No Nonsense Whisky

It is hard to overstate how strongly being badly burned by a bottle purchase can colour your future attitude towards the whisky which did the burning. I've had the great Lagavulin 16 yo in the past, from more than one bottle...so I know from whence the frequent goo-goo eyes for that whisky derive. At its best it is fabulous. I would love to own bottles of the Lagavulin 16 yo which I sipped in 2010 and 2011 from the bottles of others. My own only Lagavulin 16 bottle purchased 7 years ago did not taste like that, at all. I still have been unable to finish that bottle because it has so little appeal and so little flavour. I can't get my guests to drink it either. And I have not trusted Lagavulin 16 yo since that time to buy another bottle. When I want Lagavulin I go to the flavourful stuff, viz. the 12 yo Cask Strength. The DEs are nice too. I tried the new special release 8 yo and found it perfectly acceptable and certainly much better than my bottle of 16 yo, but in future I expect that the only Lags I will be buying will be 12 yo, DE, and maybe the occasional independent bottling

Vin, it is really fun to watch you working your way into the peated whiskies. For many, probably most, the heavily peaty/smokey products are an acquired taste. But there are also newbies out there who glomp onto the heavy peat and smoke the very first time they taste it.

@Victor I agree the 16 has been variable the last few years, but the most recent one I got last September was much more like the earlier versions that turned us all on. When it is right it is great and doesn't need to be anything more than 43%.

@NNWhisky Good to see that you finally saw the light through the bottom of your tumbler and got yourself a proper nosing and tasting glass:-) Keep up the good work.

@Victor I'm relatively new to whisky so, thankfully, I haven't experienced such a betrayal. I can imagine it's not a great feeling though. If Highland Park suddenly changed my beloved 12 year I would be most distraught!

@BlueNote well I still despute the 'proper' part but it has appeased a great many folk. I'll have to get a backup or two as I seem to break glencairns more often than my trusty tumblers

@NNWhisky I went through 2 Glencairns in first month of owning them, banned wife from washing them and have same 2 glasses for nearly 2 years. Always hand wash and rinse with bottled water then hand dry with paper towels, just to ensure no chemical taint.

@Pete1969 to be fair, it is ALWAYS the dishwasher that breaks them. I just loathe washing up with a passion. The only one I ever hand wash is the lovely crystal tumbler Cumbria Crystal gave me

@NNWhisky, it gives me no pleasure to report on bad bottles and batches of whisky. If I had my own way everything I bought would be outstanding. Regarding HP12 yo, I have no interest in being a downer, but I can assure you that @Nock owns a bottle of Highland Park 12 yo which would make you drop your gonads...right onto the floor.

I think that the best thing is to rejoice in the large amount of really good whisky which we do have at our disposal. Consistent quality is an objective for which the distilleries continually aim, but which is very difficult for them to achieve in practice. The bottom line is that those distilleries are going to find a way to sell every ounce of whisky they make, no matter how bad the casks may be. We hope that they have selected all good casks. Reality dictates that they will make some mistakes in their cask selection and cask management. Someone is going to be buying those mistakes.

@NNWhisky I know what you mean about the breakage, mate. For everyday drinking I just use a tumbler with a bit of a narrowed opening, it just has a nicer heft and weight to it and I don't have to give myself whiplash trying to get the whisky into my mouth. It's made by Speigelau. I also have a nice one from Villeroy & Bosch. But I always use the Glencairn for serious nosing and tasting.

@Victor Yes, somebody pays dearly for those mistakes and it can put you off for a long time. My first experience with Bowmore 12 put me right off until I got a bottle of Laimrig some years later.

Speaking of Bowmore, I had a taste of Glenlivet Founder's Reserve today from a friend who was curious. We both agreed that there was a significant note of the old Bowmore FWP (French Whore's Perfume) in there. Bloody awful stuff.

@BlueNote Agree about the Glenlivet Founder's - I wouldn't even disinfect with it.

Interesting about the Bowmore 12. I tried the 12, 15 Darkest (most coloured) and 18 from a taster set in order to PREPARE myself for the Laimrig my BIL had sourced for me. And then I had no interest in it. Then I tasted the Laimrig (in those days they had numbered bottles). And more recently Tempest.

Maybe Bowmore just needs CS bottling.

Bowmore just needs to outsource all their stuff to the IBs.

@Victor , great comments on the bad barrels. You'd hope that they all just end up washed out in huge batches of JW Red or whatever, but I suspect that's a little too optimistic, and the occasional bad batch of a normally high-quality product (say, HP12, but whatever) has at least one "bad apple" to blame.

Speaking of which, has anyone noticed that people misuse the rhetorical device "bad apples" these days? The idea is supposed to be that one bad apple spoils the whole bunch, like our hypothetical bum cask spoiling a whole batch of HP12. But most people seem to imply that a rhetorical "bad apple" is just an exception and everything else is just fine—nothing to see here—move along now, move along.

Hi All, I'm back to my usual weekly hijinks for the time being! This week I'm trying one of last years Glenfiddich experiments. This one has been finished for 12 weeks in casks that held IPA. I'm sure a lot of you have tried it, what did you think?

Thank you for your review, Vin PF!

I think that you captured it well, that the Glenfiddich IPA whisky is muddled between two competing styles. I would say that the resultant flavour is 'neither fish nor fowl'. That seems to be my impression of all of the beer-barrel whiskies I have tried. They don't get anywhere with their degree of finish. If they did have a lot more beer influence some would like the flavour variation while others would wonder what the point is of having a whisky taste a lot like beer. For me it all seems like one big experiment in substituting hops bitterness for either peat bitterness, overused-oak-bitterness, or a combination of the two. We all have our individual taste preferences. In those whiskies which feature a bitter component of flavour I prefer mine to come from peat. And I would rather taste it sharp-edged than fuzzy. Those beer-finished whiskies tend to be fuzzy, sort of like a bunch of gnats buzzing around your head.

I like almost all styles of beers OK, but I consider hops to be a rather crude blunt instrument for establishing a bitter balance to the sweet maltiness of barley brew. That is one reason why I prefer whisky to beer, and why I prefer whiskies without beer cask finishes to those with beer cask finishes.

@Victor very well put indeed. I was thinking about purchasing the XX soon as I remember quite liking it and it has a good story that will make for a decent video. It's an expensive drop though

This week it's a distillery that splits the field somewhat. Known for high prices, excessive colouring and bottling at 40% The Dalmore is either loved or hated. The Luceo is one of the, now discontinued, travel retail range from The Dalmore and. for me at least, falls short on a number of points.

So-so quality and relatively expensive. Go' eet!

Thanks Vin PF.

Good morning Connosr (for me at least). This week I have something of a curiosity. A secret bottling from a shop in Carlisle called House of Malt (online shop with shipping to EU available). Part of a range of 3, the Highland 10 was surprisingly interesting. I'm no where near confident enough to pin down the distillery but fun nonetheless. @Victor there's even a big ol mistake in the video for you to find :)

Mistakes? I found a couple: 1) Old Pulteney sometimes uses sherry casks, so that is not a reason to eliminate it from consideration for the distillery of the Secret Highland House of Malt bottling, and 2) you said you'd post a link to House of Malt in Carlisle and did not, at least on Connosr. Others? Do tell.

This whisky sounds like a great bargain for the money.

I would like to hear you review the House of Malt Islay whisky, mostly to see whether anyone on Islay other than Bowmore will sell them whisky.

@Victor it was the sherry mistake, I knew you'd spot it. The link is in the youtube description. I didn't share here as I wasn't sure if it was in the spirit of the site

Sure, I don't think that anyone on Connosr would mind a link to a commercial site, for informational purposes. Without that link we would not know the specifics of these whiskies which are available for sale.

@Victor Fair enough. Here is the link to the specific product: houseofmalt.co.uk/product/…

From here, the site can be navigated easy enough. UK dwellers can get next day delivery but I believe they also ship to Europe.

On a personal note, I think they have some of the most reasonable prices for specialist whisky retailer online

@NNWhisky

One of the reasons you might have a hard time finding the distillery of origin is that this is a single cask bottling. OBs are a blend of many casks, and single cask signatures don't come through as much. That's why some IBs don't taste like their distillery.

@Nozinan Funny thing about these ones are they are regular stock so should be representative of the distillery. Having said that, I severely doubt the distilleries would sell of their top quality stock for cheap so I'd expect the liquid that went into to these to be slightly sub par (although I have assurances they pushed for as high quality as possible)

Just been looking through my stats and, aside from my own sources, Connosr is my top external source for views. As a [sort of] treat, here is my trailer from almost exactly a year ago. Apologies in advance for the terrible music, opening graphic, editing and presenting skill

For this week's video I'm heading a little bit over the Atlantic Ocean (when starting from Scotland of course!) and having a look at some Young Malt made the Icelandic folk. In summary of the video, it's young and has strong flavours of straw. It's also very expensive for such a small bottle. But overall, it's an interesting drink that shows promise in an aged product.

Hi Everyone, I didn't post last week as instead of a proper whisky video I posted a 'life vlog'. Back to normal this week, and something of a controversial subject as this one was voted best whisky in the world in 2016 by everyone's favourite whisky writer, Jim Murray.

Batches! Almost no one has actually tasted the Crown Royal Northern Harvest Rye batch which Jim Murray called World Whisky of the Year 2016. The batches from which most of us, including me, have bought bottles, are apparently of much less interesting quality. There are several sites which address this issue online.

N.B. in the great and geographically vast nation of Canada, by law, any whisky made in Canada can be called Rye Whisky, whether or not it has any rye grain in it. The 51% rye content rye to which you refer is the USA rye whiskey legal requirement.

Vin, thanks for your review!

That bit about the Canadians calling all Canadian Whisky "Rye" is a Canadian historical cultural thing.

@VinPF, e.g.@paddockjudge's recently posted picture of Century 25 yo 100th Anniversary of the Calgary Stampede, which is a most excellent whisky and a big favourite of mine, too, shows the Canadian/Canadien Rye Whisky label. This whisky has no rye grain whatsoever in it. It is 100% corn whisky.

connosr.com/3-spirits-youd-take-on-an-dese…

@Victor thanks Victor. A wealth of info as always. It's a real shame that the batches can differ so wildly. You'd think that with something like 50 on site distilleries they'd be able to even out the deviation

@NNWhisky I also reviewed this whisky and I second @Victor's comments. I've been through 5-6 bottles of this stuff in the past 2 years or so. I've liked them all, but I've definitely liked some bottles more than others. I bought my first bottle on a recommendation from a good friend a few years ago. I think it was a few months before the big Jim Murray hullaballoo. I thought it was really good for Crown Royal, but I wouldn't have given it best in the world. But I'm just some guy; I'm not an expert.