Whisky Online Blog

Life is endlessly strange. I suspected I would make good friends when I came here to Peru but the friendship I found with Stephen and Rupert over the last two and a half months has been something so left field and unexpected I think it will take a long time to fully comprehend it. This was all the more compacted at the start of last week when they both had to leave, one after the other, and return home, respectively to Ireland and England. I think it is easy to forget sometimes how vital our friends are. I found it all too easy in recent years to forget how deep a real friendship can go and how powerful an effect the presence of real friendship can have upon your life. Time here has been one long reminder of how wonderful great friendship can be. It was not grand friendship compounded by big memories and intense shared experience. It was friendship forged by the continual amalgamation of days spent working together and all the laughter, frustration and ideas that made up the foundations of those days. It was a durable friendship, one not easily dulled by the rub of close habitation and familiarity. A friendship that was born of happenstance, shared humour and common belief.

I accompanied Rupert out to the bus terminal last monday lunchtime. It was his last day and we left, appropriately enough, in a tuck tuck, loaded to the gills with his rucksacks over our knees. Riding down the Pan American highway in a familiar oven of heat and dust, it was not the sort of environment that would normally make you want to reach for a dram, nevertheless that’s exactly what we did. Rupert still had a miniature of Old Pulteney 12yo that his girlfriend had sent him as part of a care package from home over a month ago, we shared it as a silent digestive for the two ice lollies we had just bought for the road.

I don’t drink a lot of whisky here, so by default the quality of any dram I have is magnified out of all proportion by the distortion of starvation. I have probably said this a lot since I travelled here to Peru, in fact anytime I taste anything even remotely resembling decent whisky I have to restrain myself from writing an instantaneous blog post about how I have just discovered the greatest dram of all time. The best example was when Stephen and I were cooking breakfast for St Patrick’s day last week, for the Irish Coffee we had decided to serve we procured a bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label. I can officially say that standing in a muggy kitchen at 7am in the morning necking Red Label from the bottle and giggling like besotted schoolgirls is up there along with sipping 1950′s Highland Park as a divine whisky experience. In that foxhole of a kitchen Red Label was the greatest dram on earth and I was on cloud nine.

I always liked Old Pulteney, all of the range appeal to me. I love the coastal edge it always has, it has never disappointed me as a whisky, seemingly always fresh, zippy and flavoursome. But I was still surprised when I drank it in the back of that mototaxi though. I’ll admit that glugging whisky from a miniature bottle in the heat of a desert afternoon while simultaneously having your spine grated down by the suspension free ride is not the most honest olfactory environment in which to judge a whisky. However I was still taken aback by how intense the flavour of that simple whisky was to me. It reminded me of when I would be fortunate enough to have a sip of my Dad’s whisky when I was growing up. The privileged sensation of staying up late with the grownups while on a trip to Scotland and having a quiet taste of a 10yo Talisker. Those are some of the most powerful whisky memories to me, and as I sat in silence with Rupert in this horrible motorised metal bubble and passed the mini back and forth, I realised that the taste of this memory would stay with me forever as well. It is a potent experience that can make you feel like you are drinking whisky for the first time. To me that whisky was nothing but pure beauty and it seemed like the perfect liquid score to two grown men waiting silently to say goodbye to each other for a long time and trying not to cry. It also hit home just how much whisky relies on circumstance and company, a moment with a truly great friend can transform even the most mundane spirit into something special. Without vital people to share a whisky with it really is a drink without a soul, a pleasant collection of composed and naturally aided compounds and vapours, one that only comes alive when it can be bounced around the pitch of shared experience.

I will miss Rupert and Stephen, while I’m sad they’re gone from PSF I am keenly aware of the fact that you can never be so sad that it makes the experience not worthwhile. I’ll see them again when I return to the UK later this year but to say goodbye and watch them leave this place and this experience, something we’ll probably never have again, is undeniably hard. In the meantime I still have work to do here in Pisco, not to mention further traveling. I’ll just have to remember to bring a bottle of Old Pultney next time I see them.

Yesterday’s post about the Caol Ila Managers’ Choice seemed innocent enough to me at the time but it sparked quite a bit of blether on the whisky-online Facebook outpost. Much of this chatter was concerning the prices of the Manager’s Choice series of casks and the old quality versus price argument. Well, I have to agree these bottlings are too expensive for what they are, I’ve tried a few and none of them really justify their price tag, not even the big hitters like the Caol Ila or Clynelish. That said, the price is understandable in many ways, bottling twenty something single casks from each of their distilleries is not really in Diageo’s best fiscal interests and they evidently put a lot of effort into getting them right. Obviously to them the money spent is as much on PR as it is on niche, nerd-pleasing bottlings. So we don’t have to agree with the pricing but then again we don’t have to buy them either. As everyone has already pointed out there are official bottlings and independent options from many of these distilleries that are often both superior and cheaper. As always the fun is in rooting out the wee gems, sorting the wheal from the chaff, or the malt from the grain if you want an elitist and snobbish ‘malternative’ sentiment. So today lets continue to half-heartedly poke the slumbering heifer of controversy with another stab at the MC series. We’ll do another of the big four, ie Lagavulin, Caol Ila, Clynelish and today’s choice… Talisker.

Talisker 10yo. OB. 2010. 45.8%. 20cl.

Colour: Gold

Nose: Wet forest flora and lots of coastal seashore freshness. Quite austere in many ways for a standard bottling with lots of minerals, lemon juice and graphite coming through. Big whiffs of grassy peat and steel wool with sheeps wool and fresh grass, then the classic pepperiness comes bounding out. Little medicinal notes of tincture, tcp and bandages with lovely oily background notes.

Palate: Oily, coal smoke and gristy green peats come first with notes of grapefruit, hessian, white flowers, stone fruits and engine oil. Green peppercorns, smoked haddock, plasticine, blood oranges,  cranberry juice, pencil shavings and paint. Becomes steadily more herbaceous with notes of chives and wax with a little spice.

Finish: Great length and pretty big on coastal notes, camphor and pepper.

Comments: One of the best standard bottlings around, supremely drinkable but if you’re in the mood to pay attention it’s a pretty challenging whisky as well. The MC definitely has its work cut out.

Score: 89/100

Talisker 1994-2009. OB ‘Manager’s Choice’. Cask 7147. Bedega Sherry butt. 582 bottles. 58.6%. 70cl.

Colour: Warm nose full of fresh butter, parsley, honey and flecks of salt that get bigger and bigger with time. Leafy and herbaceous with notes of sorrel, mint, wet earth, seashore, pebbles, oil and graphite. Like the Caol Ila yesterday this one smells much older than it is, in fact it reminds me a little of the official 30yo’s.  Flowery minerals and sharp notes of grapefruit and white pepper. The nose is much more concentrated and compact that the 10yo. Lets add water… now it’s just more leafy, more mineraly and more citrusy.

Palate: Buttery and chocolatey with after eight mints, orange marmalade, coriander, digestive biscuits, cereals, lots of peat smoke, greengages, fried chicken breast with a wholegrain mustard sauce (what a stupid tasting note). Surprisingly palatable at full strength but lets do the aqua thing all the same… With water there is some more intense notes of green peppercorns and more zingy citrus notes. Not too far from the 10yo in its ‘reduced’ profile.

Finish: Really similar to the 10yo now, maybe some more up front flavours of vanilla and bit more mouth-coating.

Comments: It’s top-notch stuff for sure but for me it’s still the same score as the 10yo. So one is £30 and the other is £300. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions from that but at least the quality is consistent.

Score: 89/100

Tomorrow: something that’s less likely to annoy people. Maybe.

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