Master of Malt tastings #2 – Carsebridge

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Rating: 5.0/10 (2 votes cast)

I have to confess that this was an unknown name to me and I had to look it up. It was situated in Alloa but was closed in 1983 and demolished in 1992, and the most surprising thing is that it seems to have been a grain distillery. My only previous experience of single grain whiskies was pretty dire so I inevitably approached this with little positive expectation.

Carsebridge

Duncan & Taylor, 31 year old, distilled 1979, 55.7%

Colour

Pale

Nose

Strong but nothing immediately identifiable. Later a scent of coffee was noticeable but I suspect the high strength was holding back the other aromatics.

Initial Taste

Warm, spicey, rich, again there was that hint of coffee. Gingery notes appeared. The taste was mostly front of the tongue. As the whisky warmed up it started to remind me of ginger nut biscuits dunked in cappuccino – no, I’ve never done that either but if I had this is what it would taste like ;-)

Later Taste

A hint of pear schapps and the taste broadens to the sides of the tongue.

Finish

A medium length finish which retains the spiciness.

Conclusion

A pleasantly warming dram for a damp day. My only negatives were that the nose seemed lacking in character compared to the taste and the spiciness, though very pleasant, eventually seemed a little one-dimensional. If I’d had a larger sample I’d have tried water with it to see what that did to the nose, but I’d split the tasting over two sessions as I’d been puzzled by it to begin with so there wasn’t really enough to try that.

Overall I was pleasantly surprised by this; it was far more complex than you’d expect from a single grain. I’d enjoy a dram of it occasionally but would probably move on to something else for the second one.

Master of Malt tastings – #1 – Balmenach

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Rating: 9.0/10 (1 vote cast)

A while back Mike passed some samples on to me from Master of Malt. Due to house moves, bereavements, and a catalogue of other matters they were put aside for a while intending that we taste them together, but as our respective calendars have left little time for such events I felt it was time we reported on them so I’ve started the sampling myself. They’re quite a varied selection in age, type and quality, so I’ll take them one by one, starting with one that I’d always wanted to try but had never seen in any of the bars or whisky shops that I’d explored.

The reason for my desire to try it is connected to the post I made a couple of months ago -

Seeing Whisky from a different age – where Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart described in his book his family connections to the Balmenach distillery and his great love for its taste. Now as anyone who has followed my posts will know I should probably have tried it 30 years ago when my tastes where more attuned to the smoother Speyside malts, but in those days it was rare to come across large collections of single malts of any kinds and for a long time Balmenach was either mothballed or its production went for blending, so it was a rare find.

Balmenach

Duncan & Taylor, 10 Year Old, 46%

Colour

Very light lemon-yellow

Nose

Curiously little of note to begin with, but then I’m used to strong west coast beginnings. Spirity but without being harsh. Later there’s a suggestion of apples.

Taste

Initial Taste
Very light, honey, lemon. Front of the tongue.

Later taste
Some light toffee notes, maybe a hint of smoked tea. Normally there would be a list of flavour impressions here but the word that kept coming to me while drinking this was “purity”.

Finish

Short though certainly not unpleasant and pretty much in keeping with the rest of the taste.

I didn’t try water with this as I suspect it would have swamped it.

Conclusion

Probably the lightest single malt I can remember tasting. Definitely not one for the people who like massively complex tastes, peat, smoke or saltiness; but strangely enough, although the above is a good description of my own normal tastes, I rather liked this. I could imagine drinking it with light and subtle food such as fish cooked in the Swiss style, as an alternative to wine. It struck me as a Speyside version of the sort of ideas that they have at Bruichladdich.

That said I think I’d like to try it after a few more years maturing and maybe a touch stronger to see how the flavours develop. But if I’m ever up Speyside way I’ll keep an eye out for more examples of their output.

Sweet spirit from the Highland line – Glengoyne

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Rating: 8.5/10 (2 votes cast)

The world of single malt whisky is wonderfully diverse and though it tends to be the big names that take most of the publicity there is plenty going on in the less famous distilleries that deserves to be better known. I recently received some samples from one of those via a friend of mine who consults on their website.

Glengoyne is a Highland distillery, but only just, situated is a beautiful spot about 5 miles south-east of Loch Lomond. It has the unique distinction of sitting right on the Highland Line – which runs between the distillery and the warehouse so the spirit is produced in the Highlands but matured in the Lowlands.

Owners Ian Macleod Distillers have an innovative approach to promoting its whiskies; for instance they combined with Visit Scotland and Michelin chef Andrew Fairlie to produce a Winter Food and Drink Guide, have helped promote both salmon and venison , and were unfortunate when the recent severe weather forced them to cancel a Christmas Food and Drink Festival. They’ve also been award winners – taking a gold award at the Scottish Field Whisky Challenge for the third year in a row.

Their production methods are quite unusual too, they reckon to be the slowest distillers – believing that it results in a smoother spirit – and they use barley which has been air-dried rather than the more usual peat smoke drying method. Coupled with that they are also doing interesting things in their maturing and bottling – one being the limited yearly bottling from a single cask allowing comparison of the way the whisky is maturing.

First tasting notes

The following are my first impressions of the three samples I received, I hope to follow them up later if Mike and I have time to get together for another tasting or if I can get my dad up here to try them.

English Merchants Choice

13 Years Old, 54.6%, distilled June 1997, Sherry Hogshead

Colour

Dark Sherry

Nose

Lots of Molasses, dark treacle, burnt toffee. Quite spirity to begin with but it fades quickly.

First Taste

There a strange effect with the sweetness. Initially it’s not-quite-bitter and then it becomes sweet with lots of black treacle coming through, and then it becomes bitter again. There’s a strong undercurrent of sherry but it’s all overlaid with a slightly burnt taste. There’s a suggestion of what I think is dates, which gives a slightly xmas cake effect. The tastes are mainly in the front and front-middle of the tongue.

Finish

The initial finish begins to fade quite quickly but then seems to reach a plateau which hangs around for quite a while.

21 Year Old

43%, no further details

Colour

Medium-dark, wit a touch of old gold

Nose

Immediately weaker on the nose as you would expect. Subtle, Muscovado sugar, and initial hint of something like marzipan but that doesn’t last.

First taste

Very much front of the tongue and compared to the nose is much stronger. There’s a feeling of chilli going on. It gets gradually sweeter but there’s always a kick in the end, right at the front of the tongue. Later there’s a slight pepperiness that goes further back on the tongue. Fairly dry, with almost a suggestion of country earth coming over. Relatively lightweight for a 21 year old, certainly compared to the 13 year old, and I’m a little surprised that it doesn’t have more body to it.

Later Taste

Later on there’s a slightly medicinal taste appears which is in some ways similar to the west island malts but because it’s devoid of the saltiness which characterises many of them it comes across in a quite different way. If asked to guess I would probably say that it’s from a second refill sherry cask, though there’s nothing to say and it may well not be the case. That’s partly from the colour and partly from the background taste – nothing like as strong as some of the more obviously sherried whiskies but definitely there in the background.

Postscript

A few days later I tried this one on its own, as I wondered if it had suffered from being sandwiched between its two stronger cousins. This time it seemed to have more character and I liked it more than I had the first time.

Single Cask

23 Years Old, 53.6%, distilled April 1986, European Oak Sherry Butt

Colour

Medium Gold

Nose and first taste

We’re immediately back in more complex territory and the extra strength is obvious. Much more my kind of whisky. However rather curiously the nose is relatively light and there’s nothing particularly distinctive to latch onto and name as a flavour, but the first taste is completely opposite to that – there’s an immediately complex hit that seems to fill the whole mouth. Very warm strong taste, dark chocolate, and the same sort of black treacle taste that we had in the first whisky but not as sweet this time. It might sound odd since there’s no real peat in it but this reminds me in some ways of the peaty Perthshire whiskies such as Blair Athol.

Later taste

A touch more sweetness comes through but the bitter chocolate with the slight chilli kick that I noticed in one of the other two is still there. There is sherry in the background but it’s nothing like as strong as the English Merchants Choice.

Overall Conclusions

Quite an enlightening tasting for me since this is entirely different to the sort of whiskies I usually drink. It’s a bit like the malt equivalent of drinking port or sherry when you’re used to dry white wine. Of the three I think I marginally preferred the English Merchant’s Choice, though the Single Cask might get the vote after a longer tasting. However I have a suspicion that I would need more time with this type before being able to really get a handle of the various tastes the Glengoynes contain as my palate is simply not used to them in this sort of context. I liked them much more then I expected I was going to after the initial sips, and I’d be interested to try more of them and explore this taste complex in greater depth. After all if you enjoy the outdoors it doesn’t have to be standing on the beaches of Islay or the cliffs of Skye with the wind in your face all the time – the gentler shores of Loch Lomond can be pretty good too!

Last two weeks for SMWS membership offer

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Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)

In an earlier post Give Yourself an Early Xmas Present we told you about an offer of a free bottle of whisky for anyone taking out a membership with the Scottish Malt Whisky Society through this blog.

The particular whisky has now sold out but the SMWS have replaced it with another from the same distillery.

The offer is only valid until the end of January so if you want to take advantage of it you’d better get in now!

Whisky iOdic – A Periodic chart of whisky (iphone app)

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Rating: 8.5/10 (2 votes cast)

So I now have my nice new iPhone 4 (its rubbish at calls and sending text messages but great at Internet things) and as usual when sat at lunch I started looking for apps to download for it. As befits my tastebuds I immediately started searching for “whisky” in iTunes.

The first app which grabbed my attention was Whisky iOdic – which is a periodic chart of whiskies. It looks great and is fun – espescially when your in a bar which lacks your favourite malts and has a large range as you can look for whiskies that share the same types of profile (I’ve found it useful about 80% of the time and found one of two weirdnesses but TBH that was when drinking non-standard casks which I should’ve expected).

Whisky iOdic Screen Grab

Whisky iOdic Screen Grab

Also when you click onto one of the whisky codes you get a short description of the distillery and the taste profile of the whisky.

Description for Talisker Distillery from Whisky iOdic App

Description for Talisker Distillery from Whisky iOdic App

So all in all a nice little time waster of an application for all you whisky lovers out there. It doesn’t tell you anything you don’t know already but hey for £1.79 (which won’t buy you a decent dram these days) is a nice distraction. To purchase the app visit the page on itunes or visit the Whisky iOdic website.

Seeing Whisky from a different age

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Rating: 8.0/10 (1 vote cast)

I recently moved into a new house, and an important part of that process allowed me to retrieve many of my books from my ex-wife’s house. In sorting them out I came across the first book I ever owned on whisky – Scotch: the Whisky of Scotland in Fact and Story by Sir Robert Bruce Lockharta Christmas present if I remember correctly.

Sir Robert was a character from a very different world from our own – a well respected author,  a career diplomat who was the first UK envoy to the then-new Bolshevik Russia in 1917, a secret agent who amongst other things was accused of a plot to kill Lenin and imprisoned in the Kremlin, and a natural adventurer. His autobiographical Memoirs of a British Agent was a worldwide hit as both book and film in the 1930′s.

His mother’s family were MacGregors and had close connections to the Balmenach distillery, and it’s clear from reading Scotch that he regarded Speyside in general, and in particular Glenlivet and his beloved Balmenach as the pinnacle of single malt creation. He scarcely mentions Islay and quotes a top-ten that has Talisker at number 10. However this was 1951 and the whisky world, as well as the Scottish and UK society and economy, was very different from anything we know now. The chances are that whisky tasted somewhat different then – single malts were seldom available and nearly all production went for blending. Britain was bankrupt and most whisky went overseas to earn foreign currency, while domestic consumption was both restricted by rationing and taxed to a level never previously seen.

It’s fascinating to read his attitudes as he surveys the history of whisky from a staunchly Scottish perspective, indeed a Highlander’s perspective where whisky is seen as the people’s birthright and an essential component of their culture and way of life. He rails against English taxation and restriction and looks towards a revival of Scottish independence if the vital spirit was removed from the common people.

Doubtless he would have been surprised but delighted at the modern revival of single malts. But he might have been appalled at the level of taxation that has continued to be imposed on it. He’d have expected the continuing success of the drink internationally but probably astonished at the quality that the Japanese have achieved as he firmly believed that the conditions in Scotland were uniquely suited to its creation.

While his writing style is of a type that modern eyes may find idiosyncratic, the book is a fascinating insight into an almost forgotten time and attitudes to whisky that link to a long bygone age as well as a good history of the creation and development of the industry. If you can get hold of a copy then I recommend it as winter reading while we’re all snowed in – and a glass of Balmenach might not be a bad accompaniment!