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The Laphroaig 10 is somewhat of a benchmark whisky. It has been around in one form or another since at least the early 1960’s and the basic recipe has been the same, but there have been  some pretty big ‘generational’ differences. Basically, every now and so often they crank up the phenolic notes in the distilate, making it more medicinal and pungent. It becomes more spirit forward that way, and maybe this is to compensate for uninteresting casks.

For me, the best Laphroaig 10’s are the ones in between generations, and this is such a whisky. This is a great example of an early ‘contemporary’ Laphroaig. The perfect blend of superb older whisky from quality casks and great younger whisky from a characterfull distillate.

Tastingnotes

Although this is not a really old bottling, it’s clearly WAY more outspoken and less chisseled than contemporary bottlings. This thing has an opinion. Smoke is the main theme here, not iodine.

Smells like the day after a BBQ party that got way out of hand. Wet ashes, cigarettes at the bottom of a beercan, soot, smoke, peat. But all in a good way. After that initial onslaught it’s time to compensate for the hangover with a healthy dose of fresh fruit and some malty cereals and some lemon for the vitamin C.

Tastewise: surprisingly beefy, fruity and rich. Also some top esters that don’t make it past the smoke on the nose; some banana, eucalyptus. There’s a very nice malty sweetness to it that works surprigingly well with the fruit and the smoke. Finish: medium long, very nice, finish.

 

A good tipple. Very accesible, very drinkable. It’s not the most complex of bourbons, but it’s very nice and great value for money.

Tasting notes:

Nose: smooth and sweet. Vanilla, apple flavoured drinks. There’s a slight solventy note, but it’s pleasant. Cedar wood. Caramel, but not buttery. Taste: accessible, sweet, but not overly sweet and slightly engineered. Very drinkable. Medium long and creamy finish, slightly hot.

Friendly on the nose: malted barly, cereal, fruits. Orchard fruits, plums and peaches. Surprisingly delicate and classy. Vanilla, sultanas. Also some minerals. Goes from fresh and fruity towards more woody bayleaf notes. Akin to bourbon matured Clynelish or Imperial from the same period.Likely a refill bourbon cask, judging by the smell. Clean and pretty sweet in the mouth and with quite some mineral notes and some nice bitternesd. Bit of heat in the finish.
Good stuff, and for around 90 euros I think it’s resonably priced. And it’s not as whacky as many other Ben Nevis
Distilled 14-12-1998, cask 1608-1552.

Nose: similar to the bruichladdich, so peaty and art classroom. Quite friendly. This time there’s some notes of coffee-caramels and cola candies. Also some menthol.
Mouth: quite hot, sherried and sweet.

Nose: very old-school. Fruity, malty, waxy, dry sherry meets refill-bourbon. White chocolate and coconut, Ferrero Rafaello. Later on you get notes of tropical fruits and green banana. Also some apricot and a slightly smokey edge.
Mouth: Sweet, dry, oily, malty. Mineral notes too. Wet pebbles. Rather complex. Slightly foosty in the background, but in a very nice way. I absolutely love this style of whisky. Surpsingly smooth for it strength.
Finish: rather dissapointing and lacking in power and complexity. Short and sweet, with some tannic notes of walnutskin.

Overall really good stuff. There’s very little not to like about this whisky, and I think this would have really been great if it were a little more “loudmouthed”.

A word of caution for those of you who plan to open their bottle: getting to drink this took me quite some time, as the cork turned out to be crumbly. I’m used to this happening with much older bottles, but apparantly it also happens to ‘young’ ones.

Nose: aaaarrrrghhhh! This is really, really, really off! I mean really off! Tinned green beans and dog food. Really, really bad! Wet draff. Very earthy and peaty. Very intense and very very strange. Pretty sweet on the palate, and as with the previous whisky, notes of Amstel Malt beer (non-alcoholic beer from the 90’s). Raisins and grain. Draff. Finish: sweet and vegatal, medium long and sherried. It does get a little better over time, but there’s too many off notes to make it enjoyable.

Well, it’s an experience, that’s for sure. Something went wrong somewhere in the 50 years since is was bottled, and it probably wasn’t the cleanest spirit to begin with. Better luck next time.

There’s something to keep in mind with opening really old bottles of spritis; storage condition have a major influence on the way they taste. Basically, if you get to many off-notes after first opening the bottle, let it breathe for a while. The more off-notes, the longer you let it aerate. This can take up to a couple of hours, but the effects usually are pretty dramatic.

Nose: ooh…this starts of quite iffy. Something weirdly vegetal. After that: dry, salty sherry, Coca Cola, and dark rum. Quite yeasty. It smells very ‘dark’, so a lot of dried fruits, chocolate, licorice root, and rum notes. There’s something fruity in there too and spices, but overall it comes across as a heavily sherried blend, with maybe the odd ex-rum-cask thrown in there too.
Mouth: sweet, sherried, peaty and quite hot. Strong hints of ‘Duimdrop’, which is a kind of licorice, and again yeasty. Reminds me very much of Amstel Malt, that horrible, horrible non-alcoholic beer from the 90’s, which tasted like it was completely off, but which was, as I’ve been reassured countless times, ‘supposed to taste like that’. Why would anyone prefer stuff like that over a glass of Cola or water?
Finish: Dissapointing. Short, more of the same.

Nose: sherry, peat, tropical fruits, OBE (Old Bottle Effect). Herbal sherry notes with a touch of saltyness. There’s quite a lot of OBE in this bottling, which I think doesn’t do this whisky much good. It feels like the peat has lost most of it’s intensity, and mingled in with the rest of the aromas, leaving us with a very nice, very rounded, but not very characterfull nose.
Mouth: quite sweet and reasonably powerfull, but it’s the same story as with the nose. It’s nice, but not very distinctive. The OBE has taken over here, and mellowed everything out. Don’t get me wrong: this isn’t bad at all! It’s just that it doesn’t have any distinct features anymore.
Finish: Medium long, sweet and spicy.

Nose: austere. Light. Fruity, with some cola-notes.
Mouth: quite bitter and surprisingly shallow.
Finish: one-dimensional and bitter.

Nose: starts of estery and slightly soapy, but in a very good way. After that it’s on to waxy and fruity notes. I think this is a sherry cask, but there also might be bourbon wood in there. Buttery. Caramel. Caramelized fruit. Twigs. Mint?
Mouth: Fresh, not very sweet. Starts of slightly smoky, which is very nice.
Finish: hmm…relatively short, but nice, with something peaty.

Nose: Clean, fresh, fruity and waxy. Some mineral notes and some apples. A nice nose. Classic dry-sherry profile.
Mouth: dissapointing. Weak and watery. Malty, with a bitter toasty note.
Finish: short with some buteric notes.

Nose: supposedly not peated, but compared to the previous whiskies this might as well be heavily peated. Pungent and carbolic. Smells like an art classroom. Paint (more specifically ‘plakaatverf’ of gouache as it’s called in English), peat, vanilla and bourbon. Very nice nutty notes too. Rambol walnut cream cheese. Walnut and pecan. Walnut skins. Salted nuts. It’s actually very salty. Also something quite sooty.
Mouth: hmm…quite dissapointing. Quite shallow. Sweet, with some notes of mushroom and bourbon.
Finish: short, hot and sweet.

Nose: light and sweet. Hints of white chocolate, chaff. Condensed milk. Continues with buteric notes and vanilla. Brioche. Rich Tea biscuits soaked in coffee.
Mouth: ooh, this one is feisty! Hot and offensive, but in a good way. Coffee with loads of condensed milk. Grainy notes too. Reminds me of clynelish. Pretty aggressive. It hacks its way down your throat with a machete.
Finish: funnily enough the finish is quite herbal, and quite long, but again pretty hot.

Nose: flowery, fruity and sour. Notes of honey. Slightly spirity, a notes of glue. After a while the fruityness subsides and quite a lot of sulfury notes start to appear.
Mouth: light. Sweet, sour, grainy. Strangely enough this is both light and full-bodied at the same time.
Finish: a bit sweet and quite fiery, with hints of hard candy.

Nose: Sweet and confectionary. Very buttery: butterscotch and butter candy (most notably ‘boterwafeltjes’) but made of margarine instead of real butter. It almost smelss like drinking Irn Bru. Slightly smokey, slightly floral.
Mouth: Mega, mega soapy and very floral. Green soap, glycerine, fabric softner. Also some vanilla and butterscotch, but overall the soapy notes are dominating everything else here. Too much.
Finish: hot, sweet and floral, and not very interesting.

The mouth ruins the experience.

Nose: Crisp smoky notes. Apple, pear, apricot, vanilla and crisp smoky notes, like a more rounded, less sweet vesion of Johnnie Walker Black Label. SLightly herbal and spicy. It’s clearly a blend, but in a good way. There’s a soft. rounded side to it that you get from well matured grainspirit. It took me some time to get used to it, but it’s actually quite nice.
Mouth: light, sweet, and quite mellow.
Finish: medium long and fruity.

Nose: very old school whisky. In line with the Pittyvaich 20 years old OB. Fruits, malt and minerals, with an ever so slight hint of smoking embers. I love this. Quite hot and spirity at firsrt nosing, but Smells like a mix of bourbon and sherry barrels, with the bourbon being the most influential, but without being too sweet and vanilla-ish. Very, very nice.
Mouth: for something bottled at a whopping 63.1%, this is stunningly drinkable without water. It’s actually quite smooth. Velvetty even, with a nice complexity. Slightly salty, with more fruits and some really nice cereal notes.
Finish: medium long, and not very intense, but strangely satisfying.

Nose: light, slightly sour, very reminiscent of a dark demerara rum. Butterscotch, sherry and herbs.
Mouth: packs a lot of punch. Soft, sweet, rumlike start, immediately followed by a powerfull and quite fiery blast of sherried malt whisky. Treacle, and dried fruits too. A pleasant surprise.
Finish: short, with chocolate and vegetal notes. Slightly bitter, but nice.

Fabulous mix of smoke, peat, leather, woody notes and fruit. Very mature, drinkable yet complex. Fantastic development. I really like how this is very drinkable, without being a crowdpleaser. There’s reason to dislike this whisky. It’s unlikable, which I think is one of the primary ascpects of a truely great whisky. Top notch stuff, and very affordable.

Superb nose, with rolling tobacco, sherry, peat and other healthy stuff. Good complexity. Great mouthfeel. Silky smooth, but with a lot of oomph. Again, superb stuff. Finish could have been a bit longer, but still very nice.

Good nose, quite fruity, with lots of pear, red fruits, and some nice sherry-influences to it. More of the same on the mouth, with a little bit of the sweetness of a well made 10 year old Barbados rum. Youthfull, doesn’t taste like 21 years old.

Very much a product of it’s time, so loads of vanilla, candy and fruits. Youthfull stuff, without much of a character. Drinkable, but also quite forgetable.

Nose: quite sherried, slightly sulphury.
Mouth: sweet malty
Finish: waxy

Nose: Typical Glenfiddich in style, but a little bit sweeter. Decent, fruity nose, but not very powerfull, and the rum has very little to say. Apples, banana, freshly pressed sugarcane, and some spices.
Mouth: more of the same, with some more estery notes.
Finish: better than you would expect. More ‘dark’ notes coming through. Quite some woody spicy notes, vanilla. I would say the finish is the most rum-y part of this whisky.

Nose: smokey and fruity. All in all this smells pretty engineerd. Young estery fruity notes, with pear adn green apple, some smoke and slight hints of vanilla. Less sweet than expected, which is a very good thing.
Mouth: quite rich and sweet. More of the same, with some woody spicy notes. Definitely not a sherrymonster, but there’s far less of the toffee-ish sweetness going on than is usualy the case in contemporary blends.
Finish: quite short and smoky.

Nose: newmake, peat. Estery, fruity and peaty with some rubbery notes. This is clearly a very young whisky, but already it’s pretty well rounded. I’m surprised that it’s bottled at 53.2%, I would have expected it to be 43%. Very dominant notes of newmake. I would be surprised if it’s more than 6 years old. Sweet and mashy, but not cloying.
Mouth: sweet and rich. Peaty and slightly rubbery, also pretty hot.
Finish: sweet and clean.

Nose: Fruity, spicy, estery and big. Starts of quity feisty and estery, but quickly turns towards fruity and spicy notes. First there’s an estery fruityness, with both unripe and overripe bananas and applesauce, then rich sweet notes of custard, and then some really nice spicy notes. And then some more fruits: jackfruit and roseapple. I reallylike this fragrant and estery style of whisky.
Mouth: Surprisingly different from the nose. Big and bittersweet with lots of cereal grainy notes. Fresh toast with a side of ovaltine. Also some waxiness and a very, very distant hint of freshly burnt firewood.

Finish: medium long and waxy, with more fruityness and some chocolaty notes.

I don’t hold any stock of this or something, but this really is my style of whisky: fruity, quite estery, and complex. It’s really nice how the nose, the mouth and the finish each tell a different story.

Nose: Big, with quite some alcohol nip. Fruity. Apple, pear, melon, vanilla, peach. Licorice root, treacle. Surprisingly fresh and sunny, but also a bit rough.

Mouth: whoa! Hold your horses. Big, big, big alcohol nip. Even for something bottled at 54 point something percent, this is quite harsh, if not to say hot. This really needs water. Fruity and sweet, with hints of banana, tannic Granny Smith apples and clover honey. There’s also quite some bitter tannic notes in there.

Finish: medium long, bittersweet and spicy.

Nose: interesting, complex and quite sweet. Fruity and spicy. Apple, malt and a distant hint of smoke. Colacubes, sour cola candy and other woody spicy notes. Quite estery, with minty medicinal notes. There’s also a distant floral note to it that I really like, and that reminds me of Imperial a lot.

With time: more sweet creamy notes. Clear notes of custard and semolina pudding. Also more vanilla.

Mouth: sweet and quite hot. Malty. Also quite tannic and drying. The palate has a roughness to it that reminds me a lot of Deanston Virgin Oak and Glenglassaugh Revival, both of which I don’t really like. Misses the complexity of the nose. It somehow reminds me of a good blend: it’s almost as if there’s some grain whisky North British.

Finish: surprisingly short. Woody, malty, with bitter notes, and a bit of heat. A bit dull.

Nose: spirity and sweet. This really burns in your nose. Really needs water. Without water it’s quite timid and insanely stingy. Toffee, caramel, caramelised apple. Nice floral notes lingering in the background.
Mouth: hot and sweet It’s quite sweet, but with very little vanilla notes.
Finish: hot, burning.

Nose: Quite intense, and quite unusual. Sweet, fruity and sour. There’s quite some woody-sour notes in there, and they manifest themselves in the form of vanilla-yoghurt with waxy apricots. Also distant earthy notes.
Mouth: bitter, fruity, and drying. Again there’s waxy apricot, but also bitter notes of apricot kernels and almonds. Again vanilla-yoghurt.
Finish: medium long, bonedry and fruity.

Nose: Quite intense. Sweet, fruity and estery. Quite intense. This one starts of a bit glue-y, and continues with estery notes and different kinds of fruit. Tropical fruits, red fruit, and waxy apples, vanilla and hints of coconut and white chocolate. Think Ferrero Raffaello. Distant salty and even some minty notes. Lush and rich, very nice.

Mouth: Very intense and quite explosive, even for something bottled at 54.1%. Bittersweet -not too sweet though. Waxy and malty. Quite spicy, a kind of woody spicyness. It’s got a lot of ‘oomph’, but IMHO it’s a bit too tannic.

Finish: long and quite drying, with a toasty bitterness.

Very nice nose. Surprisingly complex. Sweet and toffee-ish, with ripe fruits. Ever so slightly smoky. Some waxy and herbal notes, and . Coffee.
Mouth: soft and slightly sweet. Very round.
Finish: long. Fruits. Stewed tea. Funnily enough the finish is quite hot.

Nose: fruity and quite shy. At 58.?% this one really needs water to open up. Tutti frutti with clear hints of dried apricot. With water: more fresh fruits. Also some slightly floral and medicinal notes. Need time to develop. The Imperial distillery profile is clearly there.
Mouth: bittersweet and quite explosive. Fruity, and overall quite in line with the nose.
Finish: long and fruity with hints of banana and spices.

I like Imperial a lot, but so far I prefer the bourbon matured ones, because somehow the nicer sides of the distillery character tend to stand out more.

Nose: hmm…Fruity, slightly smokey and sherried. Notable sulphury notes. Spent matches, bruised mealy apples, applejuice, butterscotch and caramel…not very pleasant.
Mouth: bittersweet and malty, with more fruits and hints of strawberry.
Finish: short with hints of burnt toast and burnt sugar.

Nose: waxy, sweet and fruity. Calvados and waxy applepeel. Also pear and other estery notes. Funilly enough it develops some more fruity and estery notes over time.
Mouth: pretty light and sweet. Bourbon. Fruity and malty, with a ever so slightly floral note.
Finish: grassy and malty.

Nose: Woody, fruity and spicy. Although it’s sherry matured, judging by the nose it could just as well have been a bourbon cask. Starts of almost like a gin from Filliers: juniper, lemon and clean newmake spirit. Sandalwood, unripe banana’s, and sweet custardy notes. Also hints of dried fruit. With water: more fruits and estery notes. Very powerfull and demanding: excellent nose!

Palate: as big as the nose. Bittersweet, slightly salty and waxy. Very full flavoured. Hints of coconut. At 54% this is still very drinkable.

Finish: long and very nice. Herbal and malty.

Nose: hmm…For something that’s supposed to be peated tobermory, this is not smoky nor peaty at all. There’s some hints of smouldering fireplace in there, but only in the distant background. It’s actually pretty old-school in style, and not very clean. Reminds me of 1960’s blended whisky. Toffee, vanilla, red fruit, bruised apples and some sherry-spicyness. Also a nice medicinal note.

Mouth: sweet and fruity, with some heather and honey. Also unpleasant hints of stale garlic. There’s a lot of cask involvement of a so-so sherry cask going on in the background. It’s not bad, but I don’t think I want to know what’s underneath this really thick layer of make up.

Finish: medium long and soft, with more heather and honey and some sherry-spiciness.

Nose: full and quite smoky. Smoked meat, salty sherrynotes and tea.
Mouth: Slightly bitter. Like other blends from it’s day, the palate on this is very light. Less so than the 1970’s Vat 69 or the 1960’s Haig, but still there’s very little happening on the palate.
Finish: medium long, and quite hot and fruity.

It’s almost like they engineered blends to smell nice, but taste like water in the 1960’s. Either that, or most of these old blends have lost much of their original (already low) ABV due to evaporation. It’s a petty, because the nose was promising, but it didn’t quite deliver.

Nose: very light. Mineral notes and plastic beachball. Also some slight notes of vanilla, but overall it’s pretty light.
Mouth: Nothing. Water with a drop of honey.
Finish: short and slightly bitter

I think this bottle can officially be declared dead. It was bottled at 40% and it had almost no evaporation, but it still has gone bad. I think the screwtop on this was bad.

Nose: Ayayay! I smell mustard and sweaty feet, and it’s not me. Sour and sweet. Strange sweet smell of tropical fruits. Banana and forest fruits and strawberry yoghurtdrink. Cola. Very strange and very funky!
Mouth: Soft and sweet. Also slightly fosty and ‘dusty’. Pledge furniture polish and wax.
Finish: quite sweet and waxy, but there’s little development.

It’s not a great whisky, but I have to give it 80 points for likability, because it’s so weird.

First impression: light, both in color as on the nose.
Nose: lovely and crisp on the nose. Very crisp and fruity. White fruit and fresh stone fruit. Pear, apples, apricot. Eucalyptus. Slightly buttery, spicy, and malty. Also slightly floral, but in the most elegant kind of way. Laundry drying in the wind on a breezy summer’s day. Quite sweet and bourbon-y, but without much vanilla. This is definitely not everyone’s cup of tea, but I love this style.

Mouth: beautifull. Bittersweet, and slightly saly. Also slightly waxy and oily. I don’t know if one of the casks is refill-sherry, but it has a little bit of the buttery, salty, ‘rancio’ character.

Finish: pretty short but very pleasant, with hints of buttered toast and fresh espresso.

Bottled 2013. Fruity, salty, smokey and slightly waxy. Also youthfull. Nice whisky, pretty straightforward and smooth.

Usually, old bottles of strong spirits take time to settle down and become dinkable after you open them up. This one was completely undrinkable even after a couple of hours, and I disliked it so much that I closed the bottle and put it back on the shelf. We’re half a year later now, and it’s time to see if we managed to domesticate this monster.

Nose: Pfff…Finally it smells like whisky. And like sherry. Very promising. This one has that classic dry and salty sherry nose that you get with older blends. Very beefy and also slightly fruity, with peaches and dried prunes. Also almond, cold espresso, and something very remotely medicinal. No smoke and no peat though. Very nice.

Palate: Whereas the nose smells like a good single malt, the palate is that of fairly ok blend. dry and slightly waxy, with some treacle and sultanas. Round. Sweet and bitter.

Finish: rather short and sweet, and also pretty hot. It’s bottled at 43.5%, but you would say it’s stronger.

A nice and beefy sherried blend, but not stunning. I think this is a good example of bad bottle maturation. It has a lot of character, especially when you considering that in it’s day this probably was a pretty middle of the road blend, but you just know it has seen better days.

There’s little to add to the tonnes of stuff written about this Brora, except that it actually is really, really nice. I was hoping it would be hyped and overrated, but no: it’s great. Powerfull yet subtle, fresh yet complex, challenging yet annoyingly drinkable…

Nose: Starts off pretty estery and fruity. Pretty open and crisp, but not as crisp as the Devil’s Punchbowl Chapter 2. Apple candy, toffeed apple, peardrops on a firm malty base. In the background there are really nice biscuity notes that become more present after a while.

Mouth: sweet and just a little bit floral (but in a nice way) and very round and full. Reminds me of 1980’s Dalmore 12 years old, but this is better. Finish: quite short, with a malty sweetness and hints of treacle.

Both the Devil’s Punchbowls and the Orkney Bere Barley were way better than I expected them to be. This one however doesn’t quite deliver. It lacks the complexity and ‘clarity’ of the other ones. All in all, it’s a drinkable, yet overpriced malt.

Starts of with a very saline and smokey nose. Very hearty and herbal. It almost smells like soup, with lots of sellery and lovage. After a while sweeter notes of vanilla and fruit start to emerge.

On the palate it’s sweet and surprisingly smooth. Lots of mineraly notes and peat, but a not as interesting as the nose. Slightly waxy.

Short and bittersweet finish with a faint hint of a floral soapyness that disappears as quickly as it comes.

A nice and a-typical, but simple dram that really makes me want to eat. It is a good example of the unique characters you get with independend bottlings of well-known distilleries.

Fruit, estery nose. Apple and pear, and also some more troplical fruits like pineapple. The profile is quite similar to the 12 year old, but it’s less intense, and less ‘crisp’. It’s like they’ve diluted the 12 years old and then bottled it. Light, and a bit sharp on the palate. It tastes much lighter than the 12 years old, and also sweeter. Some very nice notes of pineapple in the finish.

Nose: starts off pretty glue-y and sour, but I think this is because the bottle spent quite some time on the shelf. Also slightly salty. Hmm…this actually has a very interesting nose. It’s surprisingly complex and busy. Almost a bit nervous. Fruity and spcy. Almond, pear and herbs. Vanilla. There are very clear notes of sherry- and bourboncask in here. It’s like they matured the grain whisky in a really high quality sherry cask, and the malt in a refill bourbon cask.
Finish: medium long, with citrus and something vegetal.

Overall a very nice and excentric blend. Recommended.

As it came from a freshly opened bottle, this one started off very, very shy. When it finally opened up after 10 minutes or so, it was different than I expected.

You can clearly taste that the people at Diageo have tried to produce a ‘delicate and complex’ blend. It’s way more subtle and engaging than the rest of the Johnnie Walker range. And there’s none of the biting spirityness you get with JW Red or Black.
It’s surprisingly floral and ‘perfumy’, with delicate hints of smoke. Overall the nose is very bourbon-barrel-speysider-ish. It’s has striking similarities with the Tony Koehl Imperial it tasted earlier, in that it reminds me of ‘laundry drying in the sun’.

A nice blend, with a big but: Blue Label is the top of the Johnnie Walker range. Yes, it’s better than the others (with the possbible exception of the less delicate, but more powerfull Platinum Label), but it’s better for the wrong reasons. It’s better because it fits nicely in some marketing managers’ market segmentation strategy. I feel that it’s not the best they have to offer. That it could have been even better if they tried a little bit harder. It lacks passion and pride.

If you want to buy a nice premium blend, buy a bottle of Compassbox Flaming Heart. It’s better, more engaging, and it’s more honest. And it’s half the price.

Many people thought this tasted a bit off, some even described it as smelling of sewer. I actually thought it was quite nice. It’s very different from the more likable 15yo, and it does have some strange foosty notes of garlic to it, but I don’t think it’s all that bad. I really liked the slight smoky edge. Decent stuff, but not really engaging.

This could be a Glenlivet 12 years old. Very fruity and estery, with loads of pear and overripe melon. It misses depth, and I think it’s too fruity.

For me, this was the winner of the lot. It’s a robust malt, and really sippable. Smoky fruit-sweets. It’s very reminiscent of old Johnnie Walker Red Label from the early 50’s. Quite a solid and tasty blend, and WAY better than JW Red, Black, and IMHO even better than JW Blue Label. I think, however, that there’s better value for money.

Very heavily sherried, very PX-ey. Vanilla, dried fruits, bit of wax. Also licoriceroot and spices, and clear notes cola. Tastes quite sweet and sour. Nice finish, but rather hot, and a bit drying. All in all a good dram, albeit a bit predictable. Something for Christmass.

Nose: sherried, sour and fruity. After the initial sherry blast, there’s freshly cut fruit. Or better: the fresh from the fridge kind of fruitsalad they have in supermarkets – minutes away from its expiration date. Also quite a lot of sulphur, but in an unpleasant way. Think pickled onions.
Mouth: dry, sweet and resinous, with liquoriceroot and vanilla, and again quite sulphury.
Finish: short with lingering hints of sultanas and liquoriceroot.

It smells pretty old-school at first (it reminded me a lot of this 1960’s White Horse), but the sulphur is just too much for me. I was hoping this would fade away over time, but if anything, it only got worse.

Typical JW in character. Pears, a bit of smoke, and caramelly sweet stuff. It tastes rather sweet, but it’s quite uneventfull, and it has no finish whatsoever. A good mixer, but it lacks the character needed to be a good sipping drink. I liked the JW Double Black more, because it also worked well as a sipping blend.

‘Product of Scotland, Premium Blend, Extra Special Scotch Whisky, Quality Guaranteed, 100% Scotch Whisky’…This must be good.

At €8.99 Glen Hood is about the cheapest whisky money can buy, and I have to admit that I’m a bit predjudiced when it comes to really cheap whisky. There’s just so much really bad stuff around, that I make sure I have the lowest of expectations, so I won’t be dissapointed.

On first nosing: Alcohol, sterilizing alcohol and lens tissues. After getting used to the sting there’s butter candy, salted caramel, burnt toast and grainyness. There’s also a clear note from sherrycasks in there. Not unpleasant, but it in the end, the smell of raw alcohol dominates everything, which makes it taste really cheap. On the mouth it’s more of the same, with a short, bitter-sweet finish, and a hot alcoholnip towards the end.

This is the stuff that you put in your cola in preparation of a rowdy night out with your friends: it’s cheap, not too obnoxious, and it’s 40% abv.

At €45 a bottle, in terms of years-per-euro this 20 year old Glen Moray should be good value for money. But is it any good tastewise?

This Glen Moray is what I call ‘plump’. Full, rich, friendly, round, and VERY sweet. It’s so sweet in fact, that it’s somewhat offputting: it feels a bit like being forced to down a pint of custard. There’s more to it than just custardy sweetness, but it all seems to be very understated. Clear bourboninfluences, with some soft herbs, toffee, caramel and brown sugar.

Some whiskies are meant to sip, some are meant to drink. This one is meant to be served with a spoon, and some whipped cream. Don’t get me wrong: it’s not a bad whisky, but it’s just too rich.

Nose: harsh, fruity and sweet. Starts of with notes of dry white wine, sour white grapes and other tannic stuff. Pear, caramel and clear spirit. Also some spices and some very faint floral notes. There’s also quite a strong smell of pure alcohol, which I really dislike.
Mouth: The contrast between the smell and the taste is pretty big, if not huge. It smells of sour and bitter things, but it actualy tastes pretty sweet and friendly, with malty tones and hints of almond and vanilla.
Finish: medium long and drying.

Although it tastes better than it smells, all in all I think it’s a pretty mediocre whisky. It’s simply too raw.

I got a sample of this during a visit at the distillery. Lovely stuff. Right up my alley, as I’m a big fan of fruity, fragrant whiskies and this is one of them. Amazing stuff, and according to the distiller this was not one of their best casks, so the future is very very promising.

Nose: Fresh fruits and minerals. This has that lovely crispness to it. It’s not very accessible, which for me is a good thing. Very zesty and fruity. It’s a complete fruitbasket: apple, banana, orange, apricot, peach, pear. Very fresh. It has resemblance to Imperial, but it’s less floral. And then, all of a sudden, there’s a completely unexpected tarry note. Roofing felt. A nice surprise.
Mouth: different than expected. Quite bitter and not bourbon-like at all.
Finish: medium long and very nice.