very drinkable – Page 2

Springbank 12 years 43%

In a ceramic jug, from the 1990ies.

Nose: Raisins, milk chocolate, caramellised something, fried butter and a little eucalyptus. Water brings out the sherry and some congeners, a hint of cellar, possibly some mould.

Palate: Burnt sugar and oak cask. With water the wood tastes rawer, there are a fair few congeners, but also toffee and sherry notes.

Comments: Somewhat strange on the nose, but not at all unpleasant. The congeners are a pluss, they help make the dram more interesting. I prefer the roughness of this to the elegance of the 17 year old. It’s ovbiously worth keeping a look out for these old bottlings.

Box The Explorer 48.3%

Nose: Singed juniper wood and juniper berries. Lemon. Vanilla and coffee, and spices; chai? More of everything with water, but also chalk and mineral notes.

Palate: A lot. Let’s see: Immediately a little burnt rubber and liquorice, then herbs and after a while oak planks and one the finish coffee. The chalk makes and appearance on the palate as well with water.

Comments: I’ve poured a The Challenger in another glass to compare the two, and I still find Challenger closed on the nose. Explorer has more of a full in-your-face-nose. But they are both good. Very good, in fact. In six months the fourth and last bottling of The Early Days Collection will be released. I will be ready and waiting on the date of release, and once I’ve got it I will, of course, have a quadrupel paralell tasting. I’m already looking forward to it.

Myken Arctic Dry Gin 47.3%

Myken is soon ready to launch their first product. Well, if you happen to swing by the pub Emaus at Lovund this evening you can have a dram already. Not coincidentally, Roar Larsen is also at Lovund, preparing to appear on Norwegian national television in the programme Sommeråpent in just a few minutes.

And guess what I found in the mail today?

Nose: Nice and clean gin nose. Juniper berries, juniper wood, slight cumin, pine needles and coriander. A bit of cucumber too, I’ll have to get the Hendricks out to compare. A drop of water emphasises the coriander, making it more soapy.

Palate: Quite light, a little citrus, but more of an orange peel than a lemony citrus. Quite soapy corainder, some juniper berries and juniper…twig? I’ve never actually chewed on a juniper twig (perhaps I should try it?), but I imagine it tastes like this.

Comments: I can see no reason why this shouldn’t soon be appearing in every bar in Norway. I like it, and it’s got to be more fun presenting a Norwegian gin than a run-of-the-mill foreign one to your customers? Not least if you frequently have tourists stopping by? I’m certainly aquiring a bottle as soon as it becomes available at the Vinmonopol some time this autumn.

After a quick nip to the cupboard for a Hendricks (one of my favourites, I should mention) I can say that, yes, there are definite similarities, especially on the nose. The spice is a bit more apparent on the Myken, but they both have that cucumbery feel to me. And they both have that soapy coriander on the palate, though the Hendricks leans more towards lemondand lilacs. Adnams First Rate (another one I really like) has a completely different profile, with a more extreme spicyness.

PS: Whiskysaga have written about Mykens gin today, where you can see pictures of the lable design and find more details on the botanicals.

Ardbeg TEN L7 46%

It’s Ardbeg Day today. Ardbeg Perpeteuum is being launched it honour of the day, but since I’ve already published tasting notes for that, I had to find something else. So here’s a ten year old bottled in 2007 (which is what L7 means, in case you want to check the batch number markings on your Ardbeg bottle).

Nose: Slate and bonfire. Dry leather. Over ripe banana. Sand. Water brings out yeast and maritime smokiness.

Palate: Bonfire, salty water and seashore. Something fruity behind it all. With water the fruit turns to unripe bananas.

Comments: The classic, and very, very good. 2007 is “old” Ardbeg. I need to get my hands on a recent ten years old to compare.

Ardbeg Perpetuum 47.4%

Ardbeg celebrates 200 years this year, and naturally there are some new releases involved. The first was called Arbeg Perpetuum at 49.2%, available at the distillery only (Thomas has tasting notes for that one over at Whisky Saga). To celebrate Ardbeg Day, another version, also called Perpetuum, is being released. It was made available from the Ardbeg web shop on the 4th of May to Committee Members only, but the committee is no longer a small, select group, and the web shop crashed. A lot of people decided to wait for world wide release, to happen on Ardbeg Day, 30th May. But in Norway we have the Vinmonopol, and they operate on their own schedule, with no nods to *cough*hyped*cough* Scottish distilleries, so that the Ardbeg Perpetuum that became available to order on the May release last week (8 May) is the Ardbeg Day version at 47.4%. I got mine today, and naturally had to try it at once.

perpetuum-1

Nose: Warm, peaty smoke, grilled banana, grilled apples, vanilla, some dusty malt. The smoke aqcuires a colder note with water, and I get wool dust and wellies. And “pulverpadder” (a sweet very like tyrkisk pepper, but with a dusty coating).

Palate: Concrete dust, peaty smoke, vanilla ice cream and black pepper. The finish is bitter, dark chocolate. With water I get slate and cold smoke, something fruity in the background and still vanilla ice cream.

Comments: Moreish. I am an Ardbeg-fan, still, even if the prices are getting more than somewhat ridiculous (even with this one, almost 1000 NOK for a NAS? That’s stretching it, if you ask me). But even so I am pleasantly surprised. I like Perpetuum better than I have liked most recent new releases from Ardbeg, partly because it’s more complex than the run of the mill “heavily peated NAS” (even Ardbeg’s own). Worth the price? Well, I don’t think I’m going to stock up, but I am pretty pleased with the purchase.

Box Cask Sample Peated Bourbon Cask #A5808 54%

Filled 4 July 2012, bottled 6 February 2015, peating level 43 ppm, matured in a 40 litre ex-bourbon cask.

Nose: A bonfire that someone’s thrown some juniper branches on over which spareribs are being grilled. When I add water the sweetness and heat disappears and I am left with cold smoke, flint and juniper berries.

Palate: Cold smoke, in contrast with the heat on the nose, lemons and herbs. No significant development when water is added.

Comments: Wow, that’s a bit of a split personality on the nose. I liked both varieties, but preferred the hot and sweet undiluted character. The palate is perfectly fine and demonstrates how much can be disguised with a bit of peat, this they could easily bottle and sell as far as I’m concerned, something I wouldn’t advice doing with the unpeated variety. Another dram? Well, if you won’t need to twist my arm.

Dieu du Ciel Solstice d’Hiver 10.2%

Nose: Dutch coffee bon-bons and a bourbon-y note.

Palate: Coffee, creme brulee and cognac. Dessert, coffee and avec all together i a glass.

Comments: This should probably be drunk after dinner rather than before, as I did, but it’s hard to regret drinking something this good. Highly recommended.

Consumed at The Bishops Arms, Östersund.

Myken newmake 63.4%

In order to really test the sample of Myken newmake, I lined up two other newmakes to try in parallel. One was not even a sample, Mackmyra Vit Hund is available at Systembolaget in Sweden for 319 SEK for 50 cl bottle. The other spirit I let Myken test its mettle against was a sample of Glenburgie newmake. To my delight (yes, I will happily admit to rooting for the Myken project) the sample from Myken stood its own. The Mackmyra is perhaps more polished, but it’s also a product meant to be sold and drunk as is. The Myken spirit is intended for maturation (so is most of the spirit off the still at Mackmyra, of course, but I suspect they chose the batches for Vit Hund with care). The Glenburgien had a pleasant nose, but was unfortunately undrinkable once water was added, and that’s simply not good enough in this company.

But enough waffle, here are my impressions of the Myken newmake:

Nose: Malt, milk chocolate and wet concrete. With water sulfur emerges, but also green grapes and apples and Wasa Husmann crackerbread.

Palate: Lemon, concrete, malt and a chemical pine needle character. A little sharper with water, but the malt/barley character is also emphasised.

Comments: Pretty good, on the whole. Less fruity than the other two, but it tastes nice enough to leave me wanting more. The impression of concrete interests me (it’s an aroma I rather like), and I’ll be interested to see if it follows through in the maturation.

Mackmyra Vit Hund 46.1%

Nose: Malt first and foremost. Citrus and Haribo peaches, congeners in appropriate amounts. With water comes orange peel and orange blossom. Grilled chicken breast and apricot chutney.

Palate: Malt, a hint of sulfur, yellow apples. With water the malt turns doughy, and I get strong associations to a “Full Scottish Breakfast” without managing to pinpoint why… White pudding, perhaps? Or haggis?

Comments: Quite my cup of tea. There’d be no point in maturing this, except it results in another product entirely and so why not have the best of both worlds?

Kilchoman New Spirit 5 months 63.5%

Distilled 27 Juli 2007, 50 ppm in the malt, matured in an ex-bourbon cask, bottled 26 February 2008.

Nose: Railway sleepers and rusty iron. Apple sauce, apricots and cucumber. With water jasmine and cardamom.

Palate: Soot-covered iron construction. More ashy with water, with an underlying fruitiness.

Comments: Where can I get a proper bottle rather than this puny 5 cl? Makes me wonder what the point is to years of maturation, when this is perfectly delightful as is.