Author: The Scotch Noob

30% Off Edinburgh Whisky Academy Online Courses

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Edinburgh Whisky Academy has been running online Whisky Appreciation as well as industry certification courses, and due to the Covid-19 crisis they are offering a discount of 30% off tuition costs. No coupon necessary – the discounts are already reflected on their site. Note: I haven’t yet tried any of the courses myself, so I can’t vouch for them, and I’m not receiving anything for posting this or if you buy a course. I just thought it was a nice offer that some of my readers might be interested in. Cheers, and stay safe out there!

Boutique-y Whisky: Teaninich (11 year) Batch 2

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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.

Hancock’s President’s Reserve

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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.

Westland Peated

The Scotch NoobReviews4 Comments 6472 views

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…

Jim Beam “Pre-Prohibition Style” Rye

The Scotch NoobReviews2 Comments 10610 views

This is just Beam straight rye (likely at 4 years and a day old) at 45% ABV. Maybe – MAYBE – if they had anything whatsoever to say about what their “oldest recipe” entails, or why it has anything to do with pre-Prohibition distillation, or really any information at all about why this is different from the 40% ABV version that this is replacing, I MIGHT have been a little less cynical…

Tomatin Dualchas (or Legacy)

The Scotch NoobReviews3 Comments 10222 views

In the UK and other markets this NAS Tomatin expression is sold as “Tomatin Legacy” while in the US it’s sold as “Tomatin Dualchas”, which is the Scots Gaelic word for ‘heritage’ or ‘legacy’. This bottling, whatever its name, is the NAS (no-age-statement) entry-level bottling from the Tomatin distillery in the village of Tomatin in the Scottish Highlands … is vatted from Tomatin single malt aged in a combination of ex-bourbon and virgin (new) American oak casks. The virgin oak is intended to give the under-matured malt component an extra dose of …

Westland Sherry Wood

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Westland’s meticulously-sourced sherry casks are shipped whole (rather than broken down into staves and re-coopered, which is how most whisky producers handle them) to the States and then filled with the same five-malt blend as the American Oak release. The distillery uses both ex-Oloroso and ex-PX sherry casks, and blends the resulting full-term sherry-matured malt whiskey with…