very drinkable – Page 5

Springbank Vintage 2000 for Jon Bertelsen 58.5%

Bottled in 2008, cask number 401 gave 322 bottles.

Nose: Potato crisps with paprika. Malt and vanilla with a touch of smoke. With water I get balck pepper and a dose of barbequed chicken.

Palate: Smoke, ashes and malt. With water, much of the same. Not that this is a peat monster, the smoke is contained, but very clear. Salt bisquits and on the finish something vegetational.

Comments: Bottle-kill. The last few cl have been hanging around the bottle for a while, so that might have affected the taste. Takes a lot of water. This was the first Springbank I liked well enough to buy a bottle of, and it’s therefore a sort of milestone in my personal whisky history.

Arran 1997-2013 Sherry Cask #937 55.8%

Nose: Dried apricots, milk chocolate and thyme. Witn water I get honey, some lemon and malt. There’s also something flowery on the nose, tending towards lilacs without feeling too perfumy.

Palate: Orange marmalade and then bitter oak which softens substantially on its way through the mouth and becomes cream and milk chocolate on the finish. Fascinating. Water does not change that, but adds a floral note, and reveals malt on the finish.

Comments: This is the shit. The bee’s knees. I recently tried one of this year’s casks, presumably on its way to Vinmonopolet, and it was lovely as well. Quite simply one of the best buys at Vinmonopolet right now, at less than a thousand NOK. And since the importer is nice enough to list each cask separately (and believe me, that adds expense and work) you know exactly what you get when you order it.

Glen Spey 17 years Cadenhead Small Batch 46%

From 2 ex-bourbon hogsheads. Blind tasting.

Nose: Immediately some gin notes, juniper and a hint of liquorice. That disappears after a while and instead I get orange, milk chocolate and eventually malt. Water brings out pear ice lollies and vanilla.

Palate: Orange chutney (is there such a thing?), in other words: Spiced orange marmalade. Grain dust and a little metal.

Comment: I like it. I’d love a top-up and would even buy a bottle if the chance offered.

Mackmyra Vit hund Newmake 46.1%

The newmake bottled as Vit hund is of the variety Mackmyra calls “Elegant”, distilled from unpeated malt.

Nose: Sulfur, a touch of apricots, clear malt notes, like a grain store. Almonds and a little fennel. With water I get lemon and a bit of acetone, then honeydew melon and almond essence. Sulfur and congeners throughout.

Palate: Spice, peaches, hint of pineapple. Grainstore as well. A sharp note on the finish. With water there are more spices; cardamum and coriander, as well as baked, mealy apples.

Comments: This is nice enough to beg the question of whether maturing it is really neccessary. On the other hand it’s nice in a very different way than whisky, so perhaps, “Both, please” is the correct response. There is a lot both on the nose and the palate, and it opens beautifully with water. There is newmake roughness, of course, but that is to be expected and personally I rather like it (if you like your whisky smelling of tar I guess you may like sulfur as well, though there will probably be a lot of people who like one or the other and some will like none). Clear malty and grainy notes leave you in no doubt what sort of spirit this is, also a good thing.

Bunnahabhain Bn2 Elements of Islay 56.1%

The Elements of Islay series is bottled by Speciality Drinks.

Nose: Light smokyness, green wood burning, with rather a lot of leaves still on the branches. Banana and honey. More fruitiness and sweetness with water, barbequed peaches and rosemary.

Palate: Cold fireplace, ashes and coal. Maltiness and sweetness. Water lights the fire (strangely enough), the smoke becomes warmer. Underneath there is banana toffee and yellow apples.

Comments: I can only state (categorically) that peated Bunnahabhains are nice. Very nice.

Thanks to Daniel for the sample.

Arran Sherrycask 1998-2014 cask #43 54.2%

Distilled 19 January 1998, bottled 10 February 2014.

Nose: Vanilla, citrus and flowery notes. Cinnamon and nutmeg with water, after a while green apples.

Palate: Vanilla and sap. A little more bitter with water, but also more depth. A hint of cigar smoke and spice.

Comments: A fantastic nose, and a nice taste. A little bitterness on the finish detracts, but overall a very, very nice dram and pretty much perfect on a warm spring evening in Trondheim. A good candidate for this year’s summer whisky.

Tasted half-blind. I knew the importer, but not the whisky. I’d never have guessed that this was from a sherry cask, but with hindsight I see that the spices and the cigar smoke are clues I should have picked up.

Box Försmak bourbon cask smoky newmake 20 months 57%

Nose: Strong similarities to the Kilkerran WIP batch 1; more like aquae vitae than whisky, but very, very nice.

Palate: Malt with an aquae vitae and spruce profile.

Comments: Very promising, but also quite drinkable as is.

(Tasted at Trondheim Whiskyfestival 2014.)

Gjoleid bourbon matured 47%

The label is almost too informative, but here are all the details: First fill, American oak, 200 liter casks. Matured for 3.5 years. Malt: Pale barley, pale wheat, beach wood smoked barley. Cask number 9359.

And it contains wheat malt. Interesting.

Nose: It smells like whisky, and much less of congeners than a three year old can be expected to. A bit of lemon, a bit of malt, but a rather closed nose. With water it develops a somewhat surprising note of eucalyptus, with a persistent grain (as in dried barley and wheat, not as in “grain whisky”) character underneath.

Palate: My brain may be stuck on the ingredients list, but I actually think it tastes of driftwood and wheat husks. Water turns it sharper and brings out the eucalyptus from the nose, as well as some dry wood and a little newmakey roughness.

Comments: This is not bad at all. Arcus are not just playing at making whisky, that much is obvious. It would probably not stand up to a really good single malt, but then, at three, it can hardly be expected to. I’m looking forward to the next chapter.

Bowmore 100° Proof 57.1%

We visited my parents on Sunday and this was temptingly placed on the kitchen counter, so I grabbed the opportunity to write tasting notes for it. My mum was quite pleased with the purchase, complaining only that it seemed to disappear very quickly.

Nose: Orange peel, juniper berries, pine needles, surprisingly little smoke. Only with water does the smoke manifest, as well as green apples and (smoked) meat.

Palate: Warm peat smoke, salty sea, tar, orange, spice. With quite a bit of water I also get apples and spicy sponge cake.

Comments: I will definitely buy a bottle if I get the chance.

Caperdonich 1972 34 years Duncan Taylor 55.6%

These notes should have been written a year ago. The bottle has been opened for longer than that, and the level has been below half for at least that, so take that into account when reading these tasting notes.

Caperdonich bottled by Duncan Taylor, distilled November 1972, bottled April 2007, bottle 141 of 198, cask number 7435, 55.6%.

Nose: Peach and honeydew melon, oregano. After a while some apple.

Palate: Apples and oranges, cinnamon, juniper (wood, not berries).

Comments: As expected, it’s past its best, and is a good example of the fact that saving that last dreg from that fantastic bottle is not really a good idea, unless you decant into a suitable sample bottle. This much air with this wee drop of whisky almost invariably goes wrong. Still, this is a cracking dram.