Tag Archives: Single Malt

Corsair Triple Smoke

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Single Barrel Malt, No Age Statement, 40% ABV, $50

This is Whisky Advocate’s 2013 Artisan Whisky of the Year. Here’s Corsair’s description of their unique whiskey:

We take three fractions of malted barley, each smoked by a different fuel – cherry wood, peat, and beechwood – to craft this deeply complex whiskey.

It’s a single barrel malt whiskey, not just a single malt (i.e. from a single distillery) or a small batch. This is the smallest of batches.

If you like peated malts, then the nosing is wonderful, rich and different, yet familiar. The aroma is a sweet mixture of rich, intense smoke, tobacco, hay, grass, toffee and overripe fruit, particularly peach, banana and dark cherry. I love the smell of this whiskey!

Wow! The flavors are huge! It starts with tart sweet fruit and transitions smoothly to wood and smoke without losing the sweetness, then introduces spicy ginger and white pepper that slowly fades along with the smoke. The finish is lightly woody with just a hint of smoke and a mildly lingering malt flavor. The fruit on the entry is cherry, banana and ripe peach along with sweet vanilla, honey and toffee. The vanilla and toffee carry through with the spices while the smoke dances around in the background. I’m falling short on the description of this fantastic whisky. It’s fabulous! If you can find it, then get some!

Bowmore 12 Year Old

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Islay Single Malt, 12 Years,
40% ABV, $39

Thanks to Mark E. again for the sample. He’s been sampling Islay Single Malts and sharing them with me. I don’t think that I ever would’ve ventured this far into the Islay region without his excitement and encouragement.

The sweetness is very forward with a mixture of smoke, peat, salt and grass in the background. The sweet aroma is caramel, butterscotch and just a hint of orange zest. After a while I start to smell fresh cut hay and a drop of maraschino cherry. The nose transforms to sweetly smoked peat to grassy smoke with more emphasis on the grass.

The taste is smoky orange, lemon, vanilla and ginger at first. The ginger and smoke linger through to the finish, where the smoke fades into a leathery charred oak with black pepper arriving midway through and lingering on with the wood. The tangy fruit fades quickly, while the vanilla is joined by a mild buttery toffee and fades slowly. The sweetness lasts quite a while and provides balance to the peppery, bitter finish. The experience is somewhat choppy as the phases are transitioned. The initial flavor is sweet, tangy and spicy, then sweet and spicy, then bitter and spicy. It’s hard to describe… not impressive, but not bad. It’s a mildly peated, fruity, spicy Islay with plenty of wood. I’m betting that an older expression would work much better.

Bruichladdich Port Charlotte: The Peat Project

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Islay Single Malt, No Age Statement,
46% ABV, $50

Thanks to Mark E. for this sample!

The color is a pale yellow. On the nose, there’s plenty of sweet, peaty smoke with grapefruit, toffee, vanilla and a bit of ginger in the background. Giving it time to breathe tames the smoke a bit, although it wasn’t overpowering before, and reveals a soft grassy aroma with just a touch of honey. This is a very enjoyable whisky to breathe in. The taste is at first sweet, then turns immediately to soft smoke and peat. The next wave brings a salty collection of fruit and spice with a chewy leathery texture entering next. The finish is leathery charred oak, smoke and white pepper as the sweetness lingers and fades along with the salt and peat. That salty, peaty taste returns again as the wood and smoke diminish. The sweet flavors are butterscotch, honey and vanilla with a generous ginger and black pepper bite. The fruity flavors are grapefruit, orange and peach. There’s a lot of flavor here and I like it all the way to the finish, where there’s a bit too much bitterness to balance with the other flavors. The smoke becomes a bit more prominent with time. A splash of water restores some balance as it enhances the fruit, subdued the spices and cleans up the oak tannin. Even the smoke moves to the background a bit.

Although this whisky is not for me, it is very good and should appeal to Laphroaig fans who want something a bit less bold.

Laphroaig 10 Year Old Original Cask Strength

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Islay Single Malt, 10 Years,
58.3% ABV, $53

Thanks to Mark E. for this sample!

The smoke and alcohol are readily evident in the aroma, along with peat and salty sea breeze. This is against a backdrop of butterscotch, charred oak, vanilla wafer, grapefruit and just a hint of apricot. The taste is very bold! The initial flavor is tangerine, grapefruit, lemon, vanilla, tobacco and apricot followed by a burst of butterscotch, vanilla and ginger that give way to a bit of iodine and grass. The finish is smokey white pepper and fades to a slightly salty and leathery oak bitterness. The smokiness remains and the pepper lingers for a long time. All of this distracts from mild sweet tobacco that still remains in the background. Adding water really tames this beast and makes it much more enjoyable. The aroma becomes mostly grass and toffee as the smoke moves to the background and the salty sea breeze becomes still sea air. The citrus becomes ginger and the alcohol burn is brought under control. The taste become more fruity and sweet with notes of apple, tart cherry, peach and grapefruit to accompany the vanilla and peat. A mild smoke aspect remains as does the white pepper that arrives in the finish. The ginger is much milder and the bitterness gives way to salt and a hint of leather. After a while, the remnants are of salty peat, licorice and charred oak and this final finish has somewhat of a numbing quality to it. Some water is definitely needed to subdue this animal. It’s wild and woolly!

My impression of this complex whisky is diminished by the bitter, numbing finish (helped out much by water). The tangy flavor is too much at times for the milder fruit elements to compete with and disappears quickly, which leaves the smoke, peat and spice to complete the experience. After a while, the balance improves but is never really achieved. For me, it just doesn’t work that well (and I know it does for many). I’ll stick with Ardbeg Ten Year over this one.

Ardbeg Ten Year Old

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Islay Single Malt, 10 Years,
46% ABV, $40

Thanks to Mark E. for this sample.

Smells of sweet, salty seawater with smoke, peat, grass, honey and toffee greet the nose. The taste is of orange, ginger, vanilla, caramel and smokey peat. These flavors give way to a bit of lemongrass and white pepper as a smokey, woody licorice bitterness complete the experience. The bitterness of the aftertaste is subtle and the sweetness fades slowly along with the pepper. This is fantastic stuff!

Here’s the description from Ardbeg:

Ardbeg Ten Years Old is revered around the world as the peatiest, smokiest, most complex single malt of them all. Yet it does not flaunt the peat; rather it gives way to the natural sweetness of the malt to produce a whisky of perfect balance.

Best of The Whisky Advent Calendar

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I’m delinquent in summarizing my favorites from The Whiskey Advent Calendar. Here are my top 5:

  1. Master of Malt 50 Year Old Speyside (3rd Edition)
  2. Glenfarclas 1981 Family Cask Release V
  3. Glenfarclas 105
  4. Glenkinchie 20 Year Old (2010 Release)
  5. MacAllan 10 Year Fine Oak

The only affordable offering is the MacAllan, but I may spring for the Glenfarclas 105 at some point as well.

Master of Malt 50 Year Old Speyside (3rd Edition)

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Speyside Single Malt, 50 Years, 43% ABV, $596

That is not a misprint! You read it right, “50 Year Old Speyside” whisky for just under $600! It’s the grande finale of The Advent Calendar from Master of Malt. Just a 30ml sample will set you back $33! I just hope that its the best of the bunch, which is a pretty tall order. Here I go!

The color is amber and the nose is lightly smokey, peaty and grassy. There’s definitely a new aroma here that I’m having trouble putting a label on. In the meantime, I sense toffee, honey and the most distinct grapefruit I’ve ever sniffed in a whisky. The other aroma is a feint menthol mixing with the smoke and peat. The last smell that I detect is old cigar box. It smells great!

The taste leads off with grapefruit and orange paired with vanilla and toffee. This transitions to wood, mild smoke and peat with a brief bold bitterness that fades into the aftertaste very nicely. During that bitter interlude, a note of ginger arrives and fades to mild white pepper. The aftertaste is mildly woody with a white pepper taste, but very little heat. It’s so soft and lingers a good while. During the transition to the finish, I detect that menthol like flavor for just an instant and its subtle, yet distinct. Wow! This is impressive stuff! I wish I could spend some more time with it, but it’ll be gone in very soon, only to live on in these tasting notes… at least for me. The truth is that I really didn’t want to like this whisky because it’s too far out of reach, but I’m glad I was able to sample something like this for future reference.

In their bottling notes, Master of Malt announces:

Here it is – the third edition of our astounding, palate seducing, sensation that is our fifty year old Speyside Single Malt Scotch Whisky! This bottling from our Secret Bottlings Series is packaged in a redesigned bottle and label. This is quite literally whisky heaven in a bottle – the flavour is intense with perfect structure and the finish is astonishingly long.

The MacAllan 10 Year Old Fine Oak

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Speyside Single Malt, 10 Years, 40% ABV, $34

The nose is lightly peated toffee, grass, orange and ginger. The grass is feint and the ginger arrives last. After being allowed to breath, a mild smoke aroma appears. This is one of the easiest to pick out distinct aromas so far… very nice. The taste is immediately and consistently a balance of sweetness, bitterness and spice. Orange and ginger with apple and vanilla with mild oak and just a bit of peat. There’s also bitter honey and white pepper. The aftertaste is long wit the spicy pepper lingering long after the sweetness dissipates. In the end, there is only a mild oak, but without the leathery feel. Anyone looking for a heavy wood influence will be left unsatisfied. For me, this is a nice young Scotch whisky and only the second MacAllan I’ve had… both 10 year old and this is the better of the two.

According to the bottling notes:

This 10 year old from Macallan was matured in a mix of bourbon and sherry casks.

Longmorn 1997 Cask 163310 (Berry Brothers and Rudd)

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Speyside Single Malt, 14 Years, 56.7%, $73

This whisky is a pale yellow with an equally subtle nose of honey, corn, grassy peat and feint smoke; however, the alcohol is not so subtle on the nose. A couple of splashes of water reveal toffee and a hint of vanilla. The taste is peppery, tangy and woody. There are hints of vanilla and honey, but mostly the bitterness of wood and a peppery burn that remains as a bit of dull smoke arrive. There is a brief taste of ginger up front as well. I’m not impressed with this one.

Here are the bottling notes from BBR:

This was distilled in 1997 at Longmorn and aged in cask 163309 before bottling in 2011 by Berry Brothers and Rudd. This is a complex, full-bodied and aromatic whisky, with honeyed, malty flavour.

Glenfarclas 105

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Speyside Single Malt, 10 Years, 60% ABV, $92

The first characteristic I notice is the color, which is dark amber. Its a richer color than any of the previous whiskys, excepting the bourbon. Even through the alcohol burn of the high proof, I can tell that the nose is rich with a sweet and mildly smoky aroma. I’m going for the water right away.

Now, that’s better! The nose is rich with smoke and peat, but its not strong. The toffee, honey and vanilla blend to add a sweetness that adds to the richness and a gentle ginger element completes the story. The taste is immediately fruity and tangy along with the candy sweetness. The ginger is in perfect balance with the sweetness, while the flavors of orange, vanilla, toffee and the bitter woods dance around in my mouth. This is fantastic stuff. A mild peppery and woody aftertaste is complemented by a slightly salty tanginess. I do believe that this is the best whisky I’ve had since the Glenfarclas Family Cask Release on the first night. I might have to get a bottle of this one.

Here are the Glenfarclas 105 bottling notes:

Glenfarclas 105 is a superb cask strength whisky, really bold and punchy. In 2004, the Malt Maniacs rated this the best “Bang for your buck” whisky.