Drinking a Bulleit Rye as we speak, should go to bed, but a melancholic mood makes me watch Bonanza and drink Rye.
Drinking a Bulleit Rye as we speak, should go to bed, but a melancholic mood makes me watch Bonanza and drink Rye.
Got a new watch, divers watch it is, had to drown the bastard to get it!
Well I'm up watching Sonic Boom with my son, with not even a glass of wine or beer, let alone spirits. Good work Sir.
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Might be one for discussion here but I must say I'm not convinced by the no-age statement trend...
I'm not saying that a good whisky absolutely requires 12 years (or other) maturation but I do know that the warehousing & storage costs are a huge cost component of whisky manufacturing and I'm suspicious that one of the more expensive parts of the process has been dropped. I suspect that a lot of no-age statement spirits are very young; less than 3 years and the distilleries know that this doesn't make for good marketing.
You can see the rise in Gin brands out there and I would say this is largely due to the fact Gin can be brought to the market in no time at all when compared to Whisky.
Any thoughts out there on this ?
Completely agree with you.
Somehow, gin companies have convinced us that their flavoured industrial cleaning fluid (for that is what it is in 90% of "distilleries") should be priced at similar levels to something that requires much more investment in the product.
For something to be sold as single malt whisky in the UK, it must:
1. Be produced as a spirit from malted barley...
2. ...in pot stills on a single site.
3. And matured for a minimum of 3 years in an oak barrel.
Gin, however, for the most part is just juniper + any old rubbish you like, boiled up with medical grade alcohol (Bombay Sapphire literally get this delivered in tankers from Germany), watered to down a minimum 37.5% ABV, then bottled. No requirement to produce your own spirit, no requirement as to how the spirit is flavoured, no requirement for maturation.
I only wish that I got into the gin production business ten years ago. They must be rolling in it.
Just emptied this
Thought I'd buy another, but was a bit shocked at the price!
This was a birthday gift from my wife, who won it in a raffle!
M
^^^^one of the best imho
Watch out for it at Waitrose-it gets cheaper this time of year sometimes
Putting aside gin for the time being, I think it's highly unlikely that any NAS bottlings in the UK contain whisky under three years of age. This is based on purely anecdotal evidence, but you'd have thought that one of the newer distilleries would have tried it by now (and, from what I've seen, they haven't).
As stocks have fallen, many distilleries have been *forced* down the NAS route in order to keep up with demand - look at Yamazaki, for instance. It's also not a new thing - Abelour has been doing it for almost two decades. What is new, is the blended NAS bottlings that seemed aimed at a new (or at least *different*) market segment. Equally, some distilleries appear to have walked back some of their NAS expressions and reverted to Age Statements.
Whisky is a complicated and odd thing. With global sales continuing to grow, brands are looking to new ways to entice new drinkers - or to move drinkers into a new premium segment. Without the stocks - and without the ability to tell consumers what's in a blend - some may be caught between a rock and a hard place. Strangely, there's a *massive* focus on wood at the moment, and very little on terroir (let alone barley). The few that do talk about the latter (the Laddie, Waterford, occasionally Springbank) are very much on the fringes of the market. The majority of distilleries won't even tell you from where they get their barley (hint: it's not all from the UK, let alone Scotland).
That some distilleries are beginning to walk back their NAS and relaunch their core 10 / 12yo expressions is also interesting. It's also worth noting that over three-quarters of all whisky sold has no age statement.
If I sound as though I'm sitting on the fence, I probably am. I still find that there is more than enough interesting whisky to buy, and while I may quietly lament the lack of certain Japanese whiskies, and more than a few retired Scottish expressions, I'm still a keen whisky drinker. I'm also a supporter of those brands or distilleries that I trust and admire (as you'll see from my Maltventory).
Life's too short to drink bad whisky. Probably.
I haven't bought a single NAS that I'd buy again. I'm wary that I've got some kind of mental bias against them and that a good blind tasting session may teach me a thing or two however I'm pretty sure that I'm done with them now. I've got it into my head that it is, in effect, the leftovers that have been bottled - that's not a good way to approach a whiskey!
Interesting that you mention the focus on wood. I've always thought that they do that (and have done for ages) as the finish imparts more of a distinctive flavour to the whisky than the initial malt. I'd be interested to try different maltings that have been aged/finished in the same way though to see if there was a discernable difference.
I've mentioned it here before, I think, but on a stag do about ten years ago, we were in Aberfeldy looking for somewhere to dry off after a white water rafting trip down the Tay. We popped into the distillery and joined the tour. The introductory video mentioned the "clear, fresh highland air" at least 3 times, and how it was important that the whisky matured up here in the highlands to get the "clean and fresh" flavour of Aberfeldy.
We were then shown around the distillery by a tour guide. Towards the end, we saw an artic lorry loading up with barrels of whisky. I asked where they were going. "Oh, our main maturation warehouse is in Glasgow." She said. "Yeah, on an industrial estate in Rutherglen."
I happen to know Rutherglen, as a company I worked for had a distribution warehouse there which was forever having IT problems. So when I said to her "oh, just over the river from the sewage treatment plant, then?" she swiftly moved the tour on.
Some of the Ardbeg expressions are just beautiful.
I do agree that a lot of distilleries seem to be using the current trend as a way of releasing newer spirit at a cheaper price point. I've not been blown away by any of the Talisker or Bowmore "named" releases, but as I said, Ardbeg have been releasing brilliant limited editions for years now, and Laphroaig have had more hits than misses, imo.
Having done a few tours, most distilleries aren't allowed (because of their insurance T&Cs) to mature all the stock on-site. So no surprise they choose massive industrial estates outside of Glasgow because it makes distribution easier. (Not that I condone the practice!)
Take a look at this lot. No idea what the end result will be, but it sounds interesting:
https://waterforddistillery.ie/
I've tried the Laph "Select", I prefer the regular 10 and QC and I've a couple of friends who feel the same. I might give a different one a go and possibly an Ardbeg as I am quite fond of an islay. TBH most of the NAS I've tried have been bottles such as Singleton Tailfire, Jura Superstition and so on i.e. stuff on supermarket special. Perhaps that's where I'm going wrong!
Cardhu Gold Reserve in Waitrose at £25 at the moment. No idea what it’s like though.
Managed to pick up a nice Speyside - not bad for £17 for 1 litre bottle at Berlin Tegel last week...
z
Good interesting conversation here so I thought I'd chip in as I work in Scotch production operations (I'm an engineer).
Re maturation at central sites away from the distilleries - it's not an insurance issue, it's operating costs. Almost all the bottling sites are in central Scotland so that's where the whisky ends up. If you cask fill at the distillery then you've got the costs of taking the casks to the distillery, employing a bunch of people to work a couple of days a week filling and handling casks then the extra costs of shipping the spirit in wood down to the bottling sites. Much cheaper to ship the unreduced new make in tankers to big warehousing sites. That also makes it easier to disgorge the spirit required for blends with a permanent workforce at one location rather than sending guys all over the country to pull out casks whenever an order comes in.
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I'm through and through a speyside malt kind of guy, but this Laphroaig Quarter Cask is just exceptional drinking when the mood is right...
Well, after stating that I'm done with NAS I've just gone and ordered a bottle each of Lahproaig Triple Wood and Ardbeg Uigeadail, the latter of which has style/character notes on thewhiskyexchange's website that are right up my street. To top it off I've just poured myself a large QC, a little ironic given that it's also NAS...
Slainte
I've got a bottle of Uigeadail on the go at the moment. It's unlike any Ardbeg I've ever had - goes very well with sweet desserts, actually!
Jura is swill. Absolutely everything I've tried from there (and I reckon it's probably most of what they've done - friends know I'm "into" whisky, see it cheap in Tesco and get it as a birthday present for me) is undrinkable rubbish.
Laphroaig Select I'm not a massive fan of, but the quarter cask is excellent, Lore is very nice as is the An Cuan Mor.
The great thing about NAS malts is that they let the distillers and blenders experiment. Some come out really good, some don’t, but it’s interesting to taste what can be done by tweaking the wood policy and blending different ages.
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I'm a big Laphroaig fan, my favourite being the cask strength, which is now sadly impossible to find, with quarter cask second and the standard 10yr behind that. I've avoided 'select' as i read it was a toned down version to have more wide appeal, so not up my street. Not tried triple wood, must give it a go. Ardbeg and Lagavulin are good too, but usually alot more expensive, though i picked up a bottle of Ardbeg for £37 in Morrisons the other day. Another worth a look is Ian Macleod's 'Smokehead', alegedly a young Arbeg, pretty good when you get it cheap on amazon
I wish it were easier to understand how (why?) we all taste and enjoy these things. I agree re the Ardbeg (it's my fave of the core expressions) and I completely agree re Jura (just can't get on with it at all). But I found the Lore and ACM incredibly disappointing. The Select is fine, if you buy it cheap. All this stuff is so bonkersly subjective. There really must be a better way of doing these things. Perhaps "If you like this, try this...?" or "if you hated that, ignore this...?"
The Lore I was given a bottle of. Having just seen the price, I think I'd be disappointed if I'd paid for it. Assuming it was a £25-30 bottle, I have to say I enjoyed it. ACM I only had a single of in a bar, but remember it being nice.
Glad we agree on Jura though. It's rare that I don't find a single expression I like from somewhere, but I guess there's no accounting for taste!
There's a huge degree of subjectivity to the subject. I'm of the opinion that the more expressions that someone tries the easier it is for them to define what flavour profiles they like and it's this background knowledge that can be used in moving forward trying other whiskies. Regardless, it's nigh on impossible to tell someone that any particular dram is worse than another as it all comes down to personal taste - some things can be agreed upon, others can't.
This reminds me of a Christmas bar crawl with a few friends 4-5 years ago, one of them had never touched a drop in his life and thought that all whiskey was exactly the same with the only variation being the branding. The bar we were propped up against had a reasonable selection of whiskies so I ordered a Dalmore 12 and a Laphroiag 10 - the greatest difference in profiles that I could see - and asked him to just take a sniff of each. He simply couldn't understand that they were both whiskies! He preferred the Dalmore, perfectly understandable considering he was a newbie, and has drunk the stuff ever since.
Edit to add that this isn't a slight on the Dalmore 12, I personally love the stuff. More to say that what some people love (they think is good) can be in complete contrast to others.
Last edited by CardShark; 12th December 2017 at 12:52.
If you can get it and it’s priced similarly to cost in Spain, around just 15 euro, Dyc 10 yr old is surprisingly good,http://whiskeyreviewer.com/2012/08/d...hiskey-review/
Just been through Schipohl airport a couple of times in the last few weeks and it was a good opportunity to kill time, looking at the whisky selections - specifically around this whole NAS argument. Unfortunately I have to agree that I think, as consumers, we're basically been taken for a ride by the industry.
Very little stuff for sale was age statemented - and whenever it was, it was priced accordingly. The rest of the time, it's this stupid fantasy name branding, such as the ridiculous names Highland Park and Dalmore are trotting out. Viking Honour? Viking Pride? Valkyrie? Quintessence? Valour? Dominium? Been watching a bit too much of Game of Thrones have we chaps?
Presumably this stuff sells to certain customers, but to me it just cheapens these brands and puts me right off them. Most disheartening is just the sheer cost of even the absolute blandest 40% NAS 'Distillers Edition' stuff - everything started at a minimum of £35.
I'm still relatively new into whisky but even in the 5 years or so I've gotten into it as a drink, I've seen the market change a fair bit. Maybe I've been listening to too much Ralfy but it's already turning me off massively.
Remember, at duty free, most bottles are 1 litre, instead of the standard 700/750ml bottle, and if you're flying within Europe won't be much cheaper anyway.
Thought this was a great deal.... Caol Ila 2002 Distillers Edition for £50
https://www.thewhiskyworld.com/whisk...catel-fin-p500
That's a very fair price. The Distillers Editions won a few Golds back in the early teens, if I remember correctly.
Going try this over Christmas!
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Just opened one of the three 12yr old Highland Parks I have, for domestic quaffing to keep the chill out, as I finished the Conemara I was drinking. The 18yr old can wait it's turn as I work through the Maltventory . . .
Aberlour 10yr old
Glenmorangie, Portwood Finish
Talisker 10yr old
Caol Ila 12yr old + 15yr old already open
Old Pulteney 12yr old
Bruichladdich 10yr old
Bruichladdich 1993
Glenkinchie 10yr old
Cardhu 12yr old
Jura 10yr old x 2
Highland Park 18yr old
Highland Park 12yr old
Connemara single Irish peated
F.T.F.A.
Some good stuff there - I'm still updating mine in your original Maltventory post...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deanston-Ye...8&tag=ho01f-21
deanston 18 rather good
Tried it the other day. I thought it was rather good for such a young whisk(e)y. Colour on it is impressive too (if it's natural). A light winter fruitiness to it, with a lovely, sweet, smooth mouthfeel. Very easy to drink. Will be interesting to follow their progress.