Whisky

Benriach Cask Strength Batch 1

What is it?

The formula focuses on 3 of BenRiiach’s favourite types of wood: ex-Bourbon casks; Virgin American Oak and ex-Oloroso sherry casks.

The biggest contribution comes from 1st fill ex-Bourbon Barrels although they are still less than half of the make-up.  Then there is an even split of BenRiach finished in Virgin American Oak Hogsheads and BenRiach finished in ex-Oloroso Sherry Butts.  The age is top secret.

The distillery described the whisky as classic honey, vanilla, soft oak from the ex-Bourbon, some very robust oak, big vanilla, strawberry shortbread and American cream soda from the virgin oak, and then the heavy fruits, dark chocolate and lots of body and depth from the ex-Oloroso sherry butts.

Tasting Notes

Nose:  Green bananas, mango and pineapple.  Peppery cherry flavoured boiled sweets.  Marzipan.  Freshly baked sponge cake.  Warm beech wood.  Earthy.

Taste: Creamy.  Mouth coating. Warm grapefruit with hot crème anglaise.  Cinnamon and star anise.  Spicy wood notes – circular saw cutting through the wood which is getting hot.  Then spiced warm orange liqueur.

Conclusion

A really nice whisky.  It is very much BenRiach and quite feisty.

To learn more visit The Whisky Shop Dufftown.

Benriach Cask Strength Batch 1

Glen Garioch Virgin Oak

What it is

Brand new American Oak casks.  Made from inner heartwood of 100 year old oak trees frown in the North American mountains, each barrel has been heavily charred inside to activate the woods vanilla and oak spices in readiness for the maturing spirit.

Tasting Notes

Nose:  Soft berries and cocoa dust followed by baked peach cobbler.  Orange boiled sweets and sweet runny honey.  Some perfumed notes: heather, lavender and violets.

Taste:  More orange sweet and peach cobbler becoming blood oranges covered in vanilla custard.  Much more spicy than the nose with cinnamon and star anise.  Fresh pine needles.

Finish:  Slightly wax with warming spice.

Conclusion

We really liked this whisky and it probably can claim to be the best of the current batch of Virgin Oak casks but it is pricey.

For more information go to The Whisky Shop Dufftown.

Glen Garioch Virgin Oak Small Batch

Longmorns Distillers Choice

What it is

Matured in 3 different types of cask: First fill American Oak barrels (sweet caramel notes), ex-Sherry (warm spices), traditional American oak [not sure what that means, dechar/rechar or 3rd fill may be – Ed].

Tasting Notes

Nose:  Sweet vanilla toffee.  Light raisin notes – Garibaldi biscuits & fig biscuits. Sweet – warm muscovado sugar.  Background of cherries and rose Turkish delight.

Taste:  Medium sweet.  Warm vanilla & pineapple cube sweets.  Hints of spice – cardamom, pickled ginger and chili powder.  Dunked malt biscuits.

Finish:  Spices linger, waxy and a little pickle.  Finally, a waft of fresh mint.

Conclusion

We liked here.  A really nice dram.  But it will be a big shock to Longmorn 16 lovers.

For more information see The Whisky Shop Dufftown.

Longmorn The Distiller's Choice

Glen Scotia Distillery

I recently went on a tour of Glen Scotia Distillery which has had a big revamp and it shows.  The distillery itself is quite compact which makes it easy to follow the process so makes this tour ideal for beginners and their are plenty of quirks for the certified anoraks like me.

Glen Scotia

While a lot of money has been spent on the premises you will not see a computer screen or digital read-out.  This is a hands-on manual distillery which now makes 500,000 litres of pure alcohol per year.

The technical stuff:

  • Two types of whisky are made: unpeated and lightly peated.
  • The barley is Concerto.
  • The malting is done in Aberdeenshire
  • The used peat for the lightly peated version is also from Aberdeen.
  • The mill is one of the few non Porteus

Mill

  • The mash tun is cast iron and out of a different era.

Mash TunRakes

  • Condensors – 9 x shell and tube (3 outside)

Condensors

  • The Cut – The heads are 78% to 71% with the heart at 71% to 63% and tail 63% to 1%.
  • Wash Still – 1 x Plain (7500 litres)
  • Spirit Still – 1 x Plain (8400 litres)

IMG_4297Inside the StillStillStill

  • All new make is filled in ex-Bourbon casks and some of that is finished in ex-PX casks for around 6 months.

With now 3 distilleries in Campebltown to visit it is now well worth the long and beautiful drive.

Glenlivet Nadurra Peated Whisky Cask Finish

What it is

This Glenlivet Nadurra is finished in heavily peated whisky casks and bottled at cask strength. The peated casks impact on the mature whisky with gentle aromatic smoky notes and there still remains the more tropical side of Glenlivet.

Tasting Notes

Nose:  Sweet and sparky.  Fish pie with smoked haddock.  BBQ’ed fruit.  Wet malt almost soggy paper with an ashy note.  Then there is light brittle toffee.  Jasmine.

Taste:  Creamy.  Chilli spice and white pepper.  A punch of peat, hot embers, and then toffee comes through.  Then fruit cocktail after a BBQ.

Finish:  Paper ash lingers.

Conclusion

It is a talking point whisky and may even be a cross over whisky for people who are fearful of peat.  It’s OK easy drinking peaty whisky.

For more information see The Whisky Shop Dufftown.

Glenlivet Nadurra Peated Cask

Benromach Organic 2010

What it is

Distilled 2010 bottled 2015.  Every step of its making is certified Organic too. Still the only one of its kind. The new spirit goes to rest in virgin American oak casks.  First distillery to produce a fully certified organic whisky by the soil association.  The whisky is unpeated.  Bottled usually between 5-7 years old.  The casks have come from an organic certified forest in Missouri.  Produce around 100 casks a year (3 weeks production in January usually!).  Currently experimenting with organic spirit in refill organic wood to try and see if we can prolong the ageing process a bit…

The barley comes from a farm at Mulben, and the farmer is the distillery manager’s bother in law!

Tasting Notes

Nose:  Sweet toffee malt. Sweet wet wood and kumquats Caramac bars with a hint of mint (mint pearl sweets) and cinnamon.

Taste:  Medium sweet.  Orange toffee.  Chilli chocolate spice.  Baked apples with nutmeg and baked oranges.  Wood spices.  That virgin oak prickle.  Develops with time and becomes more floral – orange blossom.

Conclusion

This is a great whisky and has great character.  In the last 10 years this is the whisky that has inflated least in price of all other whiskies that we can find.  It is not the whisky that 10 years ago that people used to think was matured in whisky casks but it is still well worth drinking.

For more information see The Whisky Shop Dufftown.

Benromach Organic 2010

Cadenhead’s Small Batch Burnside 1989 26 Years Old

What it is

This Burnside from Cadenheads was distilled in 1989 and bottled in 2015 from ex-bourbon barrels which produced 282 bottles.

Burnside is was it is called “teaspooned” Balvenie.  Balvenie is used in a lot of blends out there (or has been) which are not owned by William Grants its parent company.  Wm Grants sell the whisky on for blending but they “contaminate” each cask with a dash of another single malt.  In this case it is usually Glenfiddich.  The cask therefore has the predominant characteristics of Balvenie for blending purposes but can never be sold on as Balvenie single malt and bottled as such which is something Wm Grants never want to happen.

When you get hold of an expression of a teaspooned cask it is always fascinating to see how much it resembles the supposed prominent malt.  In this case Balvenie.  My theory goes that in essence it must be Balvenie otherwise the blenders would not buy it.  But how true is that?

Interesting fact – Burnside cannot be bottled by anyone, including Balvenie, except for Springbank (actually J&A Mitchell) and hence Cadenhead’s.  William Grants do not own the rights to bottle a whisky under the name Burnside.  They can sell in it bulk under that name but not in a bottle.  Strange eh?

Tasting Notes

Nose:   Lime and aniseed. Sherbet dabs.  Limoncello. Grapefruit and freshly picked cape gooseberries.  Underpinned by wood resin.

Taste:  Sweet.  Peppery.  Candid peel and more sherbet.  Wisp of maple wood smoke.  Tart fruit salad and more gooseberries becoming tangerines with all spice.

Conclusion

This was a good whisky but in essence we felt it was more teaspooned Glenfiddich in characteristic than teaspooned Balvenie.  Interesting.  But how many of us have tried 26 year old Balvenie from an ex-Bourbon cask particularly at this price.

For more information see The Whisky Shop Dufftown.

Small Batch Burnside 1989 26 Years Old

Letting Search Engines See “Out of Stock” Products

I have been buying whisky on the web probably for as long as you have been able to.  Not so much these days obviously.  I have always been annoyed when you are searching for a whisky and you enter its name into the Google search box and it comes back with 5 results that when you click on each one you go to a page which says the whisky is Sold Out.  My time has been wasted.  Actually this really annoys me.

The Whisky Shop Dufftown is now on its third website (actually we are working on 3.2) and each time I developed one I have paid extra to have an automatic routine that runs each night and hides our out of stock products from search engines.  I think this is being fair to my customers.  I don not want to waste their time but am I being an idiot?

Why do other companies allow their out of stock products to be indexed by search engines?  The most practical reason is you have to pay extra development costs to have this done.  I have not come across any e-commerce shop where there is a global switch to hide out of stock products.  In reality the cost of doing this is minuscule to what we have to pay for our websites so there must be another reason.

From developers and the owners / runners of other websites I have been told some other reasons.  Firstly, if you click through to an Out of Stock product you might just stay on the website and buy something else.  I am told that if only 1 person in a 100 does this it’s worthwhile doing.  Secondly, just having the click through helps with your Google ranking etc.  But is all of that worth wasting the time for the other 99 customers or am I missing out on that 1 sale?WSD SOLD OUT

Over night another issue with my strategy has come to light.  A customer thought that as he could not find a fast selling / rare product on my website that I had not stocked it and therefore he assumed that I actually do not ever stock rare or fast selling whiskies.  If this is a general view created by my strategy then this could be a real problem.

This practice of continuing to list out of stock products is almost universal now so is it now the expectation of customers that they have to click through multiple search hits to actually find a site where the whisky they want is still listed? Are you as a whisky buyer now numb to this time wasting?