thing quickly became clear. The barrel was, shall I say, porous. Though I gave the staves twice the recommended time to expand, the barrel leaked from three places, three spots conveniently located so that no matter how I rotated the barrel something was always escaping. Nevertheless I persisted.

My previous barrel experiments played out in our former Long Beach apartment which would get very hot in the summer. But I'm in Ohio now. And I have a basement! A basement which stays between 62 and 69 degrees all year, and remains dry thanks to a dehumidifier. Thus the maturation environment was much stabler this time.

The details

Seasoning: 750mL of Porto Morgado 10 year old Tawny Port. Seven full days, quarter turns every 12 hours.

Spirit: Approximately 1,989 mL of Redemption White Rye batch 001, distilled by Midwest Grain Products with a 95% rye, 5% malted barley mashbill. 46%abv.

Rotation: Quarter turns once a week.

Day 7: ~1.24% evaporation so far, or 0.176%/day (August 11, 2017)

Day 14: ~2.03% evaporation, 0.145%/day

Day 22: ~3.64% evaporation, 0.165%/day

Day 28: ~4.50% evaporation, 0.160%/day - Color: Peach. Notes: Berries, cinnamon sticks, chocolate.

Day 35: ~5.67% evaporation, 0.162%/day

Day 43: ~7.02% evaporation, 0.163%/day

Day 50: ~8.20% evaporation, 0.164%/day

Day 58: ~9.61% evaporation, 0.165%/day - Color: Light gold. Notes: Rubber, fennel seed, flowers, pears ginger, cocoa, caramel.

Day 65: ~11.02% evaporation, 0.170%/day

Day 77: ~12.99% evaporation, 0.169%/day

Day 85: ~14.46% evaporation, 0.170%/day - Color: Gold. Notes: Pumpkin pie spice, cinnamon candy, mint, very bitter.

Day 91: ~15.80% evaporation, 0.174%/day

Day 96: ~18.34% evaporation, 0.191%/day

Day 114: ~22.08% evaporation, 0.194%/day - Color: Apricot. Notes: Shortbread, underripe stone fruits, pears, rye bread, pumpkin pie spice, dry red wine.

Day 126: ~24.88% evaporation, 0.197%/day

Day 168: ~36.13% evaporation, 0.215%/day - Color: Red. Notes: Pear and cinnamon tart, smoky apples, vanilla pods, pear, cherries, cinnamon.

Day 170: Now bottling. Lost nearly 1.60% in last 48 hours alone. (February 4, 2018)

Something happened right there on Day 168. Per my notes, the bung plug had completely worn out by that point so the seal was probably lost. And maybe some quicker leakage. Bottling proved clean and quick. Space was made for it in the cabinet. And there it stayed, waiting 22 months for a label and even longer for an embrace.

Further thoughts

I find this experiment more enjoyable to write about than it was to actually carry through. As you may note in the list above, my motivation to measure the thing began to evaporate (jokes!) after the third month. The barrel was poorly coopered, the experiment cost at least $150 and the process just wasn't that interesting, or at least not nearly as fascinating as my then-brand-new baby daughter. The Diving For Pearls Whisky Machine, Version 2.0 hasn't seen a second experiment, and I'll probably blow it up with fireworks like a good American.

Thanks to dumb luck, the resulting whiskey wasn't that bad. Proper examination will follow on Friday!

The Barrel

This barrel wasn't supposed to be that relevant. I ordered this inscription two-and-a-half years ago, inspired by Woody Guthrie's guitar message, which he'd crafted after he wrote "Talking Hitler's Head Off Blues". Guthrie opposed all forms of fascism, and in my naïveté I had thought the majority of Americans did too, or at least had once done so. But perhaps we've only opposed other countries' fascism while accepting our own. Or maybe we thought things were okay as long as it wasn't present in our neighborhoods, but that it was necessary to impose anti-liberalism on other people's neighborhoods. I cannot follow that logic, as it seems antithetical to our constitution and any dream to fulfill the promise of a healthy republic. One would think this is something our country needs to figure out without further delay.

This barrel is not an "antifa" barrel. And if you regularly use the word "antifa", may I encourage you to add some variety to your news sources. In truth, the above description could have been "This Machine Kills Fascists, Communists, Nihilists and Know-Nothings" but there wasn't enough room on the barrel head.

Here's the reverse side:

On Wednesday, the experiment. On Friday, the tasting!

Laphroaig Càirdeas 2018 Fino Cask Finish

No rant today, just a list of the past eight Laphroaig Càirdeas releases and their ratings, because assigning a number grade to a liquid totally makes sense.

2012 Origin - 88 points

2013 Port Wood finish - 89 points (though I scored it 87 in my review)

2014 Amontillado cask finish - 86 points

2015 200th Anniversary - 91 points (though I scored it 90 in my review)

2016 Madeira cask finish - 84 points

2017 Quarter Cask, cask strength - 82 points

2018 Fino cask finish

2019 Triple Wood, cask strength - 89 points

Are the Càirdeai better than Laphroaig's standard range or are they just fun novelties? Yes. As novelties, they top Ardbeg's annual slog, partially because Càirdeas avoids the dopey marketing, partially because they're better thought out, and partially because they taste better. And, yeah, the Càirdeas experiments often result in better whiskies than Laphroaig usually offers. This streak may be ending or pausing this year, but that was yesterday's rant.

I tried the 2016 and 2018 side-by-side this weekend. You may find the 2016's results somewhere in yesterday's post. 😙 Here are my deep feelings about the 2018.

Distillery: Laphroaig

Owner: Beam Suntory
Region: Islay
Age: ???, though probably less than 10 years
Maturation: bourbon casks first, then a fino-seasoned-hogshead finish

Batch: 2018
Alcohol by Volume: 51.8%

Chill-filtration? No
Caramel colored? Probably

(from a bottle split)

NEAT

The deeply earthy nose is anchored by lovely nutty notes — think almond extract, walnuts and black walnuts — followed by layers of charred fennel-laden sausage, dried apricots, moss and mango. The flamboyance-free palate leads with umami and nuts (mostly roasted almonds but also a hint of those black walnuts). Bits of roots, dried leaves and fresh oregano in the background. Leafy, earthy peat makes up much of the finish, along with smaller savory, salt, limes and plastic notes.

DILUTED TO ~48%abv, or ½ tsp of water per 30mL whisky

The nose holds almond extract, dried apricots, salty peat and soot. Though mostly herbal and mineral, the palate gains dimension with umami, lime juice and salty peat. The finish matches the palate, then adds Cracker Jack.

WORDS WORDS WORDS

The great fino casks help deliver one of the best Càirdeas noses yet. Meanwhile, the whisky has possibly the most reserved palate of the above-mentioned eight bottlings. A bit of water stirs it up a little, though it's nice to have a peated whisky that doesn't scream in one's face. On the whole it's much better than I'd expected, something I'd considering buying a whole bottle of and in the running for the second best Càirdeas I've had. Probably the antithesis of the 2019 and 2020 Càirdeai.

Availability - Still around, here and there
Pricing - $75-$175
Rating - 89