Brenne Ten

Interesting. I would be interested to try this. I may have had cognac once in my lifetime so I couldn't really point out how it would affect the end product.

I don't know if I qualify as an intensity buff, but whilst this style may not be my go to, you've certainly painted a very appealing picture @Victor!

@Victor, a nice review for a nice whisky. I've had Brenne with you on more than one occasion, I like it. I also like brandy, especially some Armagnacs and Cognacs. Brenne is about as far away from "intense" as a whisky could possibly be. A nice easy sipper... Sunday morning stuff.

@casualtorture I was blessed enough to have @numen spring some long-aged, 20 and 30 yo, hot-shit Cognacs on me during some tastings. Wow! There is all the difference in the world between the better Cognacs and the inexpensive mass-market products. Just like whisky. So I would not generalize too much about Cognac, just as I do not generalize about whisk(e)y as relates to the quality of the beverage. It is fun to read Jim Murray on the subject of Cognac. He hates Cognac, with an abiding passion. To paraphrase my understanding of what he, and I, would say about its influence on whisky, it makes the whisky fuzzy, sweet, and diminishes complexity. That said, complexity is not everything in the experience of consuming an alcoholic beverage. There are entirely different moods for entirely different sorts of beverages with different flavour profiles. Sometimes one wants to be able to pick out many distinct flavours, while at other times one may want just to settle into a nirvana-like blissful blur. This Brenne Ten gives the latter sort of experience, with an extraordinarily unusual sort of sharp-edged lead-up to accompany it. Note that if what you want is blissful blur then you want to add some water to your Brenne Ten. Without water the experience is a much sharper one.

N.B. Brenne Ten is similar to the NAS Brenne Malt in its softness, but it is dissimilar in that the NAS Brenne does not have the incredibly zippy progression of flavours effect experienced here.

@RianC, I bet that you would both find Brenne Ten interesting,...and like it, or more than like it.

@paddockjudge in the past we have had the standard NAS Brenne on more than one occasion. On those occasions it was generally very well liked by all of those present, though @Nock was likely an outlier, if he had any of it with us.

For me, Brenne Ten is outstanding for certain moods. I will be very interested to see whether air exposure diminishes the "becoming sharper in the mouth as time passes" effect with open bottle time. I hope that long air exposure does not diminish that effect, because that experience is something very interesting and unusual to encounter. I have run into something like that in only 2 or 3 other products.

Thank you, gentlemen, for joining in!

Not sure whether this would be the right thing for me, @Victor, but I certainly enjoyed reading your review. Having said that, I once had a sample of a Hanyu finished in a cognac cask (the "Seven of Spades") and it was excellent. I am not against Sunday morning flavours either, for example à la Compass Box Asyla. I have never seen this in Continental Europe though, therefore difficult assess, sadly.

@Pierre_W, Brenne it is good to hear from you. Brenne Ten is unusual enough that it is well worth a taste even if it does not become a favourite.