Laphroaig 15 red label.... 'Hello!'
You may or may not know but my day job is as the whisky and wine specialist at a Glasgow based auction house called Mulberry Bank. When I took the job earlier this year I was very keen to instigate pre-sale tastings. Auction houses are generally quite stuffy places, lots of beards, shadows, dark corners, tweed jackets, crusty diamond earrings dangling from crustier ears and dust. Thankfully our auction house is the opposite, open, bright, spacious and, unsurprisingly, a pleasantly calm shade of mulberry. I was keen to embrace and promote whisky as something for drinking rather than as mere collectable tokens of profit. This was the inspiration behind putting together tastings that focus on old style, rare and antique bottlings. Last Friday we had our first of these pre-sale tastings, my tasting notes from the bottles we opened are below. It may have been my own tasting but without wanting to sound big headed I think it was one of the best line-ups for any UK based tasting this year. Ok that did sound big headed, but the point is essentially that in the uk these kind of bottles rarely feature in whisky tastings. It speaks volumes about the appreciation gap between UK based and continental whisky aficionados. There are good reasons for this. Firstly the majority of the ‘old bottlings’, many of which are amongst the greatest whiskies ever bottled, were largely done for Italy and various other continental European markets. Also the majority of people connected with whisky in Scotland work in the industry and as such are naturally more concerned with current market products. They shy away from talking about the fact that their whiskies have changed over the years, or bottle ageing, or any of the other issues that these kinds of tastings unearth and serious whisky nerds tend to concern themselves with. So with that in mind I was keen to try and do a few old style tastings in Scotland.
Glenmorangie 10yo. OB. 1980-1990. Single cask number: 4318. 60%. 75cl.
An old series of single cask, cask strength bottlings that are now becoming quite rare.
Colour: Gold
Nose: A nice balance between the old and the new. Clearly from a fresh bourbon cask with its aromas of linseed oil, vanilla pods, honeycomb, nutmeg and rice pudding. A very fresh and quite inviting profile that, even at cask strength, is in no way aggressive or overly hot. With time it begins to unveil notes of eucalyptus, fresh parsley, tinned chickpeas, graphite oil and a little fragrant wax. Open up further with orange liqueurs, marmalade, fragile spices and some fresh garden fruits. Really lovely development and a profile that I would describe as very classically Glenmorangie. That is fragrantly spicy, aromatic and elegant, not really a proper highlander in style but not a speysider either, something more individual between the two. Anyway I think you would be hard pressed to find a Glenmorangie these days that has this kind of aromatic complexity. Lets add water… With water it develops beautifully on green tea, wild flowers, minerals, more of these very natural and nuanced vanilla tones and some soft heathery notes. Hints of white pepper, flints, cereals, buttered toast and lilies. Wonderful stuff.
Palate: At full strength this is a big minty, spicy and oily whisky, loads of character and a big mouthfeel. Lots of sweet flavours on top of a more drying, soft tannic sensation. Excellent composure. Leafy and fresh with notes of soot, olive oil, earl grey tea, liquorice, mead, toasted brioche, fresh butter and spicy pumpkin soup. A rare example of a perfect bourbon matured winter dram, warming, balanced and with great depth of flavour. A lovely peppery quality as well that keeps you on your toes. With water: brilliant. A rich, spicy and fantastically concentrated dram, lots of green and earthy complexity and some quite resinous qualities as well. The balance between wood and spirit seems just about perfect.
Finish: Long, slightly mentholated, spicy, a little farmy, oily and with traces of minerals.
Comments: Glenmorangie are probably the leading exponents of modern wood technology these days but I think they have gone too far in that direction and the character of their great distillate has been lost. This is by far the best Glenmorangie I have tasted in years, it shows beautiful complexity, personality, development and balance. Clearly from a relatively active bourbon cask but not one that is so rigorously designed and controlled as to force the spirit into some kind of unified, souless conformity. This bottling shows just how good a fresh bourbon cask can be with Glenmorangie when the balance is struck right and the distillate is a allowed a little more free expression. Is this an extinct style of Glenmorangie?
Score: 91/100
Bowmore 12yo OB. Brown dumpy. Rotation late 1970s/early 1980s. Plastic screw cap. 40%. 75cl.
There are many versions of this one around, almost all seem to be very good.
Colour: Gold
Nose: A little tight at first but it is a freshly opened bottle. Lets give it a couple of minutes. Ahh now it speaks, typically lush tropical notes although its more focues on tinned fruits rather that the fresh fleshy kind. Lots of syrupy tinned pineapples, passion fruit puree and guava with hints of honeysuckle and a wonderfully resinous background saltiness. Those coastal notes become more and more dominant, dried seaweed, licks of brine, some lemon wax, wet pebbles and finally some very fragrant peat oils and wildflowers. A lovely mix of soft peat, mineral, coastal and tropical notes. Very typical of these old official Bowmores and not a speck of perfume in sight.
Palate: Big for 40%! Very salty, almost like burned salt, tropical fruits again, fresh ones this time, camphor, peat smoke, some very stony mineral notes, like licking wet salty granite. Brown bread, some yeasty gueze beer notes, sharp citrus juice, pineapple, citrus rind, limoncello and hospital gauze. Quite an acrid and powerful profile, very direct and not too easy but undeniably classy and quite beautiful as well. Again we’re very far away from the 80s perfumery style. More subtle floral notes of white flowers and honeysuckle come through after a while, then something like salted honey. Quite an intriguing palate, very entertaining.
Finish: Good length, very warming and full of fragrant smoke, heather and seaweed flavours, more minerals, flowers, salts and fruits. Great.
Comments: These old Bowmore dumpy OB bottlings are not hard to find and are generally all fantastic, I’ve never had a bad one.
Score: 91/100
Bowmore 21yo. OB. Seagull Label. Rotation early-mid 1990s. Batch code: L482A. 43%. 70cl.
The old 21yo bottlings were almost all stunners. If I’m not mistaken the last ‘vintage’ 12yo was the 1973. Which means this one was probably bottled around 1994/95. Anyway, it was certainly distilled in the early 1970s so were in very safe territory.
Colour: Light Amber
Nose: Quite a bit of polished sherry at first which is a bit surprising. Again a freshly opened bottle may take a while to open up. It quickly opens onto all kinds of soft, fleshy tropical fruit aromas, a big exotic fruit salad with background notes of creosote, freshly poured tar, old rope, hessian, some beautifully rich ‘aged’ qualities and fresh peaches. Really beautiful and ever so slightly understated which only adds to the charm. After time some soft notes of bonfire smoke, violets, sultanas and other dried fruits begin to come through. This is a beautifully composed nose and a style that I really adore, proper old school Bowmore. Further delicate notes of medicine, lychee, lemon skins and wax. Wonderful.
Palate: Big, drying, saline, resinous and very fruity, like a tropical fruit juice. A fantastically nervous balance between drying salty and coastal notes and big lush tropical characters. More of these great notes of seaweed, wax, tar, minerals, orange peel, lemon oil, some smoked cereals and oily medical notes like a suggestion of tcp. Still quite resinous and camphory on one side and immensely fresh, breezy and tropical on the other, a real multifaceted dram. Gets a little minty after time with also some more drying herbal qualities, like a rosemary eau de vie or something equally bizarre. Lemon thyme, wet pebbles and bitter chocolate.
Finish: Super long, clean, drying, very tropical and lively, wakes you up brilliantly. Leaves a salty crust around your gums (in a good way).
Comments: The 21yo bottlings were always superior to the 25′s in my wee opinion. This is maybe not as majestic as some of the earlier ‘vintage’ 21′s but this is still brilliant and delicious whisky.
Score: 92/100
Glenlochy 1969-1994. 25yo Rare Malts OB. 62.2% 75cl.
From one of the very first batches of Rare Malts released back in 1994. Like many of the early batches this was a low outrun bottling and there are several different examples at varying strengths. All of them are now particularly hard to find.
Colour: Straw
Nose: Thick and quite astoundingly creamy on the nose at first, like some kind of vanilla infused motor oil. Notes of riesling, white pepper, petrol, cut grass, olive oil, lemon wax, pebbles, white fruits and minerals. Quite expressive at cask strength with surprisingly non intrusive alcohol. Becomes typically old highland and farmy with some wonderful notes of hay, stables and sheeps wool. With water: it beacame kind of ‘wider’ although it is still quite austere with lots of mineral and oily qualities. Dunnage, wet earth, soft peat, a touch of salt and more farmy notes. This is no easy whisky but it is still wonderfully creamy, quite an old style charmer.
Palate: Big and drying with notes of roast chestnuts, eucalyptus, white truffle oil, wild mushrooms, vegetal notes and some very savoury cereal notes. A little quiet and closed on the palate at full strength, lets try with water… more of these creamy notes now, luxuriously creamy in fact but now with a huge herbal quality as well, like a dry herbal liqueur. A little medicinal as well with more mushroomy notes but also some fresher flavours of lemons and bay leaves. Quite light for a Glenlochy but still very elegant, austere, old style and complex.
Finish: Long, leafy, oily and mineral with notes of graphite oil, baked cereals, malted barley, vanilla cream and black tea.
Comments: I adore Glenlochy and this doesn’t disappoint, it’s a little lighter than I was expecting, old Glenlochys from this era are often a little more ‘extreme’. But this is a delightfully elegant and charming old style malt. Glenlochy is always a joy to drink, one of the most consistent of the silent distilleries.
91/100
Laphroaig 15yo OB. Red 15 label ‘Unblended’. Cork seal. Rotation mid 1980s. UK market. 40%. 75cl.
Colour: Light gold
Nose: A cavalcade of tropical fruits, bandages, oysters, seaweed, antiseptic, iodine and creosote. What a blinding nose! The topical character is super intense and the peat a little quieter than normal, you might well mistake this for an old 60s Bowmore given it blind. It evolves further with notes of lemon wax, coal, camphor, sea air and yet more intense tropical complexity. Just simply stunning, the kind of fruit quality that simply does not exist in modern whisky.
Palate: Powerful at 40% as only Laphroaig can be. Drying, dusty seaweed notes with masses of tropical fruit salad over the top. Crushed sea salt, fresh top quality espresso, dark chocoalte, devastatingly quaffable, you could demolish a bottle of this in an hour with a couple of whisky chums by your side. Burnt peat, bonfire smoke, green fruits as well, moss, charcoal, barbecue sauce, tar, tcp, mouthwash, fresh mint, eucalyptus oils, Tunes throat sweets, dried herbs, many different kinds of tea, milk and Euthymol toothpaste. Lets stop this madness.
Finish: Hugely medicinal, drying, coastal and endless with a gloriously oily and green fading peat quality.
Comments: If I had to pick a distillery that has undergone the greatest extremes of change in character due to the modernisation of its production process then I’d pick Laphroaig. I’d love to see the guys at Laphroaig who insist their whisky hasn’t changed over the years taste something like this next to the current 10yo. It could almost be from a different distillery.
Score: 94/100
Balvenie-Glenlivet ‘As We Get It’. Macfarlane, Bruce & Co Ltd Inverness. Rotation early 1970s (around 1971/72). 105.2 Proof. 26 2/3 floz (75.7cl).
This was one of the earliest bottlings under the ‘As We Get It’ banner, a title that has been used by several different companies over the years. Macfarlane, Bruce & Co were the first if I’m not mistaken. There are several versions of this one floating around, most are fantastic so I have high hopes for this one.
Colour: White wine
Nose: Unmistakeably old school despite the heat of the high alcohol at first sniffing. A sackful of minerals, wet rocks, flints, all kinds of wax, white flowers, toasted cereals, lemon juice, turpentine and sheeps wool. Gun oil , steel wool, salt, sawdust and some quite pungent farmyard aromas as well. This is very close so some old Clynelish white label with its huge but stunningly beautiful austerity. Big notes of petrol and buttered toast, another one of these old style malts that smells very much like a great aged Riesling. Hints of silage, stables, motor oil and other oily industrial characters. And all this without even adding water! Lets try that now… water doesn’t change it too much, it just somehow becomes oilier, wider and richer. The waxy qualities become more fragrant and there are more of these notes of grass, citrus and wildflowers. It keeps on developing though, you could sit with this for hours probably.
Palate: Neat: this is a huge whisky, immensely waxy, oily, petroly, gree, flinty, oddly coastal and fat. Touches of camphor, medicine, peat, more massive oily notes and some beautifully smatterings of green and citrus fruits. About as extreme in this old style as it is possible to get, super clean but also very grumpy, difficult and wild, not at all sexy, swish or easy like so many modern malts. God I love this. More notes of flowers, hay, muesli, porridge, boiled grains, coal, masses of waxy mineral notes, butterscotch and tablet. If you like this extreme old style akin to old pre-Brora Clynelish then you’ll adore this. With water: it becomes a bit more savoury and bready but there are still these beautiful flourishes of old school sweetness, fresh malt, slight vegetality and notes of mashed potatoes. It’s still massively waxy, mineral and austere.
Finish: Super long, buttery, fat, oily, laden with white fruits, hessian, sheeps wool, hay, metallic notes, more wax, flints and cereals.
Comments: What a brilliant dram! It might as well be from another planet compared to modern Speysiders, let alone modern young Balvenies. The level on this bottle and the screw cap seal were both perfect which means that this whisky is probably as close as is possible to how it was when it was bottled. Combine that with that fact that it is almost certainly a very young whisky, certainly younger than 10, and it has come from very ‘quiet’ wood and you have an invaluable window onto a long departed style of distillate. These characters just aren’t found in modern Scottish whisky making sadly. Of course this style isn’t for everyone but I adore it and I think this is a particularly stunning example. What the hell did they do at Balvenie to eradicate such a distinctive character?!
Score: 94/100
People begin to take their seats for the tasting.
If you are one of the lucky people who attended this tasting and are wondering where the infamous Highland Park tasting notes are then rest assured they have been made but I’m holding them back for a particularly stellar christmas tasting that I am in the process of putting together.
As for the rest of you who didn’t go, this was just the first of what will hopefully be many tastings. The next auction is scheduled for March 28th so the pre-sale tasting will almost certainly be around about the 27th. Keep your diaries free and make a point of being in Glasgow then because if you thought this one was brilliant then just wait till you see what we’ll be tasting next time.
