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…
So it turns out that when I see a 16 year-old single malt for $23 on sale, I should buy a lot more than 1 bottle. This stuff, which is essentially 16 year-old Tullibardine, retails for $60! Now that’s a steal … The brand website is devoid of useful information, but assume this is 16 year-old Tullibardine single malt bottled at 40% ABV after chill filtration and added color. The label says it was aged in “oak casks”. Duh.
Instead of an innovative cask finish (like last year’s funky rum), this year Talisker simply selected the 8 year-old warehouse casks that were in refill (re-used) casks and which showed the heaviest peat character. Diageo would like you to think of this as maturing in “ex-Talisker” casks, or perhaps as a “Talisker finished in Talisker”, but refill casks are hardly new, and honestly that sounds a bit…
Highland Queen, which I confess I’d never heard of before I saw this bottle on sale, is a line of blended scotch and single malts owned by Picard Vins & Spiritueux SA, a family-owned firm based in France that also owns the Tullibardine distillery. Picard acquired the brand from Glenmorangie in 2008, but the name dates back to 1893 when a blended scotch was named after…
The annual limited release of Paul John Christmas Edition is peated and matured in a combination of ex-bourbon barrels, port, and madeira casks. The whisky is bottled at 46% ABV without chill filtration or added coloring. Like other Paul John whiskies, it is mashed from six-row barley harvested in the Himalayan foothills and distilled in…
“Brilliance” is distilled from Himalayan 6-row barley and aged in ex-bourbon barrels for 3 to 5 years, and is bottled at 46% ABV. Remember that whisky ages faster in India, so 3 – 5 years is equivalent to 10 – 15 years in Scotland. … As Goa is located squarely in the tropics, high heat causes barrel strength to increase in the cask as more water than alcohol evaporates. This sort of “reverse Angel’s Share” also occurs in other parts of the world, such as Kentucky in the USA, and isn’t as simple as…