This was purchased for a friend as a Christmas gift, it was given to them in late April and then (among another 2 gifts) was forgotten here. So having taken some initial notes the night before, and a follow-up glass we bring you something unique. However much like that bent fork in your silverware drawer that you hate but won’t throw out, there are some downsides.
We honestly did not pick this up because it was an Indian whiskey – as always it was huh, never seen that before. let’s get it. That being said it’s great to see that the offering from India is actually pretty good, oh sure it’s got problems, and it’s not as good as Japan’s recent forays, but first impressions are good.
At this point, we’re fairly familiar with Bowmore. However we’ve sort of been going about it in reverse having started with the 17 year, and then near 6 years later (yikes), we did the 15 year. We’ve opted this time to go with the 12 year. We can therefore finally form a verdict on which Bowmore you should buy, and what (if anything) does time do?
Christmas time has come and gone once again, and once again a scotch has been gifted to the lounge. Sadly however it’s not a scotch as it’s been tainted by the wicked evil magic that is sherry. We’ve long been opponents of sherry aged scotches, but the recent trend of finishing in sherry has revived our hopes and can often be enjoyable. That is not the case here.
Because today’s Christmas eve we decided to review a gift we got ourselves. Don’t worry whiskey is still going to be every other Wednesday, today’s a one-off because this whiskey is rather special. It begins in a Glasgow whiskey bar. Staying over the Easter weekend – Nah JK we’re not a recipe blog. While Aultmore isn’t as well known as some other scotches it should be. It’s probably one of the great whiskeys out there, and if you can find it – a real gift.
This is normally the bit where we talk about how this relates to the regular version and what the distillery specific breed brings to the table. (But we’ve not actually done that yet – our bad). In fact, the only thing we’ve done that’s dealt with Caol Ila on this site is its inclusion into Johnnie Walker Green (which is defunct). But that’s okay.
So we’ve always been a bit apprehensive of the Fiddich, namely because while they deserve the store presence they often get and are by no measure have made a bad whiskey, they’ve always been – just slightly above average. It seems though just a few extra years of aging allows it to set itself apart though.
Once again a victory scotch from the duty-free store graces our doors. (It’s a victory because getting back home at 1 am after 14 hours of travel needs a drink). We have a special ‘town & year’ version of Glen Scotia, and sadly we don’t have a baseline with their malt to compare against as what we find here was less of a victory, and more of a loss at the end of a long day.
We all know (or maybe not) that all spirits are filtered (unless rarely as otherwise noted) and that usually this filtering goes through charcoal. Now one would think that said charcoal filtering doesn’t really go into the product, and it’s not like your barbeque variety coal is what’s used. At least that’s supposed to be the way, but here it’s suspect.
Once again the duty-free shops of the world’s airports have made the choice of getting another Auchentoshan breed an inevitability. This time instead of Blood Oak we get another blood-related wood thing – Heartwood. It genuinely does live up to that name of being a warm and woody drink, but it’s sadly not that simple.
