Johnnie Walker Green Label 15 Year Old

The earlier releases of Green Label were great. It is very good to hear that the recent release is also great.

Thanks for your review, @talexander.

Very nice review for a very nice malt. @talexander thanks for sharing. I had a couple of pours from your bottle after Spirit of Toronto. This particular batch is a stunner. The bottle I opened on Easter weekend didn't stand a chance.

Interestingly, Pam really didn't like it - which is funny as I thought it was right up her alley.

@talexander I am almost down to the half waymark in my last bottle of the original release. I am very happy to hear that the current offering is just as good. BTW, is the newer one corked or capped?

@BlueNote Ah - it is corked.

Does the label really say, unambiguously, that it's made from four malts—Talisker, Caol Ila, Linkwood and Cragganmore?

I have a vague memory of the phrasing being slippery enough to give them room to use pretty much whatever malts they want.

@Ol_Jas The box is very unambiguous - it very clearly says those 4 malts make up the whisky.

@talexander It would be nice to know the proportions of each of those malts. I suspect it is heaviest to the Cragganmore. I'm glad to hear that the bottle is corked. I had read back when it was first re released that they were capping the bottles.

@BlueNote The cork is also not "real" cork - it's the more stable and environmentally-friendly "fake" cork. Also, nothing wrong with screw caps at all!

@talexander

I disagree, cork makes a particular popping sound without which the whisky just doesn't taste as good

@BlueNote, I think, actually, that it would be more fun to buy the malts and try to recreate the blend, similar to @paddockjudge's Legacy work...

I've noticed some Japanese bottles, especially, that have really nice screw caps that deliver a sense of substance & quality. I dig 'em.

@Ol_Jas It's good enough for the wine industry so we may see higher end single malts moving in that direction. I think it is still a matter of perception: expensive single malts have corks, cheap blends have caps. Cork=high class, caps=lower class. We probably need to get over that.

@Ol_Jas and @talexander - unless @talexander's box is different than what's currently on store shelves, it's actually not that unambiguous​. It says the listed malts are the "key components" not only components. It seems to me that that gives them enough of an opening to use other malts as well, as long as the listed malts are present. I feel like it's even up for debate if "key" means "primary" in terms of volume, or if it's a reference to flavours. An argument might be able to be made that those malts impacts the flavour so significantly that they are "key" even at less volume than some other, unnamed malts.

This is all pure speculation on my part. Well, other than the wording of "key components" which I am positive is written on the boxes I've seen.

@Nelom , thanks for giving us a little quote. I can tell you based on professional experience that "key" means nothing. Does anyone have the full exact language? Google couldn't help me.

I hope I'm not the only one interested in little wording shenanigans like this. I work as a tech writer, and my mind is drawn toward such things.

This is a different box than what I'm quoting, there are no pictures on that one, but the "key components" part is still there.

@Nelom @Ol-Jas. Good pickup. I was pretty sure that the original edition only contained those 4 malts. The "key components" wording leaves a lot of flexibility for additional input.

Regardless, the original version is a very good malt and @talexander, whom I consider a very reliable reviewer, scores the current version 95. That's good enough for me and I'm in for another bottle. Cheers.

I happened to be at a liquor store last night (OK, three) and I took a peek at a box too. The current ones have the same phrasing in @Nelom 's picture above: "These single malt whiskies represent the key components of Johnnie Walker Green Label:"

That, to me, sounds meaningless x 2. I don't really doubt that they use those four malts a lot, but their claim on the package gives them room to use whatever malts they damn well please for any given batch.

@Ol_Jas Interesting - I didn't interpret it that way, but given the loosey-goosey terminology in marketing and packaging these days (and Diageo's history around "Pure Malt" from Cardhu), I am sure you are right. Maybe @Nozinan can play with the 4 malts, and if he creates something like the Green, then we will know!!

@talexander Maybe once I've paid off the renos I can buy 4 bottles of malt to produce 1 bottle of blended malt I can get for a cheaper price...

@talexander Hi Tom, while I have issues with cork as a closure for whisky bottles, real cork is in fact environmentally superior to the fake stuff. Cork is the bark of a specific oak tree and is harvested (if memory serves, about once every 8 years) without harming the tree. In fact, these oak trees live for hundreds of years and the bark is removed several times over the years! Cork is 100% natural and 100% biodegradable. The fake stuff is usually plastic which are made from synthetic materials and far from bio-degradable! Note that many of the cork stoppers used for whisky (think Laphroaig) are cheap/crappy composites (small bits glued together). www.youtube.com/watch

@talexander Allow me to go back to the whisky itself with a discording voice. I have waited a few weeks to make sure my bottle would not change but I have to say that I have a minty varnish note that ruined for me the otherwise excellent JWGL.

This varnish note is related also to the alcohol coming to much forward. It's too bad because first I have wonderful balance between the wood spices (shooting Cragganmore) and the smoke.

@Ol_Jas According to a recent "Scotch Noob" review there are 27 malts (he acknowledges that the figure is unsubstantiated) in the new JW Green Label. I think I recall seeing the same figure on another website as well. Regardless... I think it is delicious, so i has been welcomed next to the Monkey Shoulder as the second blend on my shelf.

@dcbill Interesting...if these distillers had any sense of transparency, we wouldn't have to guess...

@talexander Yet they'll blame the Scotch Whisky Regulations....even though most ownership groups have members sitting on the Advisory Council of the Scotch Whisky Association who could, in theory, petition the various governments to have the legislation changed. I'm convinced some powerful groups (cough-Diageo, Edrington) like the secrecy and see it as far more profitable than moving toward transparency. It's the reason I think someone like John Glaser from Compass Box is persona non grata.

@OdysseusUnbound @talexander

I don't think that the reason they don't name the 30 m alts has anything to do with SWA regulations. As long as they don't use inner staves and all the whisky is aged 15 years they can name each malt that goes into the blend.

However, they may not use all of the lesser malts each time and so for packaging reasons (not excuse) they may not want to put them on the label. Or they don't want someone like @paddockjudge to improve on their own blend, like he did with Wiser's Legacy.

@Nozinan Or they may want to highlight the Diageo-owned brands - if they have 20-30 malts in there, I'm sure some of them are sourced from non-Diageo distilleries.

This Johnnie Walker Green Label conversation makes me think that the reason for the original discontinuation of Johnnie Walker Green Label 15 yo was that Diageo felt that they could no longer supply sufficient quantities of malts from those four distilleries alone to supply it...and that they decided later, "Hell, it's too popular to discontinue. Let's just continue to put it together with whatever we can get."

I have yet to taste the 'new' Green Label. I am a big fan of the 'old' Green Label, with one bottle of it nearly finished and one bottle of it put aside unopened.

Or they just don't want us to know that it's nearly all Glendullan!