Whisky Online Blog

There has been a lot of high praise for the Caol Ila ‘Managers’ Choice’ cask that Diageo released earlier this year. It has received some very high scores from very distinguished whisky scribblers which is rare for any youngish, modern single cask these days. So I’m very interested to try it today and, considering its reputation, I think we’ll make things a little harder for it and put it up against something that might prove stiffer competition than the official cask strength that I previously had in mind for this session. Anyway chocks away and may the best dram win. Lets do it in ascending order of strength.

Caol Ila 1982-2010 28yo. Adelphi. 193 bottles. 56%. 70cl.

Colour: Bright straw

Nose: Textbook early eighties, aged Caol Ila, lots of smoked green tea, lemon syrup, wet pebbles, seashore, tincture, green apples and lime juice. Really beautiful pristine, pin sharp profile on the nose, unmistakably Caol Ila. Hints of fresh Lobster and Crab meat with fish sticks and seaweed, this stuff reeks of coastal characters. Develops some really lovely minerality along with more notes of pebbles, manure and stables. Like in the best aged peated malts that slight farminess comes in and balances out the coastal aspects beautifully. There is no harshness on this nose at all, it’s so easy on the nostrils, remarkable considering the strength. With water out comes all kinds of different tea aromas and hints of lemon juice, chamomile, nettles and damp sackcloth. This is quite a delicate Caol Ila methinks.

Palate: Brilliant white peat, immediately evolving into ash, soot, tar, chlorine, cough medicine and earth. Not as expressive as the nose so lets add water… Much better, drying notes of mercurochrome, lanolin, oysters, some flecks of white stone fruits, grapes, granny smith apples and slightly under rip pears. Very sharp and straight profile on the palate, very tightly composed. Lovely bubblegum flavours start to spring through towards the finish after sometime.

Finish: Medium-long and ashy with lots of sharp lemon juice, salt and faint bready traces.

Comments: The nose was stunning but the palate didn’t quite deliver as much as was promised, which is seemingly a pandemic issue amongst older whiskies. Anyway it is still a phenomenally drinkable and delicious whisky. The aged, old school Islay malt is a virtually distinct beast in the saner price categories but this seemingly inexhaustible supply of great old Caol Ilas continue to be excellent and affordable from almost all the various bottlers. Long may they continue to emerge.

Score: 89/100

Caol Ila Managers’ Choice. OB. 1997-2009. cask no 14185. 366 bottles. ex sherry hoggie. 58%. 70cl.

Colour: Gold

Nose: What strikes first is a very surprising, soft, sweetish phenolic aroma which slowly gives way to lots of antiseptic, germoline, gauze, gentian root, iodine, kippers and tar. The sherry seems to have done a good job of giving the whole thing a rich, velvety, oily robe and providing apparent maturity beyond its years. Feels quite thick and weighty in the nostrils. Fragrant traces of flowers and lanolin soap with a little marzipan, old rope, kreel nets and hints of root beer. With water it becomes a little more old school with some more lush fruitiness coming to join all the more typical characters. Smells much older than it is.

Palate: Pow! Lots of camphor, old herb liqueurs, hessian, dunnage, leather, lamp oil, all kinds of delicate medicinal tones and big notes of spice. With water comes lots of dried herbs, old rope, tar, camphor, iodine, paraffin, sackcloth and traces of marmalade. Sarsaparilla, root beer, lots of medicine and white pepper. Great!

Finish: Loooong! A big mouth-coating fug of fruity peat hangs around with a beautiful drying medicinal sensation and more herbaceous notes.

Comments: This stuff holds up to the best of them and is certainly worthy of much high praise indeed. A great Caol Ila and a great example of fine cask selection. I think Caol Ila might just be the most consistent distillate on the planet, it takes real skill to bottle a bad Caol Ila, you really have to be doing something spectacularly wrong.

Score: 91/100

Manager's Choice, part of Diageo's new 'controversy' range.

So they’re all finally out, everyone scrambles to get a bottle of the Lagavulin, collectors and drinkers bang their heads against blogs over the pricing, and we can all sit back and wait for the next controversial series of bottlings to arrive. I will say right now I was never fussed by the Manager’s Choice series, its a nice idea for Diageo to release a series of single casks from all its distilleries, although I’d sooner have a closed distillery selection (hint hint diageo), but it was always going to be out of my and many other people’s price range. The price seems to be where everyone is getting their knickers in a twist, its one thing to complain about festival bottlings being overpriced, but these are a limited range of premium whiskies and this is just what people are charging for them these days, I don’t agree with it but its not much use sniffing about it.

Nobby Nodrams never got any manager's choice, boohoo.

My only problem is one of price versus quality, I haven’t tried many of the Manager’s Choice range, I tried the first set of releases and out of all of them it was the Oban that stuck out. I remember scoring it something like 90/100 but I don’t have a sample to do proper notes now so take that with a pinch of salt. The point is more that the others failed to impress, there was nothing there that you could not get from another independent single cask bottling from the same distillery for at least half the price. Take the Oban again, it may have been excellent but it was nowhere near as good as the old 19yo OB Manager’s Dram from way back in the 90s, a bottling you can still buy for less than what it cost to buy the new one.

Oban Manager's Dram, why spend more for less?

I haven’t heard much to impress me from people who have tried the whole series who’s opinions I trust, certainly not enough to justify the price tags in terms of what’s inside the bottles. It seems to be difficult as there is an increasing void in taste and opinion on whisky, those who enjoy the more modern style, lots of wood technology, quite sweet. And those who prefer older style whisky, dryer, more mineraly and fruity. I would count myself amongst the latter and it is difficult to indulge many new bottlings, especially supposedly premium ones, when you feel their quality pales in comparison to more obscure, difficult whiskies and older bottlings. This is a very narrow view to take though and it is very much a personal one, the opinions of whisky nerds like me will not change the fact that all these bottles will sell anyway and the releases will be largely successful. There are also no doubt some great whiskies dotted throughout the range, not all of them will be top notch but I’m sure the Lagavulin will be excellent, it seems impossible for Diageo to bottle a bad one. I would also be very intrigued to taste the Clynelish as I have an ill disguised passion for this whisky and I already loved the Oban. Not to mention that Serge already gave the Caol Ila 94/100 on Whiskyfun, so there are surely some bottles amongst the range that justify their price tags.

Caol Ila, dependable as ever. Already considered one of the highlights of the range.

Anyway as I already said complaining will not change the fact that high prices are here to stay in terms of many official releases, and maybe that is ok in some respects. Collectors who want to have bottles to look at can save up and buy these bottles, those of us who want bottles to drink can search out the independents. The joy of finding something obscure and delectable at a great price to share with your chums is still very much a possibility. I would probably be much more frustrated if these bottlings were all amazing, precious liquid gems unearthed from cavernous warehouses that everyone would be clamoring to own and taste. What if they became the 21st century version of the old Samaroli bottlings or something similar? Thankfully they are not, they are good whiskies, solid examples of their distilleries from good casks, they just don’t make the earth move. Its reassuring to not feel tempted to scrape every penny I can together in a desperate bid to get that amazing cask of Blair Athol that I simply cannot live without! Diageo has made the effort to do these bottlings and for that they should be commended, it is obviously a big effort for a big company to produce such a fiddly series of bottlings, maybe this partly explains the cost. I would like to see them do more unique bottlings like this but maybe they could dig a little deeper into their warehouses next time, what stocks remain of Port Ellen, Brora, Glenugie, St Magdalene, Rosebank, Banff, Millburn, Glen Albyn, Glenury Royal? Maybe you could spare some of those Diageo rather than drowning them all in the pointless whisky graveyard that is Johnnie Walker Blue Label. Oh and while you’re at it Diageo, have one last little look for some Malt Mill, go on please..?