...where distraction is the main attraction.

Monday, September 9, 2024

THE Teaninich Cluster

Teaninich had been a vaguely familiar distillery name to me, but I took little interest in the whisky until 2013 when Diageo announced they were investing £50M in a facility upgrade. Clynelish, Caol Ila, Linkwood, and the rest of the known blend gems, I'd understand, but Teaninich? WTF is a Teaninich?

The "T" has a bit of a "ch-" sound to it, and there's an "-ick" at the end. The name is Gaelic of "The House on the Hill". The Munro brothers, a pair of military fellas, oversaw the distillery for its first 33 years (1817-1850) until they leased it to future crook Robert Pattison. Thankfully that lasted less than two decades. Distillers Company Limited (proto-Diageo) bought the distillery in 1933 and have never let it go since. It is The Big D's third largest malt distillery behind the Roseisle and Glen Ord horses, having quadrupled its annual capacity since MacLean's 2012 edition of Whiskypedia.

Until 1984, there was actually an "A" and "B" distillery on site, with the latter getting shuttered due to the big industry downturn. The "A" side was also shutdown for six years (1985-1991) before starting back up again.

1970 called, it wants its architecture back.
(pic source)

Teaninich uses unpeated malt from Glen Ord Maltings, upon which it uses a hammer mill and mash filter (the first Scotch malt distillery to do so), and gives the juice (plus pressed yeast) 78 hours to ferment. Once casks are filled with the distillery's spirit, they're carted further inland to Diageo's warehouses.

A lot of Teaninich samples are hiding in my stash, in fact, I'm not sure how many. This occurred because I tried a bunch of the distillery's single malts and very much enjoyed them. It has been one year since I did a full-blown scotch cluster, so now it's time for me to bring forth all the samples for what will be my largest cluster in nearly three years.

While I'm not sure if anyone else has ever said, "I am thrilled to drink a lot of Teaninichs," I would be proud to be the first. I am thrilled to drink a lot of Teaninichs.

THE TEANININININICHS:

1. ???
2. ???
3. ???
4. ???
5. ???
6. ???
7. ???
8. ???
9. ???
10. ???
11. ???
12. ???
13. ???
14. ???
15. ???
16. ???
17. ???

Friday, September 6, 2024

Birthday Booze: Miltonduff 26 year old 1990 AD Rattray

After I paid for my part of a bottle split of this 26 year old Miltonduff, the honorable bottle owner reached out to me saying that he'd opened the bottle and tried the whisky, finding it to be "Just straight SOAP", and offered me a replacement pour of something else. As much as I appreciated the replacement whisky, I also requested a sample of The Soap anyway. I received it and (two years later) drank it along with Wednesday's '80s Bowmore to determine which of the two was the bubbliest, saponific single malt. Yes, I do these things to myself.


Distillery: Miltonduff
Ownership during distillation: Allied Lyons
Current Owner: Pernod Ricard
Region: Speyside (Moray)
Independent Bottler: A.D. Rattray
Age: 29 years (16 Sept 1990 - 23 February 2007)
Maturation: bourbon barrel
Alcohol by Volume: 49.1%
(from a bottle split)

NOTES

The nose has so much vanilla, caramel, pound cake, and whipped cream that it reminds me more of a Canadian blend than single malt scotch. It takes at least 45 minutes before other notes, like orange peel, lemon juice, apricot jam, and baby powder, to appear.

The palate starts off like a mouthful of Werther's Originals. Beneath that caramel candy are tangy lemons, jasmine, and tree bark, with a little bit of soap in the background. With time, the soap note expands but never breaches the background, because the citrus character also grows, and silky sticky toffee appears.

Sweet caramel, lemons, sea salt, and that hint o' soap finish things off.

WORDS WORDS WORDS

I've sworn off AD Rattray on two previous blog occasions due to my experiences with too many of their wonky casks. Third time's the charm?

The good news: This is less soapy than Wednesday's Bowmore. The nose isn't bad, and it improves with time.

The bad news: Why does a 26-year-old scotch smell like an 8-year-old Canadian blend? Soap + tree bark on the palate? Not great, Bob. Soooooooo much caramel everywhere.

Though this whisky isn't broken, there was something unusual going on with the cask and not in a fun way. Again. So, yes, third time's the charm. No more AD Rattray casks for me.

Availability - Sold out
Pricing - ???
Rating - 75

Wednesday, September 4, 2024

Birthday Booze: Peat's Beast 34 year old 1985 (Bowmore)

Yes, I am including one '80s Bowmore among my Birthday Booze, because what the hell. Though I am a bit startled by the new generation of whisky fans who unironically find perfumed soap and artificial violet notes as features, not bugs, of the whisky production process. (Yes, and Troll 2 is peak cinema.) Or are the newest moneyed whisky drinkers unable to discern when old and/or expensive whiskies are crapola?

I don't know. But indie bottler Fox Fitzgerald thought it wise to finish a half dozen or more '80s Bowmore casks in Cognac-seasoned vessels. Maybe this is just crazy enough to work. At some point in the past, I thought it was a good idea to engage in a bottle split of this whisky. For science.

Distillery: Bowmore
Owner: Beam Suntory
Region: Islay
Independent Bottler: Fox Fitzgerald
Range: Peat's Beast
Age: 34 years old (1985 - 2020)
Maturation: ?????, then Cognac casks
Outturn: 1800 bottles
Alcohol by Volume: 47.1%
(from a bottle split)

NOTES

The nose is unique and......kinda great. First, wrap flower kiss candy in maple candy, then smoke it. Then do the same with seaweed-wrapped sour apple candy. And how about a slice of cinnamon cake next to a blob of pine sap and a few band-aids, in a fish market.

On the other hand, the palate. Burnt hay, burnt moss, burnt Crème de Violette, burnt floral soap. Now I'm sipping shampoo with a flower kiss candy chaser. Some curiously clean peat smoke floats up from the background.

Lemons, black pepper, Crème de Violette, shampoo, and burnt hay finishes it off.

WORDS WORDS WORDS

Yes, we all have our kinks. You like to pay $400+ to drink violet shampoo. I like Jess Franco films. I also love this whisky's nose, fashioned by the insane idea of bringing cognac into the mix, and it keeps me from failing the entire thing. This is it for my '80s Bowmore samples, but it's not the only possibly-soapy sample in the stash. For my next review...

Availability - 
Maybe the primary market, probably the secondary

Pricing - ???
Rating - 71

Tuesday, September 3, 2024

Birthday Booze: Speyburn 37 year old 1975 Clan Cask 3413

The Birthday Booze posts are going to go on for a while because that's the mood I'm in.

In 2012, Speyburn Distillery bottled a single cask for their official fan club, and it wasn't something like a 7 year old Virgin Oak creature, but rather a 37 year old PX cask! As far as I can tell, they never did such a thing again. Luckily for me my good friends, the Doctors Springbank, purchased a bottle back then. I didn't meet the Docs for another six or seven years, but apparently it was just in time for them to share a pour with me. Thank you, folks!

pic source
Distillery: Speyburn
Ownership: Inver House (via Thai Beverages plc via International Beverage Holdings Ltd.)
Region: Speyside (Rothes)
Age: 37 years old (1975 - 2012)
Maturation: Pedro Ximenez cask
Cask #: 3413
Exclusive to: Clan Speyburn
Alcohol by Volume: 55.4%
Chillfiltered? No
e150a? No
(courtesy of Doctors Springbank)

NEAT

The nose begins with a mix of dark chocolate, dried blueberries, dried currants, and brine. After ~40 minutes, Fig Newtons join in, as does a subtle farmy note. After an hour, there's cinnamon sprinkled on baked peaches and walnuts. A nice musty dunnage note hits the palate first, followed by limes, wet stones, and tannins. Nutmeg and an earthy molasses fill the background. Lime pith and pulp, honeydew, nutmeg, and baking chocolate finish it off.

DILUTED to 50%abv, or ⅔ tsp of water per 30mL whisky

Due to the whisky's age, I'm being cautious with the dilution. Date rolls and old Calvados float up to meet the nose, followed by raw almonds, maple syrup, and a hint of anise. The palate gets mustier, tarter, sweeter, and figgier. The sweetness merges well with oak spice and bitter citrus in the finish.

WORDS WORDS WORDS

I don't know how many, if any, such gems remain in Speyburn's Rothes warehouses. In fact this may have been their oldest official release, with a 1973 single cask being the only one from an earlier vintage. The whisky feels its age, but in the best way, with a mustiness and earthiness which meld perfectly with figs and dates, so you know it won me over. The whisky carries a steep price on the secondary market, perhaps the highest of any Speyburns I've seen, so you should surreptitiously seek out Clan Speyburn members and drink their whisky.

Availability - Secondary market
Pricing - ????
Rating - 90

Friday, August 30, 2024

Birthday Booze: Coleburn 17 year old 1978 Cadenhead Authentic Collection

My first Coleburn review! In fact, before today I'd only referenced the distillery once (11 years ago) in the history of this blog. This is the second Coleburn I've ever tried, the first being an AD Rattray cask that I don't remember.

Coleburn's production lasted 86 years, starting in 1899, mostly under the ownership of DCL→UD→Diageo, with DCL officially dropping the axe in 1985 as a reaction to a bumpy era of scotch sales. It had been one of the main malts in the Usher's blend, as well as making appearances in Johnnie Walker products, until it was deemed superfluous. The distillery still stands in the town of Longmorn, and bottler Murray McDavid currently uses its warehouses for their casks.

Today's Coleburn single malt is one of three '78s that Cadenhead bottled during their eh-fuck-the-cask green bottle era. A lot of their bottles from this range in the 1990s were raw rocket fuel with zany ABVs, which is a mixed blessing. The drinker gets a chance to try some nude spirit, but also some of the tired oak vessels were crap, resulting less than pleasurable experiences. I don't foresee an opportunity to review a second Coleburn, ever, so I'm just going to enjoy this experience.

actual bottle shot
Distillery: Coleburn
Cradle to Grave: 1899-1985
Executioner: Distillers Company Limited
Region: Speyside (Moray)
Bottler: Cadenhead
Range: Authentic Collection





Age: 17 years (March 1978 - December 1995)
Maturation: "Oak cask"
Alcohol by Volume: 59.9%
(from a bottle split)

NEAT

The nose begins very perfumy, but with patience and time one finds anise, burnt nuts, hay, and strawberry jam. It improves with time as it picks up clover honey, lemon peel, and shortbread biscuits. An OBE funk, reminiscent of '50s & '60s blends, lingers in the background throughout. It's surprisingly drinkable at full strength, never scorching the palate. No perfume. Yes unripened stone fruits and lemon pith. It slowly evolves into tart apricots and limoncello with a dash of cayenne pepper. Its intense finish is full of lemons and apricots, with a sprinkle of sea salt.

DILUTED to ~50%abv, or 1¼ tsp of water per 30mL whisky

Went easy with water here. The perfume note remains in the nose, but actual maltiness appears, along with wet stones, brown sugar, orange oil, and those shortbread biscuits. The palate is pepperier, sweeter, and with a touch of the OBE. A mix of tinned yellow peaches and fresh white peaches highlight the background. It finishes peppery and sweet with a hint of those peaches.

WORDS WORDS WORDS

This is one of the better green-glass-era Cadenhead whiskies that I've tried, accomplishing the bottler's intentions, if they had any. It's VERY spirit forward, but never raw. I could do without the perfume, but I cannot do without the fruit! So I like the palate better than the nose, in fact the palate is excellent. At 40%-46%abv the whisky might start to resemble many of its neighbors, not a bad thing for '70s Speysides and their fans, but thusly viewed as redundant to the planet's largest scotch blender. I have a several more samples from this green glass series, and I hope they're as good this one. Maybe one for the next birthday?

Availability - Maybe secondary? Are there Coleburn bottles on that market?
Pricing - ???
Rating - 88

Wednesday, August 28, 2024

Birthday Booze: WhiskySponge Blended Scotch 46 year old 1969

Yep. It happened. I completed my 46th solar year. 46 sounds a lot older than 45, but I feel a bit creaky and cranky, so that tracks. Since the last birthday, I went to Paris, bought a house, my daughters continue to thrive, and my dating/seeing/relationshipish life continues to crash spectacularly. This house has found its way into my heart......because it's a really really small house! LOL, amirite? No, actually it's too big for a single fella, even when my daughters stay over. But it's the most stable thing in my life, partially because it's not a living breathing creature with a complex emotional past, and partially because I live here.

My daughters stayed with me for this past birthday weekend, so I was on my best behavior, thus not much alcohol was consumed. But the weekend is over, and it's time for Birthday Booze! Drinking on a work night!

First up is a 46 year old whisky bottled by a certain Sponge. It's the only blended scotch Angus & Co. will bottle under the WhiskySponge moniker, so they swung for the fences. Filled in 1969, this single cask was bottled in 2015, but was never labelled or distributed, so Spongie rebottled it around this past new year, using this excellent label:


Bottler: 
Decadent Drinks
Range: WhiskySponge
Type: Blended Scotch
Distilleries: ???????
Age: 46 years (1969 - 2015)
Maturation: ???????
Outturn: 208 bottles
Alcohol by Volume: 46.6%
(from a bottle split)

NOTES

Nectarines, mango, toasted coconut, and apricot jam greet are the first to greet the nose. Burlap, dunnage, and ocean brine float through the midground. French vanilla ice cream and orange oil await in the background. The apricot note expands with time.

The palate is......wild. Strong spices, like coriander, cumin, and green peppercorn arrive first. But there's also some baked peaches, coconut milk, and tapioca mixed in. Vegemite, toasty black tea, and unlit cigar wrappers slowly take over.

The coconut milk and tapioca mix sticks around through the finish, where they're joined by big tannins roaring in with a bitter leafiness, cigars, menthol, and a tangy peppery burn.

WORDS WORDS WORDS

Apparently I never received the "this is a 90-point whisky" memo. The blend's nose is sublime, period. The palate SHOUTS, but not necessarily coherently. It's a hoot, because old casks can have a sense of humor, but the (possible) high grain content got steamrolled after 46 years, thus quirky oak is 90% of what remains. It's an oak beast, which shouldn't surprise anyone when considering its age. Though I much prefer Sponge's 30 year old blended malt, I could (and did) nose this 46 year old blend for hours.

Availability - Sold out
Pricing - ???
Rating - 87

Tuesday, August 20, 2024

High West A Midwinter Night's Dram in 3 Scenes

It's been long time since I've scrapped a week's worth of posts and then started over, but now here I am. Originally, this single post was going to be three separate posts with some bad Shakespeare jokes, but once I sat down to do this Triple Taste Off, I started noticing a difference in the underlying ryes. After doing some quick googling, I realized the rye recipes had changed, and I was reminded of my "Constellation Brands blows up High West Rendezvous Rye" post from 2019.

For those of you who have forgotten the High West tale, here's a recap. In 2016 Constellation Brands bought High West Distillery, a distillery who had to that point succeeded due to its blending of sourced whiskey rather than actual distillation, for $160 million. Between 2017 and 2018, High West ran out of its old sourced rye from Barton distillery, and swapped out the well-aged portion of their rye blends from that distillery for the very young rye from their own distillery, creating a sudden shift in the character of all their ryes.

My favorite post from the post-tasting snooping, Bourbon Culture's review of MWND Acts 5 through 10, dished out the above information, and more.

As Culture notes, the Midwinter Night's Dram Act 5 (aka 2017) batch recipe was:
"Website Description: A blend of older rye whiskeys ranging from 5 to 19 years 
95% rye, 5% barley malt from MGP 
53% rye, 37% corn, 10% barley malt from Barton Distillery 
80% rye, 10% corn, 10% barley malt from Barton Distillery"

The transition began with the Act 6 scenes/batches (from 2018):

"Website Description: A blend of older Straight Rye whiskeys ranging in age from 5 to 19 years 

95% rye, 5% barley malt from MGP 

80% rye, 20% malted rye from High West Distillery 

53% rye, 37% corn, 10% barley malt from Barton Distillery

80% rye, 10% corn, 10% barley malt from Barton Distillery"

And in 2019, the shift was complete with Act 7:

"Website Description: A blend of Straight Rye Whiskies including 95% rye, 5% barley malt from MGP and 80% rye, 20% malted rye from HWD. 

Website Description for 2019 Rendezvous Rye says that it contains 4 to 7 year old rye whiskey that is a mix of sourced and in-house distilled ryes."

As you weathered whisk(e)y fanatics can already guess, the price of the much younger rye did not go down, but rather increased. And, as Culture covers in another post, Constellation has aggressively increased the MWND outturn while raising the bottling's price.

I have no interest in tracking down a bottle of any of these Acts, but I have enjoyed the batches I've sipped (two from Act 2, and one from Act 6). So I was excited about this Midwinter taste-off in midsummer. Here are the results from the Taste Off that inspired my Google searches:


A Park City Trio


High West
A Midwinter Night's Dram
Act 5, Scene 8 (2017)
49.3%abv
High West
A Midwinter Night's Dram
Act 7, Scene 1 (2019)
49.3%abv
High West
A Midwinter Night's Dram
Act 8, Scene 2 (2020)
49.3%abv
Everything in the nose revolves around a middle ground between sticky sugary fortified wine and bold rye: grape jam, blueberry syrup, rye bread, fennel seed, black licorice, marzipan, and brine.The nose is very winey (Moscatel!). Roses, cherry syrup, and grape lollipops keep the fennel seed in the background.Raw rye in the nose, and it isn't MGP sauce. At least it's less winey. Mothballs, tar, and black licorice up front, with marzipan, grape juice, and ethanol in the back.
It's a good thing that there's a lot of high-rye rye as it keeps the port casks' sweetness from taking over the palate. Fennel seeds and honey on one level, strawberry candy and grape candy down below.There's a strong orange note in the sweet palate. Then sawdust and ginger. Tart apples and dash of salt. Not much in the way of that fennel seed note.Again the wine is mellow in the palate. It's very peppery and spicy, full of loud oak and youthful rye. Tangy orange marmalade soaks into the toasted oak. As with 7:1, the sweetness isn't necessarily from the port.
It finishes with rye and sugar. Fennel seeds, lemon candy, and grape candy.Very sweet on this finish. Orange candy, lemon candy, ginger candy, tart apples, and tannins.The finish is so very, very sweet. Fennel seed and tangy citrus try to break through.
Final thoughts:
The port casks start to tip the scales in the finish, and it's quite sweet overall, but never too much for my grumpy palate. In fact, it's the least sweet of the three. The ABV works perfectly on this one.
Final thoughts:
This is a very different whiskey, and I don't think the port casks are driving all the sweetness. It's as if the spirit itself has been dosed with refined sugar. The orange note is the only thing keeping this from dipping into the 70s.
Final thoughts:
I like this more brutal take on The Dram, until the finish strikes. The spirit's volume is cranked up, while the port is toned down, something I do support. But this is soooooo sugary. I'm struggling to find any MGP in here.
Rating: 84Rating: 80Rating: 82

WORDS WORDS WORDS

By the end of this lineup, I had my phone out, trying to discern what's going on with the changing spirit. As noted in the intro, Act 5 was the last one with the original recipe, without High West's spirit. Act 7, was the first act with no old Barton rye ingredients, and theoretically Act 8 was the same. My Kravy senses tell me that Act 8 had the most High West rye in it. Though 8 feels like the youngest of the three, I know my way around young MGP rye better than any other American spirit, and there's not much to be found in 8:2.

Five years ago, I'd already noticed how much sweeter Act 6 was than Act 2, and that was the Act that introduced the High West spirit to the recipe. The trend appears to have increased in Act 7 and 8, which leaves me uninterested in Acts 9, 10, and 11.

In fact, you won't find me supporting High West in general, now that David Perkins is no longer at the till, and yet another corporation is charging more for less. The market offers plenty of options for me to obtain a bottle of Indiana's rye if needed. You may want to explore those as well.