{"id":1399,"date":"2014-06-03T15:30:28","date_gmt":"2014-06-03T20:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mark.abear.net\/blog\/?p=1399"},"modified":"2014-06-06T12:15:48","modified_gmt":"2014-06-06T17:15:48","slug":"johnnie-walker-tasting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mark.abear.net\/blog\/2014\/06\/johnnie-walker-tasting\/","title":{"rendered":"Johnnie Walker Tasting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mark.abear.net\/blog\/?attachment_id=1445#main\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1445\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1445 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/mark.abear.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/JW-Odyssey.jpg\" alt=\"JW Odyssey\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mark.abear.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/JW-Odyssey.jpg 640w, https:\/\/mark.abear.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/JW-Odyssey-100x56.jpg 100w, https:\/\/mark.abear.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/JW-Odyssey-300x168.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a>This month&#8217;s tasting at Trinity Hall Irish Pub was of the new Johnnie Walker product line. \u00a0Diageo Master of Whiskey, Teresa Meyer, was on hand to talk about each of the products and offer some tasting notes as well. Before getting started, we viewed the excellent video production from Johnnie Walker entitled, <a title=\"The Man Who Walked Around the World\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Y27vijCWxSg\" target=\"_blank\"><em>The Man Who Walked Around the World<\/em><\/a>. \u00a0After that introduction, here&#8217;s what we sampled:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Red Label ($18) &#8211; \u00a0Made mostly from Carhdu whisky (owned by Johnnie Walker), this is a light, peaty whisky with an aroma of mild smoke, malt, straw, honey and a taste that is\u00a0grassy with mild peat, honey, apple and pear. \u00a0The finish is light and mildly leathery with lingering peat. \u00a0I&#8217;m really surprised at the amount of peat in this whisky and it&#8217;s not a great combination with the\u00a0light and spicy flavors that can&#8217;t stand up to it.<\/li>\n<li>Black Label ($27) &#8211; A blend of 40 whiskies with 12 year minimum age and the best seller in the JW line. The nose is very good with honey, fruit and feint peat, while the flavors are fruity and mildly spicy with a bit of\u00a0peat and vanilla. \u00a0The finish is dry fruit, mild leather, mild spice and honey rounding out a mildly rich experience with nice mouthfeel and a good balance of sweet and spice. \u00a0This is nice whisky for the price and I&#8217;m surprised at how much I liked it.<\/li>\n<li>Double Black ($32) &#8211; This is the newer No Age Statement Black Label offering\/replacement. \u00a0It was previously a seasonal offering, but is now permanent. \u00a0It&#8217;s definitely similar to Black Label, but with less depth and a thinner mouthfeel. \u00a0Skip this one, go for Black Label and hope that JW doesn&#8217;t discontinue it like Green Label.<\/li>\n<li>Gold Reserve ($70)\u00a0&#8211;\u00a0Made up of whisky from Clynelish and Caol Ila distilleries, Gold Reserve (replacement for Gold Label) has a nice nose of plum and honey. \u00a0The taste is consistent with the nose with notes of honey, vanilla, ginger, peat, plum and pear, giving way to a mildly peated and leathery finish with a bit of\u00a0spice and honey. It&#8217;s\u00a0light and flavorful with a light mouthfeel&#8230; more of a summer whisky.<\/li>\n<li>Platinum Label ($100)\u00a0&#8211; This is the new\u00a018 year offering that really replaces Gold Label and is comprised of mostly Speyside whisky. \u00a0The nose is quite nice with a bit of vanilla, straw, honey, plum and cherry. \u00a0The taste is the most interesting so far with bits of\u00a0lemon drop, cherry, honey, ginger, white pepper and straw followed by a sweet and mildly spicy finish. \u00a0This whisky steps things up just a bit with a nice nose,\u00a0a good balance of spice, fruit and candy and some\u00a0decent mouthfeel. \u00a0It&#8217;s the first real competitor for Black Label at almost 4 times the price. \ud83d\ude2e<\/li>\n<li>Blue Label ($182) &#8211; This is the premier offering from JW and one I&#8217;ve been looking forward to for a long time. \u00a0It doesn&#8217;t disappoint with some cherry, plum, apple, pear, honey, peat and straw on the nose and a richer taste of caramel, vanilla, honey, peat, black pepper, ginger and orange. \u00a0The finish is sweet, fruity and spicy resulting in a\u00a0very nicely balance whisky and plenty\u00a0of flavor. \u00a0If it weren&#8217;t so expensive, I could enjoy this one.<\/li>\n<li>Johnnie Walker &amp; Sons Odyssey ($1,100) &#8211; Marius (Trinity Hall proprietor) secured a bottle of this limited offering that is a\u00a0blend of 3 malts in a fancy crystal bottle that rotates 360\u00ba while in the box. \u00a0It has a great nose of vanilla, plum, honey, cigar box, straw and mild peat. \u00a0The taste is similar with notes of plum, ginger, pomegranate, honey, vanilla, caramel, orange marmalade and light tobacco before transitioning to a light and sweet finish. \u00a0This is the standout of the night with a great nose and a rich, complex taste. \u00a0At this price, I would expect no less!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;m glad to have finally sampled the Johnnie Walker line. \u00a0Previously, I had only tasted the plentiful\u00a0Black Label, which I didn&#8217;t remember being as good as I discovered tonight. \u00a0It was by far the best value of the entire line and well worth the jump up from Red Label, which I wouldn&#8217;t bother with at all. \u00a0While Odyssey and Blue Label were impressive, their prices were much more so and put them out of consideration for sure&#8230; they&#8217;re just not worth the cost of admission. \u00a0As good as these whiskies are, there are much better ones available for much less money (Black Bull 12 and \u00a0Glendronach 12 to name a couple and Odyssey has nothing on Glendronach 15 Revival at around $80). \u00a0Johnnie Walker has quite the following and they appear to offer great consistency from year to year, which is important to plenty of people, but I still don&#8217;t see the value above Black Label. \u00a0I&#8217;m an explorer and easily bored with the same whisky night after night, so I have no daily dram to speak of. \u00a0There are plenty of whiskies yet to explore and I&#8217;m glad to have sampled these along the way. \u00a0Given an opportunity like this one, you should too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This month&#8217;s tasting at Trinity Hall Irish Pub was of the new Johnnie Walker product line. \u00a0Diageo Master of Whiskey, Teresa Meyer, was on hand to talk about each of the products and offer some tasting notes as well. Before getting started, we viewed the excellent video production from Johnnie Walker entitled, The Man Who &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/mark.abear.net\/blog\/2014\/06\/johnnie-walker-tasting\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[45,46,183],"class_list":["post-1399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whiskey","tag-blended","tag-blended-malt","tag-johnnie-walker"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p364aH-mz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mark.abear.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mark.abear.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mark.abear.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mark.abear.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mark.abear.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1399"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mark.abear.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1447,"href":"https:\/\/mark.abear.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1399\/revisions\/1447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mark.abear.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mark.abear.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mark.abear.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}