Lots of blog milestones! Thank you!

It's going to be a quiet whisky week here at Diving for Pearls.  Next week, there will be some goodies, I promise you that.

According to Google Analytics, Diving for Pearls surpassed 100,000 views last week (Blogger has the count at 270K, but they seem to be counting all of the spambots).  Last week, I also passed the 600-post count.  After next week, I'll have reviewed my 300th whisk(e)y.

Thank you to all of my readers, whether you found this site via an image search for Anna Benson or wound up here looking for scuba gear.  Diving for Pearls wasn't originally structured around whisky reviews, but it has fascinated me how many people have stopped by to read my booze posts.  Sitting down with my whisky journal and a Glencairn of something new has become a lovely addition to my life.  My nosing and tasting process is slow, a little meditative, and probably sort of weird to anyone who is not me.  That process has improved over time, especially as I've been trying similar whiskies together.  That approach then helps me schedule my posts, giving each week its own theme.

My palate preferences have shifted over the years and I will try to warn you when they do.  Otherwise, I hope there has been some level of consistency in my reviews.  I do know that I used to give out much higher grades than I do now.  It's not that I like whisky less.  When one has tried 50 whiskies, one's frame of reference (or whisky sensory cache size) is much different than when one has tried 500 whiskies.  As I look at my whisky review list, I see a few towards the top that I want to retaste to see if they still hold up.

Perhaps you've noticed that I also give out fewer low scoring reviews -- for instance, I've been averaging two sub-80 point reviews per month in 2014, which is half the pace it was in the 2-1/3 years before.  That's not because I suddenly love everything I drink.  Instead, it's due to selection bias.  After doing a few "Cheap Blend Weeks" in the past, I found myself really not looking forward to drinking anything afterwards, such was the result of drinking one uninspiring whisky after the next.  Instead, I am and will be sprinkling oddities (and cheapies) throughout the weeks.  I'm both looking forward to and dreading the first sub-50 point whisky review.

I'm also looking forward to posting my first 97 point review.  I've certainly tried a few that could meet that grade, but never in a controlled review setting.  Will it be this year?  I don't know.  But in my whisky heart, I know that both the best whisky and worst whisky I'll ever try have yet to meet my lips.

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"The Standings" was something I used to post every other weekend for a few months back in 2012.  It was pretty silly and oddly time consuming.  Also it was pointless and narcissistic.

So here are The Standings.

The All Time Top 25 Most-Viewed Posts:

1. Chivas Regal 12 versus Johnnie Walker Black Label - A pair of hard to find indie blends.
2. Glenlivet 12 versus Glenfiddich 12
3. Dewars White Label versus Johnnie Walker Red Label - Wherein a commenter calls me a snob and I call him a troll, one of this blog's finest moments.
4. Famous Grouse Blended Whisky
5. Glenfiddich 12 year old
6. Macallan 18 year old - I call a moderately okay whisky moderately okay and complain about its price.  And then its price goes up 30%.  Basically, it's every post I've done.
7. Black & White Blended Whisky - This is the fourth most popular post since 2014 began.  Really, people?
8. Lauder's Blended Whisky - Um...... Must have been all the nude photos.
9. Las Vegas, Days 4 & 5 - Fremont Street and Departure - Probably a lot of viewers stealing photos that I also stole.
10. J&B Blended Whisky - People like blends
11. Glenlivet 15 year old French Oak - This used to be the most popular review on this blog.  Now no one reads it, which makes me hope that people have stopped drinking the whisky too.
12. Johnnie Walker Black Label - The first, briefest, and least lucid of my Black Label posts
13. Macallan 17 year old Fine Oak - This is the bottling from four years ago, when it was better and cheaper.
14 (tie!). Jameson Select Reserve versus Jameson Select Reserve - I'm very happy that people are reading this post because the Black Barrel hype was very aggressive, meanwhile the whiskey is the worst Jameson product by a considerable measure.  My worst bottle purchase in the last three years.
14 (tie!). Willett 5 year old Single Barrel Rye - My first rye post. I later re-reviewed the whiskey and found the whiskey less good.
16. Maker's Mark versus Four Roses Single Barrel - A blind taste off.
17. Isle of Skye 8 year old versus Johnnie Walker Black Label
18. Talisker 18 year old - I really enjoyed writing this post, almost as much as I enjoyed the whisky. I say that free of sarcasm.
19. Diageo, Whisky Killer, Part 2 - The death of Green and Gold Labels - This was the moment when I decided to laxative-up and sh*t all over Diageo.
20. Ardbeg Uigeadail versus Ardbeg Uigeadail - L6 versus L13
21. Glenfiddich 18 year old
22. Power's Gold Label Blended Whiskey - Good ol' Power's.
23. Getting rid of baseball cards
24. GlenDronach 18 year old - Not sure why folks viewed this one more than its brethren
25 (tie!). Glenmorangie Original
25 (tie!). Macallan 12 year old

All of the above, except the Uigeadail post, are more than a year old.  The older the post the more opportunity for views.  Here are the top ten posts one-year-old or younger:

1. Ardbeg Uigeadail versus Ardbeg Uigeadail
2. Needed: Whisky Consumer Advocacy
3. Laphroaig Cask Strength Batch 005
4. Springbank 12 year old Calvados Wood
5. Finlaggan Old Reserve
6. Macallan 17 year old Fine Oak versus Macallan 17 year old Fine Oak
7. Lagavulin 16 year old
8. Willett Family Estate Single Barrel Rye 6 years old, Barrel #57
9. A Poacher Enters the Dusty Hunt
10. Whisky Fail: The Blind Taste Test

The Bottom 5 All Time Least Viewed Whisky Reviews:
5. Willett Family Estate Single Barrel Rye 4 years old, Barrel #85
4. Jefferson 10 year old Straight Rye (Hi Time Select)
3. Auchentoshan Three Wood

2. Kilkerran Work in Progress 4 (2012)

1. Taliskravaganza! Day 5: Talisker 18 year old 1986 Macleod's Vintage
Four of these are relatively recent reviews, but the Auchie 3 Wood was posted almost 2 1/2 years ago.  But that's okay, the whisky is crummy and my review is worse.

The Top 3 Posts Beloved By Spambots For Reasons Only They Understand:
The Flailing Writer Goes Gardening, Part IV
The Single Malt Report returns with a Kilchoman Taste Off!!!
K&L Single Cask Whisky tasting with the LA Scotch Club (Part 1)

Some more random facts:
My Johnnie Walker posts are responsible for 10% of my pageviews.
Blend reviews in general picked up 18% of my pageviews.
The big four malts (Glenfiddich, Glenlivet, Macallan, Glenmorangie) counted for 14% of the pageviews.
21% of views are in languages other than English.
German, French, Dutch, Spanish, and Polish are the top five non-English languages.

The U.S. of A. makes up 57% of my views.  But here are the next ten countries in order of views:
Canada
United Kingdom
Germany
Australia
India
Netherlands
France
Sweden
Switzerland
Poland

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I hope that this was enough argle-bargle and/or fooferaw to distract you from the fact that I will not have a whisky review posted this week.  That's the sort of thanks you get for being a loyal reader of this blog.  But don't worry.  I'm pretty sure there's something fun up ahead...

My Final Barrel Experiment, Part IV: Lessons learned

(Monday, Part 1, link)
(Tuesday, Part 2, link)
(Wednesday, Part 3, link)

Part 4 of 4

No matter how they resulted, all of my barrel experiments were fun.  There was a lot of joy in the anticipation each time, marking the calendar, weighing, nosing, drinking, guessing.  And I learned a number of things, the hard way:

• A spirit does not taste the same fresh out of the barrel as it does after resting in a bottle for a week (or more) afterwards.  That has been true for every spirit I aged in my barrel.  Knowing this would make me a little concerned if I was selecting single casks for paying customers.
• The Rye Storm was palatable when first bottled, but grew increasingly harsh and astringent in the matter of a couple of weeks. 
• The Eagle Morning continues to change; the oak and rye notes have grown much stronger over time.
• The Ron Matusalem rum that I'd used to season the barrel seemed to have changed little when I poured it back into the bottle, but less than a month later it was a sawdust-riddled sulphuric mess.  I've dumped a half bottle down the sink.
• The whisky blend's palate went from being so-so to almost undrinkable in a week.
• By suffocating the barrel and cutting off oxidation, maturation is severely altered. There's actual chemistry involved in aging spirits.  A shortcut is a guess and probably a bad idea.
• One of the major whisky companies really should do a rye-finished single malt.  But...
• Rye-finished single malts need very little time in the rye barrel because rye is STRONG stuff.  I wonder if rye-finishes have been tried and wound up unsuccessful.  Still...a brief finish in a Rittenhouse barrel shouldn't be too abusive.
• Malted rye spirit is probably not the best thing to age if you're new to at-home spirit maturation.  Its flavors are much different than the unmalted rye most of us are used to.  I would recommend aging a regular rye spirit (and with some corn in the mash bill) before trying something more experimental.
• My home is probably too warm to gracefully mature spirits.
• Milliliters are not the same as grams, no matter what the kitchen scale says.  Density matters.
• If you're doing spirit infusions, cinnamon sticks and orange peel are elements that require very little time in the liquor. I recommend tasting the infusion after four days, and then testing again each succeeding day.
• Also, per Alex in yesterday's comments, the cinnamon sticks we Americans see in stores tend to be cassia bark, rather than true Ceylon cinnamon. Cassia tends to be hotter and spicier, while ceylon cinnamon tends to be subtler, fruitier, and pricier!
• Infusions are an entertaining way to salvage crummy whisk(e)y.

These exercises have often been humbling, as I went into each with a just enough naïveté to mess with the results.  But even if I discount my inexperience, this little barrel was a mystery.  I never knew the char level nor the quality of the cooperage.  Now, if a business offered mini barrels with charring and oak options, I'd recommend it to those who want to do some spirt maturation at home.  But I don't think anyone is offering those options at the moment.  So it's difficult for me to wholeheartedly recommend buying a mini-barrel.

I don't foresee me getting a new barrel any time soon, either.  A 2-liter mystery barrel can cost $80-$100.  My three experiments cost $350-$400, not including the barrel (which had been wonderfully gifted to me).  The important result of those expenditures wasn't the weird brown fluids that emerged at the finish line.  What I really received was many months of anticipation, lots of blog content, and an education on how not to mature spirits.  That's been wonderful, but my next set of quirky ideas needs to be cheaper than $500.

Right now I'm much more interested in working on infusions and perfecting brandied fruits.  And I'm even more interested in drinking well made spirits fashioned by those who know what they're doing.  Again, my adventures aren't over.  They're just going to be a little different going forward.

My Final Barrel Experiment, Part III: The Firebird and The Heron

(Monday, Part 1, link)
(Tuesday, Part 2, link)

Part 3 of 4

Almost two liters of ruined Scotch whisky sat in bottles, awaiting demise.  I awoke one more morning during the week following my failure, still disappointed that my experiment had added up to a lot of bitter brown fluid.  Driving out to the gym, I decided I'd just dump the whisky down the kitchen sink when I got home.  While cranking through my hour of cardio at the gym, my mind drifted (as it often does) to things anti-exercise.  I was thinking of buying a super cheap bourbon and infusing it with a split vanilla bean for one week to try to create a vanilla-bomb dessert bourbon.

But then I realized, why buy a bourbon?  I had a load of unpleasant whisky at hand.  We already had vanilla beans here.  Then I remembered the Armangnac cherries I'd made (a whole other story) last year.  Those were a success.  In the 'gnac and sugar reduction, I had used a cinnamon stick and some whole cloves.  Then I started thinking about fruit......I seem to be finding lots of citrus peel notes in the whiskies I've been reviewing.  So I could throw in some orange peel scrapings too in order to bring that part out.

But those were a lot of ingredients to infuse, possibly resulting in a jumble of flavors.  So I could split the experiment up.  If I set aside 200mL of the whisky fail for historical purposes, I would be left with two 750mL bottles of a whisky base.  I had two never-used clean 375mL bottles, so I could take one of the 750s and split it in two in order to see if this would even work.  One infusion would be a simple half vanilla bean (scored lengthwise) and a whole cinnamon stick.  The other infusion would be the busy one, a half vanilla bean (scored lengthwise), a whole cinnamon stick, four whole cloves, and a little bit of orange peel.

The infusions started that day:

I read some online suggestions about infusion times, but most folks were infusing vodka and gin.  My whisky was much less neutral and I anticipated that it might need a little more of a boost.  So I gave the bottles one week.

And the results were intense.

Vanilla Bean and Cinnamon Stick infusion
Nose -- Cinnamon! Fresh zucchini bread. Vanilla cookies.
Palate -- Woo. Spicy. Not much malt, maybe some dark rum. Chocolate. Lots of candied ginger. Cinnamon overwhelms the vanilla. Crazy spice heat, yummy  <-- technical terminology

Vanilla Bean, Cinnamon Stick, Whole Cloves, and Orange Peel infusion
Nose -- Orange then cloves then cinnamon then vanilla. Bold and perfumy. Juicy Fruit gum.
Palate -- Less spice, more fruit that the other one.  Mostly orange and cinnamon.  Cloves hit in the finish.  Vanilla drifts around the edges.

That color you see in the jars there, that's not a lighting issue.  The infusions were dark red.  And their flavors were just as vivid.  And they were good.  Probably a bit strong.  If I could reduce the character, I wouldn't do so by one full step, instead maybe a half step.  I already knew what to do: Refill infusions.

I took the second 750mL bottle of whisky base and split it between the two bottles with the same used infusion elements.  This time, I gave the two "refill" infusions five days rather than seven.

Vanilla Bean and Cinnamon Stick infusion, part 2
Nose -- Cinnamon is still in first, but the vanilla is more present now than before. More rum and whisky notes. Curiously, some lime peel too.
Palate -- More whisky. And better whisky. Creamy texture. Cinnamon remains the strongest link. Less ginger, but now some mint. There's still a touch of bitterness from the oak.

Vanilla Bean, Cinnamon Stick, Whole Cloves, and Orange Peel infusion, part 2
Nose -- Same order as before: Orange-Cinnamon-Clove-Vanilla. Orange remains very strong. The cloves and cinnamon seem to have fused into a single note. Something about this feels more like rum than whisky.
Palate -- Mostly orange and cinnamon. A little whisky in the mix. That hint of bitterness in the finish, as with the other one. But it's still pleasant overall. Less aromatic in the mouth than in the nose. Hints of malt make it more like whisky than rum.

Yep, still a little bit of whisky in there, yet also loads of infusion character.

Having mixed a little of the opposing infusions together, I realized that sort of blending added nothing to either.  They would stand on their own.  So, I combined like with like in the 750mL bottles.

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courtesy of Kristen

The Vanilla Bean & Cinnamon Stick infused blended whisky is named The Firebird, after the mythical bird of rebirth which goes by many names in different European cultures and is also referenced (as "Chol") in the Book of Genesis and the Book of Job.  There is a well-known cinnamon-flavored-whiskey in the market at the moment with a name similar to The Firebird.  Let's just say that my version is a more graceful and layered, yet no less fully flavored, rendition of that popular flavored-whiskey's approach.

How about some official tasting notes, after two weeks in the bottle:
Color -- Cherry red
Nose -- Not just cinnamon (though there's plenty of that), but loads of carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.  Hints of vanilla and honeyed Speyside-style whisky.
Palate -- Spicy but never too sweet.  A little bit of green herbs and grass clippings.  Cinnamon and pepper largely keep the oak at bay.
Finish -- A soft bitterness mingles with cinnamon and vanilla.

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courtesy of Kristen

The Vanilla Bean & Cinnamon Stick & Whole Clove & Orange Peel infused blended whisky is named The Heron, after Bennu the Egyptian deity associated with rebirth.  The Heron is unmistakably related to The Firebird, but keeps busy with more spice box elements and a burst of orange oil.

Official tasting notes:
Color -- Crimson mahogany
Nose -- Intense orange peel meets a clove-cinnamon fusion. Maybe a sprinkle of ground nutmeg. Juicy Fruit gum. And maybe maybe a hint of peat smoke.
Palate -- Starts big on the orange peel, shifts to vanilla, then explodes with clove, as cinnamon gumdrops linger behind.  It gives the impression that its going to be sugary but never gets too candied.  A moment of oak is carried away by the cinnamon.
Finish -- A cinnamon stick floating in a floral tea.

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THANK YOU to my beautiful wife, Kristen, for creating those two labels.  They're better than my whisky infusions!  As a result, she has been promoted to Chief Operating Officer of D4P Distillers.

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My infusions could be utilized as whiskies for people who are afraid of whisky; those folks who run to heavily-flavored artificially-sweetened watered-down versions of sorta-whisky so they can do some shots.  But The Firebird and The Heron should be sipped (even though they bring with them a higher ABV) and I think they would be more appealing to whisky fans than most flavored-whiskies on the market.  My infusions will still freshen your breath and get you tipsy if that's what you want, but there's much more to them to appreciate.

The Firebird and The Heron are far from what was planned.  But as the plans crumbled, I embraced improvisation and was rewarded with madness in a bottle.  Two bottles.

Tomorrow, I'll finish this series with a few more pics and some lessons learned.

My Final Barrel Experiment, Part II: The Maturation, The Numbers, The Result

(Monday, Part 1, link)

Part 2 of 4

I had the best greedy intentions.  By wrapping the barrel tightly, I wasn't gradually spilling my whisky into the air.  But I really didn't know how this would affect the actual maturation of the whisky inside.  Since there was less being lost, I hoped that would mean the aging process would be more gradual.  Small barrels, especially very small barrels, age whisky differently than large ones.  They can often result in a product that is somehow both much too young and much too oaky, a problem experienced by some American craft whiskey makers and even some Scotch producers who are trying to speed up the maturation process.  If I wrapped mine, then maybe things would go a little slower with less spirit-oak-oxygen interaction.

I really didn't know what would happen.

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On Day 0, I estimated the blend to be 47% malt, peating level around 6ppm, and with a 44.6% ABV.

FIRST CHECKPOINT - 4 weeks
Measurement only.  Success!  0.96% lost to the angels (0.0343%/day).  An 89.5% reduction in the rate of volume lost to evaporation when compared to The Eagle Morning.  90.2% reduction in loss compared to Rye Storm.

SECOND CHECKPOINT - 8 weeks
Measurement: 2.24% lost to the angels (0.0401%/day).  That's a 89.3% reduction of the rate lost compared to Eagle Morning, 87.7% compared to Rye Storm.  I was actually going to keep my whisky!  But...

It tasted exactly the same as it had 8 weeks earlier.  None of the blended elements had integrated.  They were all floating around as separate parts.  On the bright side, there was very little oak present.  Though I had originally estimated 8 weeks as being my bottling point, this biscuit had barely begun baking.

THIRD CHECKPOINT - 12 weeks
Measurement only.  2.99% of liquid lost (0.0356%/day).  When I had re-wrapped it after the second checkpoint I likely sealed it more thoroughly, as evaporation had slowed further in the four weeks since.

FOURTH CHECKPOINT - 16 weeks
Before unwrapping, I decided that this might need to be the cutoff point for maturation.  I had no idea how long was too long.  Then I cut off the wrapping and found the following:

The metal was being corroded and oxidized.  The whisky, unable to escape into the heavens, had been eating the barrel.  Yeah, it was time to empty it.

Measurement: 3.846% lost to the angels (back to 0.0343% per day).
In its final days, The Eagle Morning was losing 0.5% of its volume each day; Rye Storm was losing over 0.7% daily at its end.  Comparatively, this new blend was losing 0.028% per day during the last four weeks.  The angels drank The Rye Storm 25 times faster than this new blend.

Then, the tasting notes:
Color -- Medium gold
Nose -- Very nice and malty. A light dusting of cinnamon and peat smoke. Some gooey sugary stuff and talcum powder.
Palate -- Instantly astringent. Wood resins, green and bitter like chewing on a new branch.  A box of pencils: wood, lead, cardboard, yellow paint, and all.  Maybe a flat plastic shopping bag laying on the side of the road?  Difficult to find the whisky part.
Finish -- Sugar coated pencils. Very bitter.

So, statistically, this was a runaway success.

But it tasted poorly......which broke my whisky heart, because the blend actually smelled very good with the rum, oak, and whiskies pleasantly intermingling.  But whisky is for drinking and my whisky was not for drinking.

At some point in the maturation, without interaction with the air, the whisky dug deeper and deeper into the oak, past the charred surface, soaking up the bitter resinous plant material beneath, leeching the xylem and phloem.  And it couldn't breathe, so those compounds carried back into the barrel.

Something had been lost by wrapping up the barrel.  As mentioned above, at the 8-week point nothing had yet occurred in the palate and nose.  It smelled and tasted like all of the separate parts were still separate, as if it had just been sitting in a bottle for a couple days.  While it's true that char may have been largely exhausted by this point, I can't help but think that the angels' share exists for a reason.  They take but they also give.  Oxidation had been suffocated, maturation had been corrupted.

So now I was left with tainted goods.  Disappointed, I considered dumping it all down the sink.

But then an idea took root.  All was not lost.

Tomorrow, The Firebird and The Heron...

My Final Barrel Experiment, Part I: The Whisky, The Rum, The Plan

Part 1 of 4

The plan was complex in its simplicity: Create a high-malt peated rum-finished blended whisky.  Sounds fun, right?  It would be a big ol' batch of something fun to drink, at a lower expense than my previous experiments.

The first whisk(e)y thing that I had aged in my 2 liter barrel was The Rye Storm.

Too young to call a straight rye, and possibly too toxic to share, The Rye Storm was invaluable as an educational experience.  It also seasoned the hell out of the barrel, which led to...

...Whisky Two, The Eagle Morning Single Malt, a Highland single malt finished in my small ex-rye barrel.  Much more successful than The Rye Storm, The Eagle Morning was actually drinkable and utilizable during last year's hot weather spell in November.

After emptying the barrel of The Eagle Morning, I gave the barrel a good washout and then filled it with water to keep the insides moist.  The next whisky-thing had to be cheaper than the previous two, and very different.  I started considering a multi-step maturation, or at least a re-seasoning.

Around that time, I tried the Angel's Envy rum-finished rye.  It was like rye candy, too sweet for me, but intriguing nonetheless.  Replicating it seemed very easy to screw up.  For moment I considered a rum-finished Rittenhouse, but then I concluded I didn't want to directly copy anything.

With rum on the mind, I realized that I had enjoyed every rum-finished whisky I'd tried.  Though perhaps not mindblowing, they were always fun to drink.  And I'm always on the search for an inexpensive peated Scotch.  I had considered using either Bowmore Legend and McClelland's Islay, but Morrison Bowmore's young Bowmores can be questionable at best.

Standing in Total Wine & More, I stared at the shelves until it (figuratively) hit me.  Bank Note.  I like Bank Note.  I've had two good bottles and one not good bottle.  And the problems with that bad bottle were likely due to storage issues rather than the stuff itself.  It's lightly peated, a 40% malt blend, and is bottled at 43% ABV.  And I could get a handle (1.75L) of it for $36.99.

There would still be 250mL of whisky room left in the cask, and I needed more peat.  Luckily I had three heavily-peated cask strength single malts to fill out the rest of the room, raising the ppms and ABV a little bit.  But first, the rum!

I had a mostly full bottle of the very sweet and silky Ron Matusalem 15 year old.  Unlike aged whisky, aged rum is often very affordable; this 15yo had been only $19.99.  Though it filled less than 1/3 of the barrel, its brown sugariness would be just enough to season the staves.  I rotated the barrel every other day for three weeks.  At the end of the three weeks, I decanted it back into its original bottle.   While the barrel was still very wet and oozed candied scents, I first filled it with the Bank Note, then with my secret combo of peated single malts.

But wait, that's not all.

Several months had been spent maturing my previous two whiskies and there was one thing that became painfully obvious with each week's measurements......the angels take their share.  I had lost an outrageous amount of product to those drunkass angels, no matter what the storage location or temperature had been.  I wanted a lot of whisky at the end of this extended maturation experiment.

So I wrapped it.

I tried the plastic and hair dryer technique but that didn't do a thing.  So instead I bundled it up tightly, Cling Wrap and lots of packing tape, maltblocking those damned angels.

Then it was time to wait.

Tomorrow, we do the numbers and we do the tasting......

Something Weird: Leviathan II American Peated Single Malt

I shall pluck the next peated American single malt from the Kravitz Cabinet of Curiosities...

...Presenting: The Tall Man!

First of all, I would like to thank my buddy Daniel for this bottle.  No matter what I say in this post, I really do appreciate this gift.  It has been an experience.

Lost Spirits Distillery was founded by Bryan Davis in Salinas, California, in 2009.  Using American barley, American and Canadian peat, and a steam-powered wooden still (which has recently been retired) his company has created about a half dozen unique whiskies (along with several other spirits).

But many of us blog readers know of Lost Spirits from Mr. Davis's direct feud with Sku's Recent Eats blog in 2012.  Picking a fight with a well-informed corner of the anorak populace probably isn't the best way for a small craft distiller to sell more bottles, but that was Mr. Davis's decision.  As someone who has tried to peddle unusual product in a difficult marketplace, I can understand the frustration that develops when the people you're trying to connect with reject what you're selling.  One thing I always try to remember is that in any form of production, from art to consumables, once the creation is released into the world the author's intent doesn't mean a damn thing.

With all of that in mind, let me get back to Leviathan II.  The barley is American.  The peat is from Alberta, Canada.  The barley is peated to a level of 110ppm (a little over Ardbeg Supernova's ppms).  But not all peat is the same, as it is formed from local vegetation.  Thus peat on Islay is different than peat on Orkney, which is different than Alberta peat.  According to Lost Spirits, the Alberta peat is "loaded with conifer and pine roots".  The American barley was smoke dried with this peat, then distilled in their former wooden pot still, and then aged in French oak casks that had previously held late harvest Semillon wine from Napa.

Did you get all that?  Here, I'll list it the way I usually do:

Distillery: Lost Spirits 
Brand: Leviathan
Type: Single Malt Whiskey
Region: Salinas, California, USA
Barley malt: American
Peat source: Alberta, Canada
Peating level: 110ppm
Maturation: ex-late harvest Semillon casks (French oak)
Age: "under four years"
Alcohol by Volume: 53%

My first pour from the bottle smelled like someone dropped napalm on a tennis court.  Everything was burned: shoes, tennis balls, the net, concrete, paint, and gasoline.  And it tasted the same.

I am a peat freak, and can take some serious peat abuse without complaint.  Octomore and Supernova are fun, not just because their peat levels are high, but because the flavors and scents are very complex and nuanced.  Meanwhile, at the top of the bottle, Leviathan II was a single slab of sensory violence.  And honestly, I had no interest in drinking any more of it.

(Quick aside -- To use another questionable comparison, I like hot sauce.  It's fun on the palate and I loves me some heat (well, my palate does but the rest of me doesn't).  But I've noticed that a lot of hot sauce producers just try to one up each other by climbing the Scoville scale.  As a result, a lot of their products taste terrible.  They bring the heat and that's it.  Creating and maintaining flavors is a difficult art.  I think we're at that stage with whisk(e)y that we can start to see that more peat doesn't necessarily equal more goodness.  There's so much more to the process that determines if the end result smells or tastes appealing, let alone great.  A lot of work went into the Octomores.  They're not just a whisky stunt, they're whisky.)

My Leviathan bottle sat 95% full.  Something had to be done.  Being someone who believes whisk(e)y changes considerably with air, I worked a couple more ounces down my trap until there was some space in the bottle.  In that space sat oxygen.  I let the bottle sit for a few days.  Then, I poured an ounce and let it air out for thirty minutes while I took notes on McCarthy's Oregon Single Malt.  I returned to the Leviathan II glass and here's the result:

NEAT
The color is gold.  On the nose there are lots of black raisins, burnt ones too.  Burnt plastic.  Un-burnt polyester, carpet, hot concrete, new shoelaces, and really rough eau de vie.  With more air, a singed orange peel note grows, followed by McDonald's honey (yep, that specific one).  With an hour of air, it smelled of wet cigars and wet cat litter.  The palate has an immense cinnamon red hots character.  Then burnt wheat toast, liquid smoke, and unaged rye spirit.  There's an ethyl heat, a spicy heat, burnt plastic, and sea salt.  Burnt honey in the finish, along with charred tuna, dried rosemary, and Swisher Sweets.

WITH WATER
The black raisins remain in the nose, joined by honey, rubber bands, and bile.  With more water, there's a note of, well, rubber raisins.  Cinnamon red hots still kickin' it in the palate.  Also sneakers (if I ate them), raisins, and toasty moss.  With more water, mossy red hots.  The finsh is mostly honey and raisins and char.  With more water, there's a floral note amongst rubber and moss.

Yes, the whole package improved.  But I'm not entirely sure for whom it is designed.  Is it for those hot sauce bros who just want to see who can crush the most ghost peppers?  Then why the sweet wine casks?  Even the Scottish haven't consistently mastered the sweet wine + peat combo and their experts have been at it for some time.

If you're going to do the Leviathan II and you're going to do it neatly, please please please air it out.  I'm not going to raise much of a stink about the whisky being too young.  It's definitely youthful and I think that's part of the point.  A lot more time in a sweet wine cask isn't necessarily going to make the whisky sexier.  It would just result in further imbalance between the cask and spirit.

I'm also not going to say that Lost Spirits should stop making this stuff, because it has a place in the market.  I think the challenge for Lost Spirits is that corner of the market has players like Balcones, Corsair, and Charbay already in it.  Those companies have a head start.  They have weird whiskies, bold whiskies, and weird bold whiskies.  Many of those products are very appealing and well sculpted.  There's real competition at the craft whiskey level.  Being small and crafty and original isn't enough anymore.

Leviathan II is indeed an experience that I'm sure many would be interested to try once.  But a 750mL bottle?  On a related note, I have a bunch of oxidized samples that I'd be happy to swap out.

Availability - About 10 to 12 specialty US retailers

Pricing - $50-$60

Rating - 69 (it rated in the mid 40s when first opened)

Single Malt Report: McCarthy's Oregon Single Malt

I've tried two peated American single malts recently, two whiskies whose characteristics couldn't possibly be any further apart.  In my opinion, one is successful, the other is not.

One half of me wonders if my palate has changed and that I'd have felt the opposite about them two years ago.  Another half of me thinks I would have never liked the second whisky, ever.  Another half of me was just happy to try them both at the same sitting.

Let's start with the one I liked:

I first tried McCarthy's at Peatin' Meetin' two years ago and was underwhelmed by it.  In hindsight, I'm pretty sure my palate had been blown out by bigger cask strength peated whiskies that day.  I wanted to give it another try, in a quieter controlled setting.  Last year, I gained a sample of McCarthy's from Jordan of Chemistry of the Cocktail in a sample swap.  And I'm glad I did.

McCarthy's is distilled at Clear Creek Distillery in Portland, Oregon.  Owner Steve McCarthy buys peated barley malt from the Port Ellen maltings on Islay and has it shipped to Oregon.  After it arrives, the malt is fermented by the Widmer Brothers Brewery.  The resulting wash is distilled only once in Clear Creek's Holstein pot still.  According to their site, the spirit spends some time in old sherry casks (though these casks may have been discontinued several years ago) as well as casks made from Oregon oak.  They age it for three years.  If you've ever tried to buy a bottle of McCarthy's you'll know why they don't age it any longer:  each batch sells out quickly.  For more details on their processes, please see Jordan's review or the Clear Creek site, both of which have a lot of good info.

I'm uncertain which batch this was from.  Jordan's review mentions that it may be somewhere between 2006 and 2008.  Many batches have been at 42.5% ABV, one was "cask strength" at 49% ABV.  This one was bottled at 40% ABV.

source

Distillery: Clear Creek Distillery
Brand: McCarthy's
Type: Single Malt Whiskey
Region: Portland, Oregon, USA
Malt source: Port Ellen maltings
Maturation: ex-sherry casks (though these may have been discontinued before this bottling was aged) and Oregon oak casks
Age: three years
Alcohol by Volume: 40%

NEAT
The color is gold.  The first thing I notice in the nose is the ocean.  Is it the Atlantic or Pacific?! Then bacon, well charred bacon. Then cinnamon, brown sugar, and kirsch.  The peat is rich, clean, and bright (if that makes any sense) as opposed to dirty or ashy. There's a nice vanilla bean note, maybe from the Oregon oak? Also some plum brandy (Slivovitz) to go with the kirsch. After being aired out for over 30 minutes, the whiskey releases a scent that reminds me of the white plastic siding on the house I grew up in (the Horseheads house for you insiders).  The palate is loaded with applewood smoked bacon.  The peat gets ashy here, though it gets brightened up by sweet mint.  Sweetness grows with time, but it is kept in check by an IPA-style bitterness.  More bacon in the finish.  The beer that goes with the palate's bitterness shows up here.  Then sugary cigar ash.  And -- to continue the personal notes -- the air on Inis Mór, the rocky Irish island I got lost on eleven years ago.

WITH WATER
Some fresh fruits (apricots and apples) peek out into the nose.  Lots of bourbon-like American oak notes too, caramel specifically.  Then candied peat, apple mint, and tangerines.  The palate gets sugary, toasty, and mossy.  Maybe a little bit of green herbs and yeast.  The finish is sweet and smoky.

I can't believe this is the same whisky I tried two years ago.  This further proves how different a whisky can be in separate settings.

It's been a while since I've experienced multiple sense memory connections with a single whisky.  Putting aside these emotional connections for a moment, I have no issue with this single malt's very young age.  While there are distillate characteristics in the nose, they work very well with the big ocean, bacon, and beer notes.  The sweetness stays mellow until water is added, the oak doesn't get too big, and the peat lingers at a medium level.  While I prefer it neat, water doesn't wreck it, which is impressive considering the low ABV.

But I cannot ignore those sense memories.  I realize that you won't have the same connections, but they draw me more deeply into the drinking experience.  Maybe you'll have your own.  Or maybe you'll see this as a decent alternative to the other (imported) whiskies created from the Port Ellen maltings.  In any case, McCarthy's shouldn't be dismissed by you peat fans.  If young Taliskers and Caol Ilas ever get out of your price range, maybe you should look to Oregon next.

Availability - Here's Clear Creek's list of stores that carry their products

Pricing - $45-$60

Rating - 87 (neat score only, and for this batch only)