So, what are you drinking now?

@BlueNote, in my neighbourhood, exactly one driveway separated my parents home and the local community hall where there was a licensed lounge complete with a four lane bowling alley, billiards table, and horse shoe pits out back. The beer was cheap and plentiful as was the liquor. The only drawback, it was uphill, twice, to my front door.

We had a small family gathering (a few people from my wife’s side) for my middle son’s 14th birthday (which is actually on the 25th). My wife’s grandfather and I finished off the last of my Bowmore 15 (review forthcoming).

Later on we had an outdoor viewing party since it was WWE’s SummerSlam and my youngest is a huge wrestling fan. I brought out a bottle of Buffalo Trace for the adults to share. Lovely stuff, but not an outstanding batch.

@Timp yes, liqueurs are by definition sweet, whereas Amrut Naarangi is made with orange rind treated casks, which adds sour orange and bitter orange, but no sweetness whatsoever. The effect is more like essential oil of Neroli, which is bitter orange. Or think orange bitters, not orange liqueur.

I own bottles of both Compass Box Orangerie and Amrut Naarangi. I knew going in that Orangerie is not a true whisky. My late wife wanted to buy it, and my sister is also a fan.

connosr.com/compass-box-orangerie-whisky-r…

I thought that I had reviewed Naarangi, but I find no record of it. I have certainly posted about it a lot, because I am extremely enthusiastic about it. I frequently crave a taste of Amrut Naarangi, whereas I never even think about Compass Box Orangerie.

@Timp bottom line with Amrut Naarangi is that you will need to experience it for yourself, because there is nothing else like it. I consider it to be one of the most interesting whiskies ever made, and quite delicious. At group tastings I have given, it is always extremely popular with NO detractors, which is quite rare for any product, no matter how rare or expensive. In 20+ tastings to groups I have given the ONLY other product I have ever seen with NO detractors is Glenmorangie Sonnalta PX. I very much hope to be able to drink Amrut Naarangi for many years to come, which is to say I hope that Amrut makes more batches of it. It is great at 50% ABV, but I can imagine a blockbuster cask strength version should also be possible, which, for Amrut, would probably mean around 57% ABV.

So Tim, if at all possible get yourself a taste of Amrut Naarangi!

As mentioned on the food thread, we just had a week on the south coast and I only had two whiskys! I was drinking red and white (as the food required) and plenty of local cider we got from a nearby distillery. It was very clean and well made stuff but a touch dry for my tastes, although it worked better in the scrumpy style. The also did some liqueurs, wines and other bits and pieces so we tried a few samples and bought some minis.

An Apple au de vie was very interesting and, again, super clean. Not a sipper though but could have been used in a long drink or cocktail to good effect. I wondered what maturing it in an Apple wood cask might have done?

Mead. This stuff was excellent. Rich and sweet, as expected, and not something I could drink too much of, but a bit gutted I didn't stock up on a few bottles before coming home.

Elderflower wine. Nice to try but not really to my tastes. And a ginger liqueur - this was the surprise of the lot. It tasted like liquid gingerbread and I reckon could have made a great component of a whisky based cocktail.

Their was also a coffee roasting place on site and I tried some of their house blend and got some African beans to take home. Excellent coffee and the smell from the place was divine. What a place to work, i thought, sandwiched between the smell of freshly roasting coffee and cider all day surrounded by the Devon countryside. Not bad ...

@BlueNote - The Bladnoch is a beautiful whisky! What I like most about it is that it is light; remaining true to a Lowland whisky, the cereal / grain notes come through but the sherry also shines. I would not consider this a sherry bomb; rather a perfect sherried whisky to be enjoyed on a warm / hot summer day. I rated it a 93.

Yesterday (Saturday), made my wife and I a Jerry Thomas Manhattan (Rittenhouse BiB) for happy hour.

After dinner, my brother-in-law stopped by for a couple of drams.

Started off with the Bladnoch Adela 15 year Oloroso Cask Matured - 46.7% ABV because my brother-in-law hadn't had a chance to try it yet.

Sticking with the sherry theme, next we had Glenallachie SMWS 107.21 (8 year - May 2012) "Bounty on the galleon" - 1st-fill ex-sherry butt" - 63.3% ABV. This is unique in that it has a lot of grape skin notes. It is very dry and winey in a good way.

After my brother-in-law left, I had a dram of Caol Ila SMWS 53.320 (12 year - Sep. 2007) "Raiders of the flossed ark" from a refill ex-bourbon hogshead - 58.2% ABV

@Victor Thanks for that. It’s on the list now! Cheers..

Tonight, a peated English dram;

St George's Distillery English Whisky Company SMWS 137.7 (7 year - Feb 2012) "How to kill your dragon" - 2nd-fill ex-bourbon barrel - 65.5% ABV

@bwmccoy - Their peated stuff always seems to get good reviews. To my shame, I've never tried any St George's whisky. Being honest, the name and packaging don't entice me ...

@RianC - I'm not familiar with their standard packaging / labels as this is a Society bottling. I also don't know if they peat their own barley or if they are sourcing it from Scotland or elsewhere, but the taste is unique. The peat is sweeter than a standard peated Scotch, so if their peated barley is sourced from Scotland, maybe it is Speyside or Highland peat. Doesn't seem to be Islay peat to me. I also don't know what ppm the barley was peated at.

I like the whisky, but it is one of the few that I think is better with a little water added. I'm glad I bought the bottle; it's a quality whisky, but I'm not sure I would buy another one. I prefer a little less sweetness and a little more oomph from the peat. Here's a close up of the label...

@bwmccoy Thanks for the info on the Bladnoch. It just moved up several spots on my wish list.

@BlueNote - If they ever open the border, I could stand on the side of I-5 in Seattle and hand off some samples to you as you drive by on your way to Oregon. :-)

Mixing some Manhattans for a cocktail exchange / taste off and sampling the North of 7 Single Barrel Rye I used in the cocktails, and my bottle of Dillon's Rye 1...

@YakLord, which barrel # was the N of 7 Rye?

Glenfiddich 15 YO Distillery Edition, 51.2% ABV. This bottle has been open for 10 years and it remains SO good. I am very happy that I have a second bottle on hand. This is NOT an easy whisky to find in the western hemisphere. I've seen it offered for sale only twice, 10 years ago locally here, and once about 6 years ago when @talexander found me a bottle at the LCBO. I am glad I have some.

I have purchased only 3 Glenfiddichs in my lifetime, the 15 DE, the OB 18 yo and the OB 14 Bourbon Cask. I've tasted their other standards but never wanted to invest in a bottle of the 12, 15, or 21. The 15 DE is "where it's at."

@paddockjudge Barrel #22 at 45% ABV.

Well, last night marked a first for me…I had a final taste of a James MacArthur ‘Old Masters’ bottling of a single barrel, ex-bourbon cask, 19 yo (1992-2011) @ 59.4%…before pouring the rest of the bottle down the drain. I have never ditched a bottle due to poor quality before, but this one did it for me.

I had originally sourced the bottle for a friend. When he went to ditch it, after about 1/5 of the bottle being consumed, I happily took it as I’m always willing to try a new bottle. Despite several tastings over the last seven years, I could never get “into it”.

While the nose was a pleasant experience, with green apples and cinnamon being the main notes that I could pick up, the taste and finish never delivered on the promise of the nose.

Overall, I simply found the flavour profile bland, uninteresting, and generally muddled. On top of that, the finish was always overpowered by the alcohol hit of the cask strength bottling…AND, it was one of the very few cask strength bottles I’ve tried where adding water did not significantly alter or improve the situation.

A very disappointing bottle, probably done in by an overused bourbon cask. I’m glad it was a freebie.

@Victor that is currently the only Glenfiddich that I have ever tasted that I like.

@YakLord Do you mean this one?

I picked this up in 2019 on a whim and cracked the seal on video with @paddockjudge at the start of the pandemic after the distillery donated sanitizer to our group. I'm not an expert on rye but I like it. This is a limited release every year. It was gone when I went back. I made sure to get 2 bottles of the 2020 release (not sure they made it to the LCBO) but sadly the pandemic has not given me the ideal opportunities to try it. I'm on their mailing list and plan to order it direct from the distillery when this year's release is available. As a 200 cc it is a "mini" so it doesn't count against my bottle count...

@Nozinan I can understand that.

@Pudge72 wow, that is a big step to pour a bottle down the drain. And clearly you are not oversensitive to some 59% ABV alcohol content per se...I don't recall your having any trouble with that 71.3% ABV bottle of George T. Stagg which I once procured for you.

@Victor your description of the Naarangi has inspired yet another addition to my wish list! Alas, the only Amrut currently available in Ontario is the Fusion…which is still an entry on my wish list, so it may be the next bottle I add to my cabinet.

@Pudge72 I doubt that you will be disappointed with either Naarangi or Fusion.

I'll say it one more time: if I had to drink from three distilleries only for the rest of this lifetime they would be Buffalo Trace, Ardbeg, and Amrut.

@Victor absolutely correct good sir! I love cask strength bottles of any type.

That Stagg was fantastic, and I randomly found a bottle of the Smith and Cross ‘Naval Strength’ rum (sorry if I got the name wrong) that you kindly provided several years ago, at the LCBO a couple of years ago…one of my few ‘spur of the moment’ purchases.

It took a while to gather the intestinal fortitude to actually tip the Glen Grant bottle over the drain, in part because I was simply dumbfounded by the absolute consistency of the abject blandness of the liquid over the years. It simply did not change at all, for better or worse.

@Nozinan Yep, that's the one. I like it but it's weird...there's a sort of bubblegum flavor underneath the mintiness of it, and it certainly doesn't feel like it's 57%...

@Pudge72 Fusion is solid. It was my first experience with Amrut.

I doubt you will find many bottles of Naarangi in Canada anymore, not even in Calgary. Luckily, I know someone who might be able to hook you up with a sample.

I remember early in my (whisky) career I opened a 200cc mini of Caol Ila CS (with @talexander, actually) and I was so blown away by it that I saved the rest to share with others so that as many as possible would have the opportunity to try such a mind-blowing whisky. I had a small taste of the final few CCs.

This is one of those whiskies. Unique. I want as many people as possible to taste it.

@YakLord, I’m part of group that has a deposit on barrel #25, 95%Rye, 5% malted barley in a new barrel from Independent Stave, heavy toast, light char, nearing 6 years old. We tasted from the cask last September and selected it as the second choice from ten barrels of varying mashbills. The number one selection was a four grain (bourbon style) dumped at 5.5 years and bottled at 74.5%, yield was around 170 bottles.

I found this Rye barrel to not yet be mature enough for bottling.

How was your bottle of N of 7 Rye? Did you sip some neat?

@Pudge72, dumping a Glen Grant???!!!!! It must have been some train wreck. I’ve never met a Glen Grant I didn’t like… even the over-oaked 26 YO which I absolutely adore.

@paddockjudge I did have a small sample neat, and I've sent a sample of the whisky on its own to try alongside the Manhattans. Very much enjoyed it.

Jason invited me to join in on the barrel pick, but I'm more about sampling broadly than having multiple bottles of the same whisky, so I opted out.

@Victor You still have some of the Glenfiddich 15 DE? I’m green. I bought 2 of those many years ago on your recommendation. I also bought 2 of the Glenmorangie Sonalta PX on your recommendation. I regret to this day not buying more while they were available. Those two and a really good batch of Uigeadail and the old Laphroaig 18 would be dessert island drams for me. What are you hot on these days?

@BlueNote thank you for asking! I own so many bottles that I like and I like so many things...that it is difficult for me to make choices and settle on one or two at any given time. I guess that currently I am mostly into making the exact choice of drink fit the moment.at hand. Then, often, a second one will suggest itself to me. I like the wide range of choice and the spontaneity.

Yesterday I did a little malt tour, after having had the Glenfiddich 15 DE. I followed it with Balvenie 15 Single Barrel, OB Aberlour 10 (which I prefer to the 12 yo and the 16 yo), Auchentoshan Valinch 2011, and Glenrothes Select Reserve. And I can never get too much of Amrut Naarangi these days, though I did not have it with this last group yesterday.

On another day I'll have 4 or 5 bourbons or 4 or 5 US ryes, smallish pours. Tequila is my favourite alternative to whiski. Some days I'll refresh my memory of what my bottles of tequila taste like over 4 or 5 tequilas.

The biggest trend for me is that I am satisfied with the amount of olfactory and gustatory research I have done in the last 12 years, and I am satisfied with the framework of understanding which I have erected organizing that experience. Nowadays I concentrate mostly on appreciating the experience in the moment, and have relatively little interest in intellectualizing about it. I am still interested in getting a taste of almost everything available, but I have so much already I rarely want to buy a new bottle any more. I feel flushed with the wealth of the hundreds of excellent bottles of drink which I already own, and content to savour them at the pace which seems natural and beautiful.

If there is an element of sadness in this it is that the joy of deeply appreciating these beverages is not something which many other people have cultivated, so often the beauty is beheld in solitude. ALSO, the very success of the whiski industries worldwide has led to such a proliferation and fragmentation of products and markets that there is now really nothing close to a common culture, worldwide, or even within a given nation. The best remedy.to this fragmentation of available opportunity for experience continues to be to sit a group of people down in the same room and drink from the same bottles. Cheers!

Islay night tonight;

Bruichladdich Islay Barley 2010 - 50% ABV

Followed by Caol Ila SMWS 53.320 (12 year - Sep. 2007) "Raiders of the flossed ark" from a refill ex-bourbon hogshead - 58.2% ABV