The Glenrothes Sherry Cask Reserve was a way for The Glenrothes to showcase its house malt with a background of sherry aging. As part of the “Vintage Collection” released in 2015 it was also a way to dump together unused vintage-dated stocks and get away with classic NAS pricing (that is, more money for younger – on average – whisky). I suppose I can’t be too hard on that decision now that they’ve abandoned it in favor of age-stated bottles.
The Irishman is a brand of (previously) sourced Irish whiskey released by the Walsh Whiskey Distillery Ltd. The company built their own distillery in Royal Oak, County Carlow in 2016 … this is straight triple-distilled single malt aged in a combination of oloroso sherry and ex-bourbon casks. The final product of uncertain age is bottled at the bare minimum 40% ABV.
I’ve been told that the quality of this blend has decreased as the Morrison family no longer has access to the mature whisky stocks that once powered Bank Note. Alas, I don’t have any details on what that means, so all I can do is stick my nose in a glass and see if I can tell a difference. The bottle still has a “5 Year” age statement on it, thank goodness. I bought the bottle in 2021 for…
This is a distillery-exclusive (plus a handful of Tennessee retailers) bottling of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee rye at barrel proof (in this case, a whopping 63.8% ABV). It’s bottled from barrels located on the highest floors of the Jack Daniel’s rickhouses, and since heat rises that means the barrels at the top experience the highest temperature fluctuations and thus age the fastest. The rye in this case is distilled from…
Enter Aberfeldy, which is essentially synonymous with Dewar’s Blended Scotch. The two are owned by the same company, and nearly all of Aberfeldy’s single malt production goes into making Dewar’s. I kinda like Dewar’s, and I liked the idea of drinking a concentrated, undiluted-by-grain-whisky version of it. It has a 12 year age statement, too, which is not a guarantee but a reassurance.
Balcones Texas Single Malt Whisky is made from (you guessed it) 100% malted barley. According to sources on the web (since the Balcones website is a glossy brochure with no real information), they use 100% Golden Promise barley, much of it grown in Texas. This is mashed and distilled using their copper pot stills and then aged in a combination of…
I could drink this all day. It’s a very middle-of-the-road kind of Speyside malt: honey, orchard fruits, light malt, little oak, but it’s executed very nicely and there’s no tell-tale grassiness or bitterness. An easy-drinking pleasure from start to finish. That said, you expect a lot from an 18-year label…
Well, it’s not every day that you get to try a whiskey that represents and entirely new category of spirits. Lost Lantern claims to be (and may very well be) the first company to blend (or “vat”) together American single malt whiskies, making the first American Vatted Malt Whiskey. … a self-styled independent bottler out of Vermont, got its start by bottling American whiskies under its independent bottling label. This is a very familiar story to anyone who drinks single malt scotch. The company then released their first vatted malt (Edition 1) in 2020. It’s a vatting of 6 American single malts (2 barrels of each), and…
The fourth batch of Kilchoman’s USA Small Batch was vatted from casks at a proportion of 5% oloroso sherry, 30% Madeira, and the remainder (65%) ex-bourbon. The result was bottled at 48.1% ABV. … Let this be a lesson to you (and me), that the mention of an interesting cask finish on the label should NOT lead you to assume that…
Elijah Craig straight rye, which is distilled at Heaven Hill not sourced from elsewhere, shares an unusually high barley component with its bourbon siblings. That 14% barley is mashed with 51% rye (the legal minimum) and 37% corn. As Rittenhouse Rye is also made by Heaven Hill and only differs from this by 2% barley (and 2% corn) and 3% ABV, one could be forgiven for calling this…