That Boutique-y Whisky Company – Aultmore Batch 2 (56%)

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Aultmore Batch 2A little information about myself: my parents met overseas while serving in the USAF. Consequently, I was born in a small Spanish bedroom-community just outside of Madrid. My parents divorced shortly after and I moved to England with my mother. A few months after that, we landed in Indiana, so by the time her service ended and she finally decided to settle down with family back in Connecticut, I was no stranger to air travel. My father stayed in the service for most of his career, which gave me lots of opportunities to get back on that plane and visit whatever corner of the world he was touring. Some of my fondest memories were of being alone in an airport, surrounded by strangers and weird 80’s art installations. The noise, the bustling, the unusual accents and languages, the change in scenery and never having to take your shoes off for security… it was all very romantic to me.

Airplane MaltThis single malt brings me back to those days. It reminds me of the way airplanes used to smell. A cocktail of chemicals, polyester, gin and smoke. That might not sound like a very traditional whisky, and it surely isn’t. Unless you grew up flying unattended minor you may not find it as nostalgic as I do, but this is really good stuff.

Nose: Juniper. Chewing pen tubes on airplanes and plastic kiddie wings. Lime Rickeys and cranberry juice. Buttered pasta with cardamom. Kiwi sherbet muddled with mint. Crunchy, packaged chocolate chip cookies. Salvaged barn board with bath salts. Just a touch of waxed leather and old library books.

Palate: This one has a little gin in the first sips but the smoke and old books chase that out pretty quickly before getting hot and spicy. Melon liqueur, bay leaf and lemon malt. Waxy finish with allspice, cassia cinnamon, chocolate chips and the soot from an extinguished candle flame.

Rating: Highly RecommendMost of Aultmore’s production gets swallowed up by blenders like Dewar’s, their parent company, but every now and then a bottling with extremely noble karma breaks the cycle and makes it into something much nicer, like this. Cheers to the chaps at Master of Malt for the sample!

That Boutique-y Whisky Company – Invergordon Batch 1 (41.6%)

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Invergordon Batch 1The elusive single grain Scotch! In Scotland there are single malts, blended malts and just plain ole blended whiskies, all of them abundant on any shelf, but the fourth category, single grain whisky, doesn’t have many contenders yet. A fifth category, blended grain, has even less.

This is a curious category in the whisky world. If they’re operating a column still, the distiller can use any mash bill at all, so long as there’s a little bit of malted barley in there, too. If they use a pot still then they can’t use pure malted barley, either. Because of this, single grain scotch can use Bourbon, wheated Bourbon, and Rye style mash bills, and can emulate the Irish or Canadian styles as well. This is, perhaps, the most flexible of all the Scotch whisky styles but doesn’t have a marketable enough designation to merit extreme popularity.

There’s probably a lot of rye in the Invergordon Batch 1 mash bill. That or maybe it sat in an ex-rye or a heavy rye ex-Bourbon cask along the way. Whatever the case may be, there’s definitely some spicy American influence. The folks at Master of Malt were tight lipped about the details, but any American whisky lover will find a lot to be familiar with in this single grain Scotch. Canadian whisky fans may find a few notes they’re familiar with, too.

Nose: I thought this was a Bourbon or Rye at first. Citrus marinated green olives and rye spice. Smoke and spiced chocolate. Mildly coppery with lots of grassy notes. Squid funk and vanilla frosting. A little earthy with perfumed dryer sheets from a few houses down the road. Subdued almonds and a touch of rounded bitterness.

Palate: Pumpernickel and tons of caraway with bitter pleather and guava. Slight copper with tangy apples. Coconut husks and cherry bark with a touch of rum and chocolate. Pleasant smoldering match-head sulfur and Bourbon vanilla beans in the vapors.

Rating: RecommendedYou don’t see a lot of rye flavor coming out of Scotland. This is a boundary pushing whisky for the British Isles.

Thanks, Master of Malt, for the neat samples! Be sure to check them out if you’d like to give this single grain Scotch a try.

That Boutique-y Whisky Company – Clynelish Batch 2 (50.6%)

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That Boutique-y Whisky Company Clynelish Batch 2I was super excited when the delivery guy brought me these samples and even more so when I opened the box and saw that they were from Master of Malt’s new Boutique-y Whisky Company label. Independent bottlings are an adventure, sometimes awesome, sometimes terrible, making the victories all that much sweeter. As he handed it over and asked for my signature, he had a look in his eyes like he knew what was in the box. It was as if he secretly wished I wasn’t home so he could forge the signature, steal the package and run off into the woods with it.

grumpyClynelish is already a covetable distillery, but this one? It made me whole again… and then it made me angry. I felt like a junky that just overdosed. Things were warm and soft for a while. Then there was some half-attended panic. I stopped breathing and felt the warm embrace of that god I was never quite sure about envelope me as the oxygen left my diseased brain. I felt like everything was finally going to be alright… and then some sadistic asshole with a defibrillator brought me back to life. Back to this cold, terrible world. They only sent a 3 cl sample?! For my metric-illiterate American readers, a single, lonely ounce?! It should have come with a disclaimer: Warning! Do not consume. May cause existential crisis. Gah!!!

Nose: Fig jam and plump, gold raisins covered in honey are first. Frozen bananas dipped in chocolate make appearances here and there between the classic Clynelish hay. Perfectly sweet malt and succulent crab meat poke around, bearing gifts of fennel, ginger powder, coriander and strawberry.

Palate: Golden syrup and coriander. Black pepper and apples with a cooling vapor on the back of the palate. Hot first and then the sweetness unfolds afterwards. Dig for the pear. Wonderfully hot and stony. Mildly leathery. Smoked tomato in the long gone echoes of the finish.

Rating: Highly RecommendBetter than lolcats and grumpy cats combined. Thanks to the lovely folks over at Master of Malt for the sample!

Nikka – Taketsuru 21 year (43%)

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Saddam and the Who-sseins Band PictureLast week I started a new band: Saddam and the Whosseins. We dress like Ba’athist dictators and perform a cappella covers of Who songs. We are the most awesome thing to ever come out of Iraq… other than written language, standardized units of measurement and accounting practices. Much like the Nikka Taketsuru line of Pure Malts, I’m not entirely sure that the world is ready for us yet.

This series is named after one of the two godfathers of Japanese whisky, Masataka Taketsuru, the other pioneer being a Japanese wine merchant named Shinjiro Torii. The story goes that right after WWI, at Torri’s request, Taketsuru moved to Scotland to attend Glasgow University and study organic chemistry. Taketsuru then began working at a few distilleries to study the Scottish distillers’ methods. He took on a local wife before moving back to Japan, bringing single malt whisky culture with them. Upon return, he helped found what would eventually become Suntory with Torii-san (See what they did there?) before branching off to start his own empire, which would later become Nikka, so he could explore what he thought to be superior locations for a distillery which Torri-san did not wish to test. 

Nikka Taketsuru 21 yearThis 21 year is much more flavorful and sharper than the 12 year release, but both are at times amorphous and difficult to pin down. This one is slightly less capricious with age, though, and a snifter will help you really open up the nose, so skip the Glencairn glass.

Nose: Tomatillos! Smashed open pumpkin! Crispy bean sprouts and Vietnamese basil! Pear and orange toffee. The farmy notes have changed to crisp pieces of printer paper with peppermint lifesavers at times. Sweet malty-custard base with a shard of rustic bread. The orange builds and builds before dropping off into nowhere, leaving you with a glass full of Coca-Cola and wet leaves.

Palate: Malt and pumpkin at first, quickly resigning to a clean-burning charcoal fire. Dry like over-brewed Lipton tea with hints of mango. There’s a bit of the capsaicin from the 12 here, too. Both are cayenne hot and have a slow burning fire that swells up over you in the finish, though this one is a little mellower. A little beer, chocolate and ginger powder in the echoes of the finish, as well.

Rating: RecommendedI woke up in a Mesopotamian doorway / The Kurdish guy knew my name / He said, ” You should not drink because Allah forbids it / if you can get up and walk that way” / Baghdad doesn’t have an underground / The breeze blew back my hair / I remembered throwing punches around / And preachin’ from my chair / Now come on tell me who are yooooouuuu? Ah-weee. / Who-who! Who-who!

Much gratitude to Joshua Hatton over at JewMalt Whisky Reviews for the sample!

Nikka – Taketsuru 12 year (40%)

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Nikka Taketsuru 12The Nikka Taketsuru 12 year seems to be a polarizing whisky in the blogosphere, and whether people love it or hate it nobody seems to be talking about the obvious pepper to it. I’d swear they put some cayenne in here for a little kick. Am I going crazy? There’s a distinct possibility that I might be.

The first three times I sat down to take notes on it I wrote three very different reviews, with only a few common threads. I feel like I agree with both sides of the argument, that it’s good and mediocre at times. I began to wonder if my nose wasn’t having trouble on most of the days I didn’t like it, but in reality, each sitting I wrote for went from opposite extremes and back again trying to describe it. This whisky is like a peppery Vesuvan Doppelganger:

(Upon summoning, the Doppelganger acquires all characteristics except color of any one whisky in play on either side. During upkeep, Doppelganger may take on the characteristics of a different whisky in play instead.)

Nose: Starts off a little farmy with a touch of squid before turning into lime and blueberry ceviche. Then again, sometimes it starts off with sweet pear and tons of malt before morphing into dehydrated apple chips. It almost smells mildly peaty, the way Johnnie Walker Black does. After a few rounds it moves into smoky/earthy territory with some paprika and cayenne pepper. It is all of these things but never all at once.

Palate: Not as sweet as I expected it to be. At first, it’s very subdued with flat malt. You can pick out hints of lime, but by the time you’re there it slips into smoked Thai chili peppers and gritty Mexican chocolate. The capsaicin builds. If you stop drinking for a bit, the finish kind of tastes like you ate a whole roll of Lifesavers candies a few minutes ago and the citric acid is still lingering. The finish is all cayenne, paprika and chocolate.

Rating: RecommendedA strange whisky indeed. This is a blended malt; a blend of single malts from Nikka’s two distilleries, Yoichi and Miyagikyo. Perhaps the disparate releases that make this one up are fighting for control. Alcohol isn’t a homogeneous substance and I definitely find two distinct, dueling spirits locked up inside this bottle.