Talisker 57º North

@Georgy, is this review from a bottle of your own, or a sample? I've found that 57 North needs time to open up from a new bottle. Sometimes that time is small, as for my first bottle, which required 10 days to blossom. The second bottle I opened, from a different batch took a very long time to jell and mellow out, like 18-24 months, but it eventually occurred. My point is to say, that if what you are having is not too together yet, and you have a whole bottle, just give it more time. When that bottle jells, which I expect that it will, "Young" will not be an adjective that will come to your mind.

Despite having to wait for it sometimes, Talisker 57 Degrees North is my absolute go-to among the Taliskers. When in bloom, it is thick, intense, and righteous. From an unknown batch I will drink that NAS over the 10 year old every day of the week, and most of the time I am more in the mood for the intensity of 57 North over the beauty and mellowness of the Talisker 18 yo.

Of course with whisky what you have tasted for yourself is 100% of your experience. All I am suggesting is that if you have the chance for a bottle of 57 North, get it, and wait it out if necessary. It will be worth it.

@Victor I have a 200cl bottle of Talisker 57. And I've been sampling from it for 2 weeks now. I also left the bottle opened for a few hours to help it a little bit. I know your love for strong whiskies, so I see why it's your go-to Talisker. However, when I go to a good quality restaurant and order a meal, I expect it to be served in no more than one hour. And so I take the same approach here. I understand that whisky needs time to open up and release all of its aromas and flavors. And I give it ample time to do so. However, I'm certainly not ready to wait for 18 months. It's like ordering a meal at a restaurant on a Friday evening and only getting it on a Monday morning. Not up for it. In my opinion, if you have to wait that long - the whisky simply doesn't deserve any extraordinary marks, and frankly, it's not worth it. There're plenty of single malts that deliver from the get-go, or in 1-2 months tops, not 18. I'd say they should have let this whisky sit in a cask for those extra 18 months, instead of making us wait for that long.

@Georgy, I don't want to wait around for multiple months for whisky either. My bottle which became excellent after 18+ months was probably like yours when first opened, OK, but not what I had experienced with my previous bottle from another batch. It was because I had expected more of that second bottle that I did not drink it in its mediocre range, but waited to see what would happen later. Eventually it did come around. I do not think that the issue with Talisker 57 Degrees North is that it is too young. I think that certain batches of it at first lack necessary integration.

There are indeed many single malts which deliver from the get-go, but almost none of those are completely consistent from batch to batch. When you go to buy any malt whisky you make a calculated gamble on what you are getting based on prior experience, general public reputation, trusted reviews, etc. If you sample from enough batches of enough whiskies you find that almost all whiskies show a lot of variation among the batches. What I am emphasising here is that when you get 57 North into the sweet spot that it is fabulous...and my hope was to help you out in getting more out of your current open bottle than you have been able to so far.

@Victor Thank you! I appreciate that. And yeah, nothing is ever constant. I might leave this small bottle alone. Still I don't really like the fact that you have to wait that long for the whisky to come together. It's like pizza delivery. If you're delivered a fantastic pizza after a few days you ordered it - then it's too late and it should be free. When you purchase this 57 North and you are not a regular whisky drinker and you don't have too many whiskies in your cabinet - this is when it becomes an issue. Why should such a person wait for years to enjoy this whisky? The bottle might not live that long, simply because he will drink from it from time to time. So to me this fact alone is enough to not bother. If you're a Talisker fan, and you absolutely MUST have this 57 North - then by all means - do so. However, if you're looking for something more or less consistent and tasty which doesn't make you wait for too long - there're better options. That's all I'm saying

@Georgy, @Victor, that is a great discussion. One of the better exchanges involving batch variation and length of time to open bottle peak. @Georgy, your point about a one-bottle-cabinet is well made. It is easy for some of us to forget the days when a purchase went immediately from store shelf to glass. Those were great times that should never be forgotten and is all the more reason for producers to deliver a high quality product every time.

I have a large cabinet of nearly one hundred open bottles. You have reminded me that we all start with one bottle. Point well made.

I agree, my first reaction was "why can't you let the bottle sit"? But Georgy makes a great point that not everyone has the same type of cabinet, and we all drink our whisky at different paces. Great to hear different points of view!

Right, I'm young and broke, so I have 3 bottles right now. And I'll go through all 3 of them in a month or 2 while I have another 1 or 2 bottles on the way. So I would never want to wait more than a couple weeks to air out a whisky. But the Glenlivet Master Distiller's Reserve I just finished was much, much better after a week of being opened. (Still not good, but better.)

No doubt it is much easier to carry whisky under-performers in your cabinet long-term if you have plenty of other options available to drink while you wait.

@paddockjudge You can also compare this issue to cigars. Since I don't live in the US, I have the privilage of smoking cuban cigars every once in a while. And with Cubans, as you've probably heard, you get a lot of issues with the draw of a cigar. Sometimes, when the draw is tight - I can give such a cigar a chance to open up by giving it time and a quick massage. I do that because I don't like wasting cigars (as well as money) and because I am pretty patient. However, my girlfriend certainly won't wait. When the draw is bad, that's enough to put her off it. And a lot of people ditch such cigars or ask for their money back. The same can be said about a whisky. If you open up a bottle, and you're not a hard core connoisseur who is willing to give all the time that whisky needs, you may very well end up disappointed by finding it bland. If that happened time and time again to my whisky brand, I'd have someone see to that as quickly as possible so as not to turn my customers away from it. I understand that when you're as large as Diageo, you stop caring about losing a customer here and there, since people will still be buying this stuff, but still I do believe the producers could try harder to deliver right from the start.

Georgy, what do you think they ought to do about it? Blend in stuff that's more immediately enjoyable? "Air" it somehow before bottling to accelerate the process for us downstream?

@OIJas could be both. I'm sure there a lot of ingenious people working there. Of course, with whisky you can control only so much. However, if you try a bottle of your own product and you see that it's not ready straight out of the bottle, I'm sure you'll come up with something. Controlled airing of whisky is a great production idea as well as a great marketing idea. "We let our whiskies breathe so that you wouldn't have to wait for an experience". If someone did it, I'm sure it would be very successful