Whisky Online Blog

Lets start our festive malt porn festival with some remnants of the notorious ‘Birthday sessions’ in Alsace last month. Today we’ll do three different malts all distilled in 1960 and bottled at under twenty five years of age, so plenty old school production characters to enjoy and plenty time in glass to mellow, should be fun. First up…

Linkwood 1960-1985. Gordon & McPhail for Sestante. 40%. 75cl.

Colour: Bright Straw

Nose: Wax, old shoe polish and beautifully delicate metallic notes that signify a bit of OBE. Resin, orange peel, a little grassiness and some lovely mineral qualities. This reminds be of the old Aberlour dumpy 8yo bottlings from the early seventies, only a little more fragile and intricate perhaps. Notes of pear liqueur, blossom, honeysuckle and darjeeling tea. The nose is quite antique and fragile but the aromas are really poised and beautiful. Grows a little more flinty and austere with time.

Palate: Big waxy and grassy combo in the mouth, not disappointing at 40% at all. Green fruits, minerals, hessian, camphor and some really soft spices. No trace of tiredness and it lives up surprisingly well to the nose. Great waxy and flinty qualities, this dram carries a really enthralling austerity about it. Quite consistent with the nose with all its resinous flavors, also notes of green peppercorns, cocoa, biscotti and freshly baked bread.

Finish: Good length but not too long. All on bitter orange marmalade, wax, a little menthol and minerals.

Comments: This was bottled in 1985, the year I was born. So 1985 is a good year for Champagne, self-important Scottish whisky bloggers, Alsacian wines and bottled whiskies. It was a bad year for distilled whiskies and miners. I think when my 30th comes around in 2015 I’ll celebrate by opening whiskies that were bottled in my year of birth rather than distilled. This is a beautiful and very drinkable old Linkwood.

Score: 90/100

Highland Park 1960. 18yo. OB. 43%. 75cl.

Colour: Dark Amber

Nose: Bloody Hell! This is so beautiful. Peat, gorgeous, delicate, phenolic, lush peat with utterly perfect sherry integrated all around it. This reminds me of a slightly delicate, very old style Ardbeg. Rooty, earthy, thick, unctuous, raisiny, medicinal… Ok I’m not going to go through the aromas, its just brilliant.

Palate: Now on the palate there is less obvious peat and more gloriously clean and vibrant sherry. Beautifully dry and mineraly with notes of figs, plum jam, oily, rooty phenols, cloves, dunnage warehouses and incredibly fresh coastal notes as well. Greengages, kumquats, lychees, peppercorns, old dessert wines, seville oranges. My god this is amazing. Ok enough of this.

Finish: Censored!

Comments: I knew this would be good, but I wasn’t quite prepared for this. The nose is stunning and what’s even more incredible is that the palate lives up to it. I was thinking of saving this and comparing it to the current OB 18yo, I’m kind of glad I didn’t, I think it would have been very unfair on the current bottling.

Score: 94/100

Glenlivet 1960-1981. 21yo. OB for Nadi Fiori. 54.6%. 75cl.

Colour: Teak

Nose: We’re in serious sherry territory here. Loads of sweet, immensely clean, classical sherry characters. Bags of stewed fruits, glazed nuts, dundee cake, old brandies, delicate spices, all kinds of flints and minerals, green fruits and, after time, some wonderfully old school waxiness. The nose is really soft and immense, you wouldn’t believe it was above 54%, it feels like 46 in the nostrils. With water: Wow! Water really magnifies all the mineral, hessian and waxy qualities, it becomes drying, chocolatey and even slightly honied with notes of heather, beeswax and hints of flowers.

Palate: Wonderfully rich, oily, vinous, jammy, waxy and fruit laden. Old candied fruits, dried fruits, figs, apricots, all kinds of orange notes, dark chocolate. Although the sherry is big and full you can still tell this is an old school whisky, the characters of the distillate are still evident and the balance is near perfect. Beautiful notes of old liqueurs, both fruit and herb varieties, little vegetal aspects and some really oily notes of camphor and paraffin. With water: we’re in fruit city and Mr Orange is the mayor! Luscious fruits, mineral and waxy notes all over the shop, glorious. Background notes of bread, nutmeg, vanilla, mocha and flints.

Finish: Massive and full of all the same stuff I said above.

Comments: I had the great privilege to meet Nadi Fiori (the man behind Intertrade and High Spirits) this year on Islay, he is nothing short of a living legend, one of the old school Italian bottlers who was dealing with stuff like this in a time when many of us were still drinking Bells and coke, or in my case, weren’t even born. A time when the old school Italians like Nadi and Samaroli corresponded with the Scottish distillery via post. Hats off to him for selecting such incredible bottlings that, in these days of modern mass production, are fast becoming time capsules. What a great dram this is.

Score: 93/100

Enormous thanks is due again to Serge Valentin, I wouldn’t have been able to taste these great drams if it wasn’t for his generosity.

Ok I’m still thirsty, that Glenlivet has put me in the mood for something more, although I’m skeptical as to what could possibly stand up to the immensity of the Glenlivet and HP…

Glenlivet 39yo 1968-2008. Duncan Taylor ‘Lonach’. 41.4%. 70cl.

Lets try this random sample I had in my stash as a ‘wind down’ dram. Lets not judge it too intensely.

Colour: White wine

Nose: Malty, porridgy, a little grainy but also very pleasantly fruity, lots of white and stone fruits, flowers, tea, herbs, at first it’s a bit of a shock to the system after such immense old glories but given a little time it becomes really attractive and delicate. Charming integration of honey, fruits, cereals and subtle aged qualities. Still impressively fresh for such an age and low strength. I always love naturally low strength whiskies, something about the natural oxidisation process in the cask brings out some really wonderful fruit characters.

Palate: A little weakish at first but then explodes with loads of beautiful green fruits, gentle spices, menthol and cold tea. Some gentle minerality, more green maltiness, some grassiness, cloves, Edinburgh rock, eucalyptus, Earl Grey tea, just delicious, perilously drinkable old malt.

Finish: Surprisingly long and rich, full of green fruits with menthol and slight metallic notes.

Comments: What a big surprise and how amazing that it stood its ground next to the other heavy hitters. This is a perfect example of an old malt for drinking and enjoying, hats off to Duncan Taylor for selecting and bottling at such a sensible price. Great stuff, it’s not the most complex old dram but it makes up for it with great concentration of flavour and a complete lack of overtly woody interference or astringency. Just like when a great musician chooses the notes not to play as much as the ones they do play, the same principle goes with a good cask.

Score: 90/100

Tomorrow we’ll get even more ridiculous.

Glengoyne, "untainted by humility or common-sense."

I like Glengoyne, it’s one of those spirits that seems to age to fruit laced perfection between 28-38 years while younger expressions often display a spicy, flavoursome verve. In short: frequently delicious, often complex, always entertaining whisky. However, for me there is one nigglesome thing about Glengoyne that is written on every bloody bottle and that is the self-aggrandising slogan “untainted by the harshness of peat smoke”. Now I am not a peat-freak, I’ve tried to cultivate a healthy appreciation for all styles of whisky/key, so it really pisses me off when I see this kind of snobbishness lofted around by the distillery owners themselves (surely snobbery is our department?). It’s not all that common thankfully, most whiskies are refreshingly modest in their packaging, but just occasionally this sort of gushing, nonsensical crap can squeeze through and Glengoyne have long been one of the worst offenders. Here is an example from the blurb that is printed on the back of the seventeen year old bottling:

“Unlike most other single malt whiskies, Glengoyne has traditionally dried its malted barley using only warm air. This ensures that there is no overwhelming peat smoke in the finished malt. The result is a subtle, complex and generally more satisfying whisky is which all of the delicate flavours are fully expressed.”

Indulge me for a moment while I analyze a few tidbits from this blurbery. First up is the use of the word ‘traditionally’. I think you’ll find Mr Glengoyne that ‘traditionally’, ie over 100 years ago for arguments sake, almost all barley would have been dried with some kind of peat, wood or coal, thus deriving some phenolic traces from the resulting smoke and fumes. If you are fortunate enough to taste any whisky produced before WW2 you’ll be hard pressed to find anything without obvious traces of peat. Completely air dried barley is a more modern phenomena. Secondly, the “generally more satisfying” comment, or massive sweeping generalisation to be more precise. Surely this is entirely down to mood and taste? If on a gentle summers evening with friends I am offered a Glengoyne as an aperitif before dinner I’m sure it would capture the essence of the moment like few other malts could. However if I arrive at a warm fireplace in a welcoming bar in the dead of winter after trekking twelve miles through a soul-shredding, sub-zero blizzard, covered in the frozen blood of the wounded deer to which I had to administer a mercy killing, things will be somewhat different. In those circumstances my first thoughts are not “Man I really fancy something delicately floral with a wealth of subtle malty complexities.” No, I want something with enough peat to turn my ear wax flammable and cause tufts of sphagnum moss to start sprouting through my beard!

Peat, sometimes there's no such thing as too much.

Now as fantastic as some Glengoyne bottlings are I think they need to be taken down a peg or two with this whole peat malarkey. So here is a list of peated whiskies that I think almost all serious whisky lovers would probably rate higher in terms of quality and complexity than almost all Glengoynes. Ever. So there!

Endless Ardbeg bottlings distilled before 1977.

A plethora of Legendary Laphroaigs from pre 1978.

Countless Bowmores distilled pre 1974

Almost all Broras from before the mid seventies.

Several legendary Port Ellens

Many of the Longrow bottlings from 1973/1974

Some phenomenal casks of Glen Garioch from the late sixties/early seventies.

Almost any old Lagavulin 12yo white label.

Many fantastic old bottlings of Talisker.

Not to mention some stunning expressions of Highland Park, 1972 Ledaig, Ardmore and Caol Ila that benefit enormously from varying degrees of peat.

Obviously that is a very personal list but it is also a list that covers many of the most desirable and expensive bottlings in the world, bottlings that have become so for a very good reason. I’ll wager a single bottle of Laphroaig 10yo from the fifties would be worth more to most people than almost any Glengoyne you could think of. This is because maybe there is something about the greatest examples of peated whisky, the way they manage to retain all the subtleties of malt and fruit but with so much more, something that truly hooks peoples hearts and minds. I feel a bit bad after all that, I’m being a little unfair to Glengoyne, please remember I love the whisky, I just hate the anti peat comments. Glengoyne isn’t untainted by peat smoke, it’s just unpeated, in the same way that Lagavulin is not ‘enhanced by peat smoke’. While I wouldn’t like to see Glengoyne’s character change, I also wouldn’t like to see every other distillery making unpeated spirit as well. Variety is the spice of life and Glengoyne’s patter reads like some kind of warped whisky racism.

Glengoyne 40yo, good whisky but if only it had a little more peat. (just kidding)

I think having ranted about poor Glengoyne for so long it’s now time to redress the balance and say something much more positive about their great whisky. I tried the new(ish) 40yo in London recently and loved it but I’ve only just gotten round to writing notes for it.

Glengoyne 40yo. OB. 1968-2009. Single sherry butt. 250 bottles. 45.9%. 70cl.

Colour: Old Tokaji

Nose: High polished antique sherry with lots of bubbly fruits underneath and some remarkably fresh notes of crisp green apples and fresh limes. Hints of honeysuckle, toffee, wild flowers, cereal and butterscotch. This is really typical of these great old Glengoynes and their uber fruit style. Now there are notes of beeswax, marzipan, pear liqueur, old books, sultanas, many fruit syrups and cordials with a really gentle custardy/vanilla undertone. Lovely complexity to the nose, lets see if the palate can keep up…

Palate: Big, round, fruity and intensely concentrated, massive notes of orange liqueur, seville orange marmalade, milk chocolate, pine resin, menthol, tobacco leaf and more orange rind. This is really orangey whisky, the futures bright for Glengoyne (sorry!). Now comes greengages, more sultanas and raisins, kumquats, lychee and mulling spices. Hints of wood, spice and hessian follow with a lovely drying tinge at the end.

Finish: Long and filled with all the same fruity complexity and resinous, mouth-coating glee.

Comments: Great old whisky, we’ll forget the price for now but it is fantastic old Glengoyne with all the distillery’s trademark complexity and fruit. Considering what the 17yo has to say about the evils of peat I wonder if as you go up the Glengoyne range the older and more expensive the whiskies become the more vicious the denouncements of peat become. So on the 21yo it states “None of that brown boggy shit in this whisky” and next year’s 40yo will simply state “FUCK ALL PEAT!!!!! WORSHIP THE GOD OF NAKED MALT!!!!” Or something along those lines anyway. The Glengoyne marketing guys can have that idea for free. All I ask in return is a case of Laphroaig. And £1 million.

Score: 92/100

The words 'from the director of Titanic' really should have been a sufficient warning shouldn't they?

What can be written about Avatar that has not already been written by people who care? Avatar if you haven’t seen it was not so much a film as a thinly veiled excuse to create a traveling tech fest. A great, hulking three hour blue advert for CGI that wafted through all the screens of the land in more dimensions than necessary. This was the first time I saw a 3D film at the cinema, (Beowulf was tempting but I had just painted a wall and couldn’t resist observing the drying process) I sat with overwhelming levels of indifference coursing through me before a wall of stuff suddenly came off the screen and started wafting past my head. After my headache subsided I tried to settle into the film but it soon became apparent that this was not really a film, more like a thin, translucent cheesecloth of a story, stretched out over a vast vista of flashing insects and funky disco trees. I didn’t really dig it.

That trailer is pretty much the film minus the herculean scenes of exposition that take place in between the bits where they are dancing in funky forests or where Sam Worthington is apparently learning how to be better at doing Navi stuff than the Navi themselves. Anyway I’m not here to critique the film, its an enjoyable and curious romp in a sort of post-watershed Tellytubby land and that’s all that need be said. I think the greater challenge lies in finding the perfect whisky to accompany it. Avatar is a struggle if you get bored easily, are susceptible to headaches, are a fan of narrative cinema or not a teenage boy so the whisky needs to be more of an aid than a companion in this case. The whisky should be easy to enjoy, it should soothe and massage its way across the palate, gently reminding you that you still have that boxed set of the West Wing to fall back on. The whisky should not be a cheapo easy drinker either. There should be some semblance of flavour and character, enough complexity to keep you sharp and prevent you from drifting off during one of the pretty hour long battle scenes. This is a companion we’re talking about, a dram that will see you through to the bitter end without faltering or straying from the path. So make mine a Highland Park, in 2D!

Highland Park by Douglas Laing. Part of the new 'Unobtaneum' Series.

This is the 1978 30yo by Douglas Laing that whisky online stocks. Its a cool £198 but that should be nothing if you can afford to set up your own 3D system at home, in fact stuff it, if you can do that go get yourself the old official 1958 40yo. Bit I digress, this whisky needs to be something that can sit with you through the film, something moreish and easy to digest. Sometimes excess is called for and Highland Park can always deliver. Its a whisky that seems to bend to any demand. It has complexity of character, it seems to be constantly undecided about how peaty or fruity it wants to be. From one bottling it is an Atlantic bombshell, standing with its face in the spit of the sea on the edge of Orkney wearing a t-shirt and shorts. In another it is moody and austere, turned grumpily away with spiky minerality and a dry sense of humour. Some might describe this as inconsistency but I love the entertainment value. I love how its a distillery with so many different facets to its personality. It never lets you get bored of it, just when you thought it was safe to look away it turns up with an all new angle on an act you thought you knew so well.

As such its perfect match for Avatar, even if you can’t afford the giddying, fruit laden sumptuousness of the 1978 grab a bottle of the 12yo. Crack it open with some chums round the blue bonfire of Avatar and before long the film will be a background flicker of distant memory, lost to the mirth and blether stirred up by such a beautiful and ever-changing spirit.