Tag Archives: Barrel

Kilchoman 3yo 2006/2010 “Summer 2010” (46%, OB, Fresh and Refill Bourbon Barrels, Circa 17.500 bottles)

Who said Islay Whiskies are only for the Winter? I tasted a lot of Islay whiskies at un winterly temperatures on nice summer evenings and it all tasted very well. Think out of the box. Although Kilchoman are hinting at the season in which the spirit was distilled, This one especially seems to tell us that Islay and summer goes together very well.

Kilchoman releases are abundant and which is what is quite clear. First there were the new make spirit bottles. Next in 2009 they released the Inaugural Release to be the first of the core range. Also from 2009 the second release became “Autumn 2009” next up was “Spring 2010” and after that the fourth release was this “Summer 2010”. Also in 2009 the first Single Cask releases were released at cask strength. From 2011 the Single Cask bottles were released with red labels. In 2012 a Sherry Cask release at 46% ABV was released with a black label. Also from 2012 a new addition to the core range was released called “Manchir Bay”. Last but not least there are a few releases of 100% Islay at 50% ABV, where all ingredients of the whisky were sourced form the island itself. Now it’s time for “Summer 2010” solely from Bourbon Barrels from Buffalo Trace.

Color: White Wine.

Nose: Fresh young peat, lots of peat, but it isn’t so in your face type of peat. Licorice and black and white powder. Citrus, lemon and whiffs of meat, less stak, more gravy. The whole is very nice. The smoke in this goes very well with the citrus part. Who said Islay Whiskies are not suitable for Summer?

Taste: Sweet. Licorice. A sour element which to me isn’t neccesarily citrussy or lemony. This has a little wood with a little bitter touch to it. Hints of paper. Very uncomplex and a beerlike, maybe hoppy finish.

The nose has more balance than the taste, still the potential is obvious. Again I can’t wait for older Kilchomans.

Points: 82

Thanks go out to Erik for sharing the Whisky.

Kilchoman 3yo 2006/2010 “Spring 2010” (46%, OB, Oloroso Butt Finish, Circa 8.500 bottles)

Kilchoman then. The newest addition to the immensely popular Islay Whisky family. This new small farm distillery was built in 2004 near Kilchoman in the west of Islay, and therefore named Kilchoman. Operations started in 2005 and their first disaster struck in 2005 also. No distillery can call themselves a real Scottish distillery without a big fire. Well history was in the making so let’s do the fire thing quickly, they might have thought. Not hinting at any foul play of course. In 2005 the kiln burned down. Rebuild in 2006 and operations recommenced. As of 2009 but foremost 2010, Whisky started to be released. In 2009 the first release in the new core range was the “Inaugural Release”. Next up was “Autumn 2009” Let’s try our “Spring 2010” that was the third release.

Color: Light Gold

Nose: Spicy butter and fatty. Peat and the smoke is distant. Soapy. Very nice wood. Meaty (steak) and full-bodied smell.

Taste: Licorice, black and white powder. Chewy, Sherried yet clean. Half sweet. Strange enough it also has something “thin”, maybe the ABV seems low (although it is 46% ABV). Again a little hint of soap, but nothing disturbing. Having tasted Bourbon only Kilchoman’s, the soapy element is probably from the Oloroso Butt.

Fair is fair. The Oloroso finish does add some character to the whole. I know the Barrels they source from Buffalo Trace are very good. I don’t know where Kilchoman sources the Sherry Butts and if they are American or European oak. Good spirit and good casks and look at this 3yo Whisky, reduced to 46% and already very nice. Can’t wait to see Kilchoman age!

Points: 84

Ladyburn ‘Rare Ayrshire’ 34yo 1975/2009 (45.2%, Signatory Vintage, Cask Strength Collection, Bourbon Barrel #558, 166 bottles)

Yes! Another example from the distillery that took its water from the Penwapple Reservoir, yes say it again, the Penwapple Reservoir. This time one of the many sister casks from the last year of operation, bottled by Signatory. Yesterdays cask was nice, but I couldn’t say it was worth your money (when you plan to drink it, rather than just mere collecting it), so will this be any better? This will be nice to compare to yesterdays one. Are they all the same? What does happen, when the same spirit is put into ‘supposedly the same casks’? In effect we can see a little bit here, what maturation in wood can do.

Color: Gold (slightly lighter than barrel #562)

Nose: Spicy wood. Clean and citrussy. Fresh sea air. Mocha and Cappuccino. Fresh cut grass. It’s different from cask #562, with a more typical Lowlander style. Fruitier, lemons and apples. Slightly woody with grass and hay. Lovely.

Taste: Sweetish, more estery sweet. This seems a bit  young too. Not very complex but a good body with apples. It has a different kind of sweetness, thicker and more tiresome if you have a lot of it. Nuttier too. Yes more hazelnuts. The finish has more woody influence and is a bit more bitter, but nothing to be afraid of. This has more balance and body. The other cask seems thinner.

No two casks are alike. whats the influence of cask, wood etc. Of the two, this is the better one. Nice full body and a great Lowlander. I enjoyed this one more. Good finish and nice aftertaste too. Because of the different sweetness this has, (corn-sugar), this seems to me less drinkable than cask #562. Still, who would try to drink the whole bottle at once, of this museum piece, so drinkability is not an issue here. Nice Ladyburn. Recommended.

Points: 84

Ladyburn ‘Rare Ayrshire’ 34yo 1975/2009 (46.9%, Signatory Vintage, Cask Strength Collection, Bourbon Barrel #562, 172 bottles)

Ladyburn wasn’t long around. Opened in 1966 and already closed in 1975. It was built by W. Grant & Sons within their Girvan grain distillery complex. Not completely uncommon in those days, since there were more malt distilleries on a grain distillery site. Glen Flagler was added to the Moffat site and Ben Wyvis was added to Invergordon. All three didn’t last long and are pretty scarce these days. These Rare Ayrshire’s are still around, but there will be a time soon, they will not, and prices will soar. So is this worth your money? Lets see…

Well officially there is no Ladyburn on the label, still it isn’t hard to guess what this must be. Out of the blue Signatory started to bottle a lot of casks from Ladyburn. Which is always nice since the place shut down in 1975 and whiskies from Ladyburn are getting more and more rare.

Color: Gold

Nose: Clean, like you would expect from a younger bourbon cask. Grassy, cold butter. Spicy yet light. Caramel, vanilla and clay. Powdery. Mild wood, which smells a bit odd here, small hint of rot maybe? It smells old now, but also not quite right. Grainy and with that, hinting at sourness. Finally perfumy and creamy.

Taste: Butter. Very grassy, lemonade-like. Mild wood, like liquid old sawdust. It’s not without body this. Caramel and powdery cream. Sweet and ever so slightly bitter. Nutty, hazelnuts. Not very balanced and rather anonymous. If you close your eyes you could imagine this being from a bourbon barrel. It slightly resembles Woodford Reserve.

I have to say that after some breathing it tastes better compared to when it was freshly opened. Beware, this Lowlander is easily drinkable and that’s not good for what is essentially a museum piece Whisky.

Points: 81

Pulteney 8yo 1990/1998 (63.1%, Cadenhead, 222 bottles, 750 ml)

My good friend Christoph asked me to have a look at a clean bourbon cask whisky and look for mint. As it happens, I have just such a thing on my lectern, so let’s have an adventurous search for mint in this whisky. This whisky was opened on November, 27 2010 at a tasting session with my Whisky club “Het Genietschap” where the theme was “Whiskies younger than 10yo”. This was one of my entries (together with the Kilkerran). I remember I found it very closed when freshly opened. Just have a look at the picture from june 5, 2012. How full it still is.

Color: White wine, light gold.

Nose: Very clean bourbon nose, clean ethanol, some chocolaty wood and musty. Fresh sea air and powdery. Very typical for high cask strength young Cadenhead bourbon barrel whiskies. I’ve smelled everything there is now, no evolution, so we can move on to the taste. Beware it’s 63.1% ABV.

Taste: Strong and spicy, but not woody (just a bit). There’s also some smoke ánd a freshness resembling menthol a bit, but not mint. Everything is in the details. It’s great to taste something that’s spicy, not from the wood. It’s obviously sweet at this high strength, maybe a tad too sweet for my tastes. High alcohol with a lot of sugar can be a bit nauseating. This one’s on the precipice, but didn’t fall in.

As I said this is very typical for those high strength Cadenhead bottlings. They are very clean and reveal quite some information about how the cleanly distilled spirit from a distillery is. This is as honest as it can get, so it’s quite interesting to taste a few head to head. I guess this is a connoisseurs whisky. Not made for your gulping pleasure at a card game. And it can only be ‘enjoyed’ with caution. If you don’t give it enough attention, it will give you very little. The fun is maybe more in analyzing and discovery. The fun is also for those people (like me) who occasionally like their whiskies strong and utterly clean.

I once had a similar bottle of Tormore that was even stronger and older (13yo, 63.9%, 85 Points). There were many things wrong with it, like a very metallic taste, but still I had a lot of fun with it, when ‘enjoyed’ at the right moment. I found myself another bottle before it completely vanished of the face of the earth.

Sorry C. No mint, I’ll have to look further, or you have to taste this for yourself this summer 😉

Points: 84

Bladnoch 8yo (55%, OB, Beltie Label)

This should turn out to be a very interesting review. If not for you, than certainly for me. Mr Bladnoch, Raymond Armstrong has a lot of fans, just have a look at the forum Bladnoch has. When looking around, this 8yo is considered to be very nice. Also, when you have a look at the average score for this bottle on Whiskybase it turns out to be 86.5 points (8 ratings).

I mention all this, because my bottle of 8yo was officially opened at a gathering of my whisky club last saturday and this Bladnoch was considered to be the worst of the day/evening! Auch! So I gave it a few days and will taste it again now in all tranquility (only some Flower Kings on the stereo). What is wrong, is the whisky bad, or were we doing something else than a proper tasting saturday? We’ll soon find out…

Color: Gold

Nose: Malty and definitively nothing wrong at first nosing. Hint of smoke and butter. Grassy. It smells like it has a more than a light body (for a Lowlander), clean and honest. The butter evolves over time. Mr. Brilleman of the Dutch Whisky Information Centre (WICN), thought us that this is a distillation error, (which sometimes can smell nice). It’s not overpowering so no problem here for me.  Hints of sour wood and powdery. Also slightly fruity. It smells like it will be very sweet and buttery.

Taste: Starts very strangely, like new make, and some woody spice. A little bit soapy and fatty. Sure there are some grassy notes, but not as I’d come to expect from a Lowlander. It’s like the grass turns a bit bitter. I find the taste to be unbalanced to boot, and seems to me as if some feints that found their way into the cask aren’t completely transformed by ageing. I guess this should have been in the cask for a longer while. I also don’t detect any citrussy notes which would make the whisky more refreshing.

After giving the whisky some time to breathe it gets somewhat more balanced and friendlier, some nice spices shine through, with just the right amount of wood. It just doesn’t shed its new-make-and-wood finish.

Adding water added even more balance to the nose, and that’s definitively all right. The palate however got even more simple. Fatty wood and slightly bitter. I’m glad most people like this, because Raymond deserves his success with this own distillation of Bladnoch since the take over. This unfortunately just wasn’t for me. But I’ll find me another one…

Points: 77

By the way the Beltie label should mean this was from Bourbon Barrels. (The Sheep label was used for Hogsheads). Sometimes, both labels were used for Sherry Butts though.

May 25, 2015 [UPDATE]. Now that the bottle is almost empty I feel I have to add something to my additional review. Reading back my notes, the nose is pretty much the same, but I feel the taste has changed, or maybe I have changed. The taste is more balanced, still buttery, but sweet and better integrated. The new make is no longer there. Fresh oak, giving spice and grass. Quite a transformation when it got a long time to breathe. Hurray! First time around it wasn’t for me, and I tried to sell it, but nobody wanted it. I’m happy I still have it. It came ’round nicely. With water the grass and spice got even better and a honeyed note enters the fold, Nice!

New score: 83

The Balvenie 15yo 1983/1999 ‘Single Barrel’ (50.4%, OB, Bourbon Barrel #1300, 311 bottles)

Time for some more whisky then…

Let’s have a look at this old Balvenie. I have to say I don’t usually like Balvenie that much. I think that for me it lacks character and body. It’s usually a light whisky that is bottled at a relatively low ABV compared to other whiskies. This older 15yo is bottled at 50.4%, but more recent versions are bottled at a mere 47.8%. That having said. This 15yo and the original 21yo Portwood can be respectable whiskies, depending on the version you find. Still, I encounter the 15yo a lot, so I have the opportunity to try them on a regular basis and to me they don’t seem to get better, so if you want one, my tip to you would be: try to find an older one.

The Balvenie 15yo "Single Barrel" but not #1300Color: Light Gold

Nose: Vegetal, comes across as a very light and clean whisky. It’s powdery and the malt shines through. Dry wood. The cask didn’t give the whisky a lot of color, but is evident on the nose. After a while I get some lemony notes or maybe some lemon grass in combination with hot coco. Again I would use words like clean or fresh for this one.

Taste: Sweet and estery. Again the wood is there. It’s there from the start and I guess it will play a role for some time to come. Even the taste is clean, so if you like clean whiskies, this one is for you. Wow this one is very fruity now and does have some body. Prickly wood (not overpowering though), yellow fruits like dried apricots and peaches. Some bitter wood in the finish.

I would say this is a nice place to start drinking good malts. It’s decent and very easy to “analyze”. It’s clean and elegant and has some nice woody notes to show you what a cask can do. If you’re a connoisseur, well maybe this one’s a tad to easy. A friend of mine would say: “drinks well playing cards” Again, try to find an older one (50.4%). By the way, this is not cask strength. It is reduced to 50.4% to get more bottles out of a cask, or maybe the Balvenie drinkers like their 15yo a little lower than 57%. I’m not judging.

Points: 86