A very pale single malt from an ex-bourbon cask, and bottled at the potent but also very drinkable 47.9% ABV, this Teaninich makes me want to go find other (cheaper) bottles from the distillery. Those will all have to be independent bottlers as well, as there are no official bottlings from this distillery, aside from an occasional entry in Diageo’s Flora and Fauna series, most of which doesn’t make it to US.
The label on this squat bottle of bourbon looks like it was created before anyone in the market started caring about the contents of their bottles. It informs me that the liquid is from a single barrel, without giving a bottle number, barrel identifier, date, year, or even batch number. It also reveals that it is bottled at the very random 44.45% ABV and that it was distilled by Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, Kentucky. Aaaaaand… that’s it.
Quinta Ruban is standard Glenmorangie malt that is aged around 12 years in ex-bourbon casks and then finished in ruby port wine casks for 2 further years, for a total age statement of 14 years. The old 12-year expression spent 10 years in ex-bourbon. The whisky is bottled without chill-filtration at 46% ABV.
We know from other sources that Westland is experimenting with local Pacific Northwest (USA) peat, but that the core range Peated expression uses already-peated malt imported from the Eastern Highlands of Scotland. That peated malt is distilled (together or separately, I can’t tell) along with Westland’s standard “5-malt” blend of Washington Select Pale Malt, Munich Malt…
Here’s something I didn’t expect to find on the shelves in 2020: A 14 year-old single malt with a cognac cask finish for $40. What is this, 2012? In the arms race that is the modern whisky industry, it’s actually pretty surprising that it took this long for someone to crack out a brandy finish. We’ve seen everything from…