What is the next bottle you purchase or open?

Canadian Rockies 17 YO 50% abv. The best Commercial bottling to date from the stocks at Highwood Distillery in High River AB. Bottled by Fontana Group this one ticks all the boxes for me. An absolute gem!

@paddockjudge Buying or opening? Isn't that stuff expensive here?

Is it better than the burgundy 90/20?

@Nozinan, Both a purchase and an open bottle. A friend contacted me from the floor of Kensington Wine Market and told me he would be leaving the store in one hour, did I want anything? I was on my way out and couldn't go back to get my lengthy KWM wish list. I picked CanRock 17 YO and it was the right pick! I scored this 93. It is not available in Ontario, $70 at KWM. It is different from the Highwood Ninety burgundy. I scored it three points higher.

@paddockjudge I just had a sample of it. It is awesome. Great finish! It's rare to find a 50% aged corn whisky (I'm assuming 100% - unconfirmed) with such a good finish. It is definitely worth buying....and I still like the 21 more. That being said, I'd reach for the 17 year old more often. As a friend of mine says, "get me a straw"....

@JasonHambrey, I've revised my score to 91. I was a bit over enthusiastic My palate was in approval mode, an enjoyable place to be, indeed. A delicious whisky possessing traits common to corn whisky aged at Highwood Distillery.

I’m hoping I won’t jinx this by talking about it too early, but I just ordered a Kilkerran 12 Year Old, and hopefully the LCBO won’t screw me over. I’ll also be picking up (if all goes well) a Laphroaig Cairdeas Fino Cask and a Lot 40 12 Y/O Cask Strength from a friend on Tuesday. And then I need to pump the brakes for a bit. I said I’d finish the year with fewer bottles than I started, but that’s a ridiculous pipe dream at this point...

@OdysseusUnbound I hear you loud and clear.

I tried the Kilkerran (thanks @Robert for the sample), and it was ok but not something I felt I needed to buy. I'll have to revisit that decision with the rest of the sample.

Congrats on securing another of last year's LOT 40 CS. It may be my favourite rye ever. I acknowledge I like CS stuff, and also that I do not have a lot of breadth of experience with the grain, but it is so fantastic! I will likely take a chance on this year's 11 YO version, though I lament the 40% increase in price. I bet that won't happen next year as $100 is a psychological barrier.

I hope to try the Fino at some point. I was really hoping fo the QC CS and the Fino wasn't on my radar, but I'm sure it will be delicious. I just need to get it in my possession, Thanks @talexander for helping with the transaction.

A bottle of Springbank 12 Year Old (Batch 11) and a couple of ceramic jugs of Tullamore DEW Uisge Baugh, possibly from the 70s.

More like Last bottle opened. Last night at an Epic tasting a bottle of Amrut Peated cask strength was opened. At the time of purchase, $106 seemed like an excessive price (though I did get 2 at $76 a year later), but in hindsight, stocking up on this, now that it's only available in Alberta, was prescient.

I have a space for a heavily peated whisky in the 'open cabinet'. I'm thinking an Ardbeg so may push the boat out and open the Corryvrekan or Oogy. I also have a Benromach peated (forget the year but 67ppm for what it's worth).

Decisions . . .

My club is having an Old Pulteney night tonight. I'm sharing the basic OB 12 from my personal stash as a baseline; then a friend in the club is sharing from his OB 21. (And I'm hoping someone in the club will surprise me by granting my repeated wish to have a bottle of the OB 17 on the table too, to round out the old OB lineup.)

But that's all a preamble to our new club bottle, and Old Pulteney IB from Scott's Selection, cask strength, 1977-2005. This one: divingforpearlsblog.com/2013/12/…

I'm super excited about this. Some young bucks in the club will get to drink something older than themselves. And a few more of us (those born 1978 or later, which includes me!) will get to drink something made before we were born—which isn't quite the same, but fun nonetheless!

@MadSingleMalt Are you serving gefilte fish? Seems to go with the nose of the 12.

We're meeting a friend's house who's free to serve (or not) anything he wants. But I'm willing to bet the answer is no.

@RianC, are you pulling from inventory or are you open to purchasing a heavily-peated candidate for the position?

@paddockjudge - Pulling from inventory but opted for the Corry . . . and it's gooood!

Why? What did you have in mind?

@RianC, I'm on my second bottle of Laphroaig Lore...I am an Uigeadail fan, but prefer Corryvreckan! Lore is a bit pricey in my region, but I managed to get my first bottle of Lore on a trade for Ardbeg Ardbog. The Ardbog sat in a friends inventory for four years ($83 CDN) and was flipped into Lore...that bottle didn't stand a chance. The contents disappeared quickly. Lore is very soft on anice and citrus/lemon, qualities I would rather not have in my Laphroaig.

Anyone have info on this? I didnt buy but its new to me.

@casualtorture

thewhiskyexchange.com/p/29863/…

Looks like it's NAS, bottled at 43% and TWE claims it has colour added. This seems eerily reminiscent of Loch Dhu. If it is it could become quite a collector's item but I doubt it...

@casualtorture, I don't know anything about it beyond seeing your picture and seeing the quick factoids from @Nozinan, but I won't let that stop me from giving you my unjustified first impression: Looks like crap.

I picked up a bottle of each, Hidden Still Single Barrel and Small Batch bourbon.The distillery is in Lebanon PA. I decide to support them as they are local. The bourbon is aged two years and is either 61.9% or 45.5%. I will give them a try tomorrow.

I'm going to buy a bottle of Springbank 10 tomorrow. I'm loving J & A Mitchell's wares: I've had a couple of bottles of Springbank 12 CS, Kilkerran 12, and Kilkerran WIP Bourbon wood CS - but I've not yet tried the Springbank 10. Time to fix that. A lot is made of batch variation in some whiskies (such as Ardbeg Uigeadail and Corryvreckan). Has anyone got any comments about superior or inferior batches of SB 10? I'm pretty sure a local shop has both the old black label and the more recent (ugly) orange label. Any got experience in differences in the juice inside?

@Hewie I have not tried the new orange label Springbank 10. My experience has been with a 2011 and 2016 bottling both were very good drams. From a time perspective, the flavour profile of the 2011 bottling changes(evolves) when consumed over the course of a year. The flavour profile for the 2016 remained consistent from when first opened to when empty. I suspect that the 2016 was the last year for the black label.

Also, bottling date codes for Springbank prior to 2016 are printed on the back of the front label(××/yyy). The xx is the year and yyy is the date in the year. To find it just look through the bottle from the back to the front.

I finally got the opportunity to meet @bwmccoy yesterday and the day before. I have looked forward to meeting him for about the last 7 years, since he joined Connosr in early 2011 and I joined in late 2010. He flew into town from Seattle for a business conference for a few days, saying he wanted to catch a Washington Nationals baseball game, so that he could add a notch to the list of Major League Baseball stadiums he had visited. So, on the night before last we went to the Nats' game and were extremely fortunate to see their ace, Max Scherzer, pitch that night. Scherzer was Scherzer-like and pitched 7 innings, with 10 strikeouts, 0 walks, and gave up 1 run. The best thing is that those K's were # 291-300, so that he became the 17th MLB pitcher since 1900 to post 300 strikeouts in a season. It was a wonderful time at the ball park.

We had to do so some tasting, of course. The next day @bwmccoy visited our home. I suspected that he hadn't yet had the opportunity to sample the American "good stuff", so I designed a tour of US top tier hard-to-get whiskeys for him...with a tour of tequila and mezcal as a hoped-for back-up. Surely enough, he hadn't tried any of these whiskeys before (except for High West Double Rye, added as a mainstream contrast to the rare stuff), and had very little experience or understanding of tequila or mezcal. He explained to me that he had long wanted somebody knowledgeable to give him just such a tour.

I dearly hoped that we were going to be able to get in all of what I wanted him to try before he had to return to downtown DC to join his workmates at Jack Rose Dining Saloon, home of 2,600+ whiskies for sale. We did get them all in, including my also-hoped-for additions of a lovely 8 yo jenever from Belgium (he hadn't known any jenever either), and that nice 58% ABV Kinmen Kaoliang (unaged sorghum spirit) from Taiwan.

The list of what we drank is on the So What Are You Drinking Now? discussion. He beat me to getting up that list.

Why is this posted on this particular discussion? Because, in order for him to have the full experience I wanted to give @bwmccoy, I had to open a few new bottles:

1) Van Winkle 12 yo Special Reserve bourbon, "Lot B", 47.2% ABV, released Fall 2009. This is the first bottle of Van Winkle 12 I have had open in the house for about 4 years

2) Pappy Van Winkle 15 yo, 2010 release, from the Stitzel-Weller distillery, 53.5% ABV. I fished around and was delighted to find one which still had the original $ 69.99 price tag on it. I asked @bwmccoy to look it up on wine-searcher.com to find the $ 1,579 current average world price for this, so that he could see why I found the price tag to be so amusing

3) William Larue Weller, 2015 release, 67.3% ABV. I usually have a bottle of William Larue Weller open at our house, but I had gone an interval of about a year without an open one

4) Sazerac 18 yo Rye, 2011 release, 45% ABV. Whoa! I haven't had a bottle of Saz 18 open at the house in about 4 years. This was a very big move for me to open this. This one I conserve. Even when I can get a bottle of BTAC once in a while in the last 4 years, it is never Saz 18 which is offered to me. I also hear that the ones from the big multi-year vattiing, including this 2011, were not matched in quality by the last couple of releases from new, different batches

5) Mezcal Artesanal Mezcalosfera, 48.29% ABV. To me, this was an enormous deal for me to open this bottle. This is my first, and only, so far, $ 160 bottle of Mezcal. @dramlette and I attended a rare tequila and mezcal tasting recently, at which we sampled 21 products. This one was by far our favourite. I was happy that @bwmccoy enjoyed this one a lot, even if his top favourite tequila/mezcal was the Jose Cuervo Reserva de La Familia Extra-Anejo tequila. They both cost about the same, on average. (I had gotten an unusually good deal on our bottles of Reserva de La Familia)

You know how you wait for those special moments at which to open special bottles? A visit from @bwmccoy was one of those moments for me. As expected he is a very nice guy who is completely worthy of opening up new bottles of 'the good stuff'.

@fiddich1980 - I think you're right about 2016 being the last year of the old black label. Last bottle I had was from about then and it was excellent. I have one in the stash with the new packaging so @Hewie, sorry, I can't be much help in comparing.

edit - just remembered that Ralfy reviewed a bottle of the old label 10 around the time I bought mine and he reckoned it was the best 10 he'd had . . .

@MadSingleMalt @casualtorture - I looked at this a while back and all the reviews (on MoM I think) suggested it was heavily coloured - probably a bit gimmicky and a 'poor man's Black Bowmore' was my impression.

@Victor - thank you again for everything. While I don’t feel worthy of you opening open all of those bottles on my account, it means a lot to me that you would. Thanks to you, I now have a greater appreciation and a great reference point for my future American Whisky tastings. As I mentioned to you, most of my previous bourbon tastings had a “cherry cough syrup” flavor that I do not care for. Of course, none of the quality examples that you walked me through yesterday had that flavor profile (not that I was expecting them to). It was a great educational experience for me, both with the American whiskies, but also the tequila / mezcal. Of course, the best part was having the opportunity to meet and hang out with you and @Dramlette.

In keeping with the topic, in preparation for my trip to DC, I put together some samples for @Victor and @Dramlette. Most were from open bottles in my cabinet, but I did open the following bottles;

Dry Fly (Spokane, WA) wheat whiskey port finish. Knowing that @Victor likes wheated bourbons and that he can’t get Dry Fly in his area, I thought he might like to try this one.

Westland Distillery (Seattle, WA) Cask No. 3824 Single Cask Release. A malted barley whiskey aged 55 months in new American oak before being finished for 3 months in an ex-rum cask.

Westland Distillery (Seattle, WA) 5 year SMWS 133.1 - "Speakeasy sneaky peeky" from a virgin oak barrel, heavy char.

@fiddich1980 hey thanks for the info regarding the dates on the inside label of Springbank pre 2016. I went to a shop where I knew they had some with the old black labels. I pulled them out of the boxes and there were 2 from 2014 and one from 2010. I grabbed one from 2014 as you can't guarantee how they've been stored over those years.

benswhisky.co.uk/p/…

This is a good link for anyone who has a bottle of Springbank 12 and are wondering what release it is? The only thing that differentiates the releases is the abv% and if its the new or old style label.

Just got an early xmas present in a bottle of Talisker 8 (Special release 2018)! I must admit I nagged a bit, and have put some £ towards it, but I was getting worried they'd sell out (I'm such a sucker ha! - they probably have 20 000 + bottles of the stuff . . . )

I also added a Benromach 10 to get the free delivery. Always a pleasure and I've not had a bottle for a while so it's long overdue.