This bottling is simply a 9 year-old expression of Lagavulin, which sounds young until you remember that peated single malt is usually quite good at younger ages, and between Octomore, Talisker 8 year, and… well… Lagavulin 8 year, no longer seems weird. The “House Lannister” bottling comes from only first-fill ex-bourbon casks (no sherry) and clocks in at 46% ABV.
For less than 40 bones you get 8 year-old Wild Turkey Kentucky Straight Bourbon, which has been mellowed using a similar process to Jack Daniel’s and other Tennessee Whiskies. Instead of filtering it through 10 feet or whatever of sugar maple charcoal, Longbranch is circulated first through American white oak charcoal (the same oak used for barrels) and then through Mesquite charcoal from McConaughey’s native state of Texas.
Oh, I’ve had Tomatin before. It’s bland, sweet, banana-y. I’m sure this will be just another ho-hum sample that gets suck in the back of my “tastings notes” folder and never sees the light of day. I’ve even tasted the 12-year. How much different can a batch of 11-year from That Boutique-y Whisky Company (TBWC) be? It’s not even sherried. At least, I don’t think it’s sherried…
Old Tub is what Jim Beam used to be called a century ago when it was first sold in bottled form. The name changed to “Jim Beam” in 1943 and the previous brand name was relegated to a Kentucky-only low-volume release. Now, in 2020, Beam has released a limited edition renewal of the Old Tub brand. It’s still bottled-in-bond, and in an effort to lend the release some authenticity the whiskey is not chill-filtered and also not charcoal filtered. Honestly, I don’t know why in 2020 any whisky company still…
Johnnie Walker Island Green – which should not be confused with Johnnie Walker Green Label – is a travel-retail variant of the Johnnie Walker Green Label bottling. The “Island” here refers to the Scottish isle of Islay, not some tropical island. Islay is essentially the opposite of tropical. Like the Green Label, this “Green” includes only…
…Cathead has taken three straight bourbons and blended them together, so the term is apropos. The first two (totaling 90% of the blend) are 4 year-old MGP sourced bourbons and the third (at 10% of the blend) is Cathead’s own 2-year-and-1-month-old Mississippi bourbon. It’s not specified on the website, but I’m guessing there’s not much of the own-distilled juice to go around so they decided to…
This Game of Thrones “Six Kingdoms” edition is Mortlach single malt that has been aged for 15 years in sherry casks and then ex-bourbon barrels. Oddly, the label and tin say it was “Finished in ex-bourbon casks” which is a silly way to convey that the whisky started in first-fill sherry (seasoned) casks and then was finished in ex-bourbon. You’d think they’d focus on the sherry. In fact, before I looked it up online I thought…
The Classic Laddie is a vatting of barrels of unpeated Bruichladdich distilled from 100% Scottish barley and aged in, well, all sorts of things. Head Distiller Adam Hannett has a generic house character in mind when he tastes casks for the vatting, but does not worship at the feet of the gods of Consistency like most distilleries. You can, and should, expect some variation…
Talisker 8 is a very limited edition cask-strength (57.9% ABV) batch of the familiar Talisker 10 except at 8 years, which is a bit of a reference to earlier 1980s bottlings of Talisker that were released at that age (although not at that strength). The whisky for this year’s release was distilled in 2011 and This time, the distillery broke new ground (for Talisker) by finishing the whisky in a funky pot-still rum cask from Jamaica.
First in the series, we have Very Old Barton 86 Proof. The whiskey is all from the Barton distillery in Bardstown, Kentucky which is owned by Sazerac (Buffalo Trace), and was renamed to the Barton 1792 Distillery in 2009. Very Old Barton (which is not old, and certainly not Very Old) used to have a “6 years old” age statement on the bottle, which was changed to a lonely misleading “6” on the neck, and then dropped altogether. The company claims…