Tag Archives: Sauternes

Longrow 10yo 2007/2018 (56%, OB, Fresh Sauternes Hogshead, for The Nectar, Belgium, 258 bottles, 18/437)

Nico got a mention in the previous review of the Springbank 12yo Port. So this Nico dude once made me aware that he really, really likes a particular Longrow 10yo Sauternes. So here we are again, going to have a look at yet another Whisky from the stills at the Springbank distillery that has matured in an ex Wine cask. Sauternes is a sweet White Wine from Bordeaux, France. Do I really need to mention this is French? Isn’t Bordeaux already famous enough? Well, just in case you didn’t know.

Although Longrow is also famous enough, as is its distilling regime. Just in case you don’t know, I am still going to tell you that Longrow is peated Whisky from the Springbank distillery that has been distilled just two times, where Springbank is 2.5 times distilled. Half the spirit is distilled 2 times and the other half 3 times, so the Gandalf’s at Springbank call it a 2.5 distilled spirit, sounds like wizardry to me. Add to that some more peat than they use for “Springbank” and you have Longrow: the heavily peated expression, 50 – 55 ppm (parts per million) phenol content of the malted barley after kilning.

Color: Copper Brown.

Nose: Fantastic fruity and sweaty peat, really bold and amazing. Could Sauternes also be one of the best wine casks for Whisky? What a classic, big and utterly wonderful nose. Sweetish and fruity. Clay, dust, white pepper and some more earthy and peaty aroma’s. Rotting leaves lying in the garden. All the aroma’s here are perfectly integrated with the peat. It almost smells chewy as well. Where fruit aroma’s usually give off a summery feel, here it seems to be the opposite. Yes it is fruity, but in a dark and broody way. Nice soft and velvety peat leaps out. As I said, fruity, but in this dark and broody way. Its fruity yes, yet also very much industrial in its feel. This is an amazing smelling Whisky. After a while a smoky note pops up. The whole is dry and fruity at the same time. I think this might very well be very special stuff. I already like it a lot. The next day the empty glass still has some big aroma’s to it. Lots of peat and smoke and some hints of plastics and a fatty aroma, for that industrial feel.

Taste: Fruity, nutty at first and than some wood, with a nice spine tingling, spicy bitterness. Black coal and iodine. Chewy peat and the smoke itself is more upfront here. Big and bold again. Seems like the Wine underlines the peat somewhat more in this expression than in other Longrows. In comes toffee, so it has some sweetness to it, with lots of carbon and peat inside. Tasting this Whisky, I’m really missing some of the funkiness the nose showed. The taste is drier and less chewy. Fruit toffee. Nutty. Semi-sweet ripe red fruits, mixed in with a healthy dose of peat (and nuts). The taste of burning off garden waste. Even though there is enough fruit here, the whole is still quite dry. Towards the aftertaste this bitter note slightly coated my tongue and shows quite some staying-power. This bitterness is actually hindering a score into the 90’s. Sometimes a bitter note can work wonders, this is just not one of those cases. Nevertheless a very nice and special Longrow for sure.

Wishing you all a very good and healthy 2024!

Points: 89

Worthy Park Quatre Vins 2013 (52%, OB, Cask Selection Series #8, Ex-Bourbon 4 years & Ex-Monbazillac, Ex-Sauternes, Ex-Moscatel & Ex-Jurançon 2 years, 1.318 bottles, Jamaica)

As we saw in the previous review, Worthy Park, as it is now, is a relatively new distillery, with the first distillate running off the still in 2007. As we all know, new distilleries sell a lot of young stuff, so there are a lot of rather young independent bottlings to be found, as well as a lot of the releases of the distillery itself are quite young, like most of these Cask Selection Series. By now, there is our Single Estate Reserve as well as a few 10yo’s (again finishes like the Madeira and the Port, both bottled @ 45% ABV.) and a 12yo bottled @ 56% ABV. So, since the distillery isn’t operational for all that long, it simply doesn’t have older stuff to release. A new distillery has to reach a lot of people to get some of the invested money back quickly to survive, so a distillery like this won’t be going for an extreme and funky style (yet). Non of the Worthy Parks I have tried until now, came across as a high ester Rum in taste (and nose). So for a Jamaican Rum, Worthy Park isn’t about all that super high ester stuff, like we saw with Hampden (or Long Pond).

By the way, Monbazillac, Sauternes, Moscatel & Jurançon are all sweet White Wines. Moscatel is fortified and Jurançon exists also in a dry version as well but then it is called Jurançon-Sec. However, I don’t think they used the dry variant here, since the rest is Sweet, but you can never be sure now can you. Since the previous review and the one below are from the Cask Selection Series, here is a list of the eight releases I know of:

Worthy Park 2012 Marsala Cask Selection Series #1 for La Maison Du Whisky, France, 60%, 319 bottles, 2017
Worthy Park 2012 Oloroso Cask Selection Series #2, 59%, 428 bottles, 2017
Worthy Park 2013 Sherry Cask Selection Series #3, 57%, 1.148 bottles, 2018
Worthy Park 2013 Madeira Cask Selection Series #4, 58%, 677 bottles, 2018
Worthy Park 2008 Port Cask Selection Series #5, 56%, 585 bottles, 2018
Worthy Park 2013 Virgin Cask Selection Series #6 for The Nectar, Belgium, 55% 342 bottles 2019?
Worthy Park 2013 Oloroso Cask Selection Series #7, 55%, 1.612 bottles, 2019
Worthy Park 2013 Quatre Vins Cask Selection Series #8, 52%, 1.318 bottles, 2019

Color: Orange brown.

Nose: This one starts with a nice funky caramel, like Jamaican funk toffee (if it exists). Clay, fatty and creamy. Honey, nutty, unlit tobacco, slightly burnt toast and warm plastic or polyester even. Organic and slightly grassy. Paint with a hint of solvents and vinegar made from Wine. Chocolate Rum beans. Spicy and obviously a bit winey yet also meaty. Gravy, dry and dusty. Nice fresh oak, in part a bit like plywood. Hints of Alsatian Gewürztraminer, but also the flinty bit of a Pouilly Fumé. Both wines, strangely enough, not one of the Quatre Vins. A fast flowing gutter in the rain. What? Yeah, well, the Wines give this Rum a bit of a combined note that is hard to put into words. Red fruit candy without the sweetness. Dusty, as well as some mocha and vanilla powder. Do you remember the smell of a bowl that had vanilla ice-cream in it a few hours ago? So, from this big funky start it first turns fruity and next, more dry and spicy. A lot of the complex initial smells wear off a bit. Stock cube, with hints of toasted oak and licorice. The development is not all that dissimilar to the previously reviewed Oloroso version. No doubt about it, this is a very good quality Rum, yet again, lacking a bit of the Jamaican funk, I’ve come to expect from a Jamaican Rum. It is almost closer to, yet another, rather new, high quality Rum that is Foursquare from Barbados, than to its Jamaican brother from another mother, Hampden. Traits I’m actually looking for in a Jamaican Rum. When you have a few open bottles of Rum around, like me, sometimes you feel like having a nice Rhum Agricole from Martinique, Guadeloupe, or Reunion. On other occasions, Jamaican Funk or a nice Demerara is the way to go. Worthy Park is very good Rum, but it isn’t old skool Jamaican in style. Jamaican funk without the funk is like chicken without the jerk, but I may have mentioned something like this as well about the Oloroso bottling. So sometimes when I want to go Jamaican, I tend to go for something like Hampden or Long Pond, more outspoken and yes, sometimes hit or miss, like the Hampden from Cadenhead I just reviewed. That one is just strange (in a good way), but therefore not for everybody/anyone. Apart from the nose not being quintessentially Jamaican, it definitely is a rather good nose though, lots happening and very fine. I have to say the Wines do lift this nose beyond the nose of the Oloroso version, the Quatre Vins smells rather exciting, and in comparison, the Oloroso can smell young and unfinished.

Taste: Big, fatty and sweet at first, yet quickly (in a millisecond or so) turning dry, spicy and winey. Although more of the Red Wine kind, than Sweet Whites (because of the sour notes). Herbal, medium bitter, green and somewhat hot. Flinty and with a slightly burnt edge to it. Licorice upfront as well as some bicycle inner tube rubber seems to be associated with it. Warming. Maybe slightly Jamaican in the beginning, but not really actually during the rest of the experience. As I said, short lived. Wax and almonds. All those different casks got very busy, but here in a somewhat disharmonious way. For me, it worked a lot better in the nose. Just like the Oloroso version, it thus starts big, funky and fatty, and it turns more dry, austere, herbal and spicy, rather quickly, which might seem odd. People tend to believe Rum is a sweet distillate, since is it closely associated with sugar as well as the fact that this has been finished in casks that previously held Sweet Wines, so one would expect something sweeter than this. Hints of latex paint. Where the Wine-casks helped the nose past the Oloroso, here on the palate, the Oloroso clearly worked better. Which is a shame really, because the nose of the Quatre Vins is much better. Well, one supposedly can’t have it all. In the finish, obvious notes of slightly milky, Red Wine notes, Merlot, this time and again not one of the Quatre Vins, and yet another Red, how peculiar. Hints of toasted oak, European oak, spicy and tannic. The finish, with some plastic/polyester and bitter notes, is short and quickly moves into the aftertaste. Which is unbalanced, actually it falls apart into a woody (bitter) bit and an acidic, winey bit, making this one somewhat less tasty to drink. Still a shame really, since the nose is really good and interesting as well.

First of all, if you want old skool Jamaican funk, than maybe you should reconsider buying a Worthy Park just yet. Do you want to buy a good Rum, than Worthy Park is happy to oblige, why not, it can be, and usually is good stuff, even though this Quatre Vins is something of an strange beast. Which one to get is up to you. Between the two, the Oloroso version is better and easier to get through, although somewhat sweeter (and more of the burnt notes) and with a (slightly) less interesting nose than this Quatre Vins offering. This one in particular is let down a bit by the taste, with the Wine casks playing a dubious role, and definitely overpowering the Ex-Bourbon cask maturation.

Points: 81

Kilchoman 5yo 2012/2018 (50%, OB, Sauternes Cask Finish, 10.000 bottles)

In the previous review, I wrote that the way to go with Kilchoman, (for me at least), are the red labelled ones. Nice single cask bottlings, with quite some ooomph, like this Belgian and German one. Often still young, but already finished. Not a sign of extreme youth or new make spirit in sight. Bourbon casks work well with the Kilchoman spirit and all the other varieties, are definitely not too bad either. Time maybe for a green labelled one. I just can’t claim the red ones are the best, without even considering Kilchoman’s other colours now can I? A while back Nico and I did a bottle share of this Sauternes cask finish. This, in itself is odd, since both Nico and I do have a fondness for bottlings that came in contact with Sauternes. I guess Nico wasn’t too sure about Kilchoman back then, and I’ll have to ask him how he feels about Kilchoman right now. Sauternes, by the way, is a sweet White Wine from Bordeaux (France). You may have heard of Château d’Yquem?

Color: Light gold.

Nose: Soft, creamy and dusty. Cookie dough. Sweet smelling, perfumy and fruity (white peach in sweet yoghurt comes to mind). Fruity acidity, yet not only citrus. Apples with a hint of exhaust gasses from a small, yet efficient, petrol car. Dusty with cold motor oil. Spicy as well, dry kitchen herbs, cinnamon and some white pepper. Old cardboard box, bad breath and cold dishwater. Nice soft wood and some mint. The typical Kilchoman bonfire smoke note is here again, but toned down a little. Overall quite elegant, although some of the off-putting notes, I just wrote down, seem to indicate differently. Nevertheless, elegant it is. Let’s say Islay style elegant, with Kilts and muddy wellies. The whole Whisky seems slightly toned down, compared to the Bourbon single cask bottlings (the red ones, remember) I reviewed earlier. Slightly less sparkly. Light vanilla notes combined with mocha flavoured whipped cream, mixed in with pencil shavings and a wee bit of menthol. Dry garden waste lying in the sun in autumn. This nose keeps giving and giving and evolves, it’s just not as powerful as the German Single Cask. This is again a quality Malt from Kilchoman, more complex than a Bourbon cask alone, and this one is also softer. Hint of sweet mint now. It shows a different side of Kilchoman. Very appetizing and very good again. It seems a bit more harmonious than a single cask Bourbon expression, and as said, it gained some complexity with the Sauternes finish. However, in all the aromas presented, it is impossible to find any true Sauternes notes. I no way I can smell a sweet White Wine in this Whisky. All the elements that went into making this Whisky do work perfectly, so it seems. Very good Kilchoman again.

Taste: Paper and ashes. Wax and sugar syrup. Dry tall grass and hay foremost. Borderline Grappa. Creamy and sweet candied yellow fruits. Less strong than the single cask expressions. Clearly reduced. A very appealing sweetness, aromatically close to a sweet apple. Fresh air after some rain. Ashes, black and white powder (licorice), hints of spicy wood and some (sweet) bitterness. Warming going down. Little bit of molten plastic in the finish. I know, this sounds terrible, but rest assured, it isn’t. This is a very drinkable expression, due to the balance and probably the reduction to 50% ABV. The aftertaste does pick up some more on the medium bitterness. The nose was definitely more complex than the taste. This, in all fairness, tastes simpler than expected. All is good and tasty, yet not as complex as the nose promised, (and the buzz in the anorak-y part of the Whisky world). I believe the recently tasted German Single Cask expression may have even tasted more complex. This is more of an instant gratification Malt (and the reduced ABV helps with this).

This offers a (slightly) different take on Kilchoman. It’s good and definitely softer than the Single Cask expressions I reviewed earlier. Sauternes, well, if I tried this blind I might not have picked up upon the White Wine finish, although there are some hints in the depth of the taste, some sort of brooding sweetness, if that makes any sense to you. For some, this offers a more likeable Kilchoman, personally I still like both earlier reviewed red labelled ones better. Can’t wait to open another Kilchoman though, to have some more Kilchoman’s under my belt for comparison and a better view of the Whisky that is Kilchoman. Impressive Whisky, especially considering the age of the reviewed stuff.

Points: 86

Glen Moray 13yo 1996/2009 (43%, Ian MacLeod, Dun Bheagan, Sauternes Barrel Finish, Cask #91981/91984, 1419 bottles)

Second Dun Bhaegan on these pages, after the Brora 1981. But the first Glen Moray. For a while Glen Moray was owned by the people behind Glenmorangie, you know the distillery with the long-necked stills and the 16 men of Tain? In that period Glenmorangie saw the shortage is good casks and started to experiment a lot with wine-finishes. The ones they did not dare to use, they bestowed onto Glen Moray. So there are quite a lot of official Wine finishes by Glen Moray themselves. Now Ian MacLeod decided to add their wine finish of their own, or maybe bought it straight from the distillery.

Color: Light Gold.

Nose: Malty and sweet. Vanilla and quite spirity. A slightly winy smell comes in, along with some glue, cardboard and sawdust. Toffee adds to the vanilla. Gypsum. I cannot say this is very balanced. The longer you keep this the more is smells of a combination of solvents. Wait, now some plants come into the mix, just hard to say which ones. Given even some more time, the nose keeps developing. I like that in a malt, just the things you smell aren’t so special in this one. Clean wood and lavas now, and an overpowering kind of toffee.

Taste: Wood, paper, cardboard, but mostly wood. Spicy wood with some detached sweetness. (so not very balanced again). Quite hard and a bit bitter. Urine? After this straight into a finish of almost stale beer, cream and wood again. Sour.

Very simple, not a lot going on, and what is going on is not great for a whisky. It would have a lot of character if it were a Wodka. Still this very nice Wodka scores into the seventies. In a few words: Bitter-sweet wood toffee.

Points: 76