jura Archives – Spirited Matters

January 8, 2013January 8, 2013

Whisky Squad #51 – The Brown Spectrum (volume 3)

With new year comes what is now becoming a tradition for Whisky Squad, in as much as doing something for three years in a row make a tradition – a session in the cellars of Berry Brothers & Rudd with friend of The Squad Rob Whitehead.

On arrival Foursquare informed me that I hadn’t been to Berry’s since January of 2012, when we did our ‘Third Sense‘ session in the Berry’s cellar, which makes me a sad panda – visiting the shop is something I try to do from time to time, despite being able to get most of their spirits at work, simply because it’s rather excellent, from subsiding floor to unalterable English Heritage listed nails (stuck into a Tudor period wall significantly after the time when the wall belonged to one of Henry VII’s hunting lodges), to say nothing of the wine.

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December 7, 2012

#BerrysWhisky – Berry Brothers and Rudd Tweet Tasting

Steve Rush of The Whisky Wire continues to rule the world of online Twitter tastings. I generally stay out of them to let more real people in, rather than industry shills like myself, but every now and again Steve runs one that piques my interest. They’ve been coming thick and fast recently and one of his November sessions was put on in association with The Great Whisky Company and Berry Brothers & Rudd. Despite Rob Whitehead‘s frequent attendance at Whisky Squad I don’t get to try anywhere as near as much of BBR’s whisky as I’d like, so I pinged Steve and got in on the tasting.

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January 25, 2011

Quick Tastings – Whisky round-up

As I have a surprisingly small amount of whisky on the horizon and used the phrase ‘Whisky Deluge’ at the beginning of last week I thought I’d better fulfill the unspoken promise therein and stick up some more about whisky. It’s also Burns Night this evening, which means that by Whisky Blogger Law I have to post something and use the phrase “Sláinte Mhath!” I’ve had some Master of Malt drams come through in the last few months, as it seems a waste of postage costs not to stick a few onto the end of an order from them, and I’ve had a few bottles appear in my cupboard by other means, so here are the ones I grabbed notes about:

Jura 10 year old – I won this as part of the Jura website’s weekly pub quiz. I’ve knocked back a fair bit of Jura in my time, but don’t think I’d ever tried the regular 10 year old. On the nose it had caramel, a hint of wet peat smoke, vanilla, apples, floor polish and an underlying meatiness (chicken?). To taste there was toast, sweet wood, pine, vanilla cream, pepper, rhubarb and lime skin, wrapped up with a dry wood finish. Water added more vanilla, more sour wood, more woody spice and white pepper on the finish.

Zuidam 5 Year Old Dutch Rye – I grabbed this in my first batch of drams and it sat around for a while before I got round to trying it. Zuidam are a Dutch distiller who started in 1975 and they make genever, gin and liqueurs along with their whisky. This is a whisky made predominantly with rye, unlike Scotch’s barley and bourbon’s corn, and from my experience of US rye I was expecting something spicier than a bourbon.On the nose it was very bourbony, with some sweet spicy pear underneath and a floral note on top. To taste it started very sweet, with more pears, squishy sultanas and oats. Water expanded the vanilla sweetness, bringing out milk chocolate, sweet wood and more sultanas – maybe a touch of rum and raisin fudge? It can take a good slug of water and calms to a very sweet dram.

Campbeltown Loch 30 Year Old – regular Campbeltown Loch is an inexpensive blended whisky put together by J&A, the owners of Springbank. This one is a rather more special bottling, with all the whiskies coming in at at least 30 years old – something that appealed to my Springbank and Longrow loving tastebuds. On the nose it was florally sweet with a sour edge – rose water, turkish delight, linseed oil, sour grapes and the air around a brewery on malting day (beefy maltiness) all made an appearance as well. To taste it had a syrupy sweetness to start (strawberries and apples), quickly disappearing behind a layer of wood caramel and fading to a warm dry woody finish. Water brought out some vanilla sweetness in the beginning, with underlying spicy wood. The finish was bolstered with a chunk of custardy vanilla and raisins.

Edradour 2003 Port Cask Matured – I’ve not tried much from Edradour but I quite like their ‘we have the smallest stills in Scotland’ claim, so have been meaning to for a while. I chose this one due to a hole in my whisky tasting knowledge when it comes to port cask finished whisky. The cask had definitely had some of an effect on this, with the whisky sitting rather pink in the glass. On the nose it had candy floss, refreshers, bubblegum and hint of spicy wood. To taste there was linseed oil, sweet wood, sherbet lemons, and a bitter wood finish with sherbet ‘sparkles’. It tasted stronger than its 46%. Water revealed a hint of creamy vanilla on the nose and much more on the taste – pine, light custard, perfumed raisins, foam strawberries, milk chocolate, smoky struck matches and a hint of citrus leading into the still woody finish.

Chichibu Double Matured New Born Cask No.446 – Chichibu is one of the newer additions to the rapidly ramping up Japanese whisky industry, opening in 2008. As such none of the spirit produced is quite whisky yet, and this sample was matured for about 2 years, first in a bourbon cask before being moved to a new american oak barrel to finish (hence the Double Matured moniker). On the nose it had pine floor cleaner, lemons, cola bottles, foam shrimps, bananas, creamy vanilla and damp wood. To taste it was very hot, with spicy wood and creme patissier. Water calmed it down (it was bottled at 61.3%) and the woodiness became very perfumed, with lots of sweet fruit down the sides of the tongue (red rope liquorice?), liquorice root and a fragrant but astringent woody end. Creamy but with a sour edge from the wood. This was very interesting and has added Chichibu to my ‘try whenever possible’ list.

Jura 10 Year Old
Single malt Jura Scotch whisky, 40%. ~£25 from Master of Malt.

Zuidam 5 Year Old Dutch Rye
Dutch rye whiskey, 40%. ~£60 from Master of Malt.

Edradour Port Cask Matured
Single malt Highland Scotch whisky, 46%. ~£40 from Master of Malt.

Campbeltown Loch 30 Year Old
Blended Scotch whisky, 40%. Out of stock, but was about £45 from Master of Malt.

Chichibu Double Matured New Born Cask No.446
Japanese grain spirit, 61.3%. Out of stock, but was about £60 from Master of Malt.

December 16, 2010April 9, 2017

Whisky Lounge – Islay ‘Blind Fury’ Tasting

Having rather foolishly double booked myself during the last Whisky Lounge event in London (a Springbank tasting that I was rather looking forward to that got dropped in favour of an evening of sherry) I grabbed a ticket to Mr Ludlow’s December extravaganza as soon as I could. This time the format was slightly different in that it was to be a blind tasting, with the whiskies revealed at the end of the night, focusing on whiskies from the whisky obsessed island of Islay.

There are currently 8 distilleries on the island (with a 9th in the planning/building stages), which isn’t bad for a piece of land less than half the size of London and inhabited by only 3500 people. While traditionally Islay is known for its peaty spirit the distilleries produce a range of whiskies, with Bunnahabhain producing unpeated spirit (most of the time) and Ardbeg producing face melting bottles of smoky mud (also, most of the time). A blind tasting of these is quite interesting, as while each distillery has its own style different bottlings borrow ideas from the other producers, making things all a bit muddled. There are a few bottlings and distilleries that I reckon I could pick out, but I was interested to see how many I could guess. In the end though this blind tasting wasn’t about guessing. Knowing where the spirit in my glass has come from will often prompt an attitude or tasting note that comes from inside my head rather than from the glass. Tasting blind removes all of that and hopefully lets us taste without preconceptions.

It was a full house in the upstairs room of The Red Lion in St James’s and the man behind the Whisky Lounge, Eddie Ludlow, led the group through the whiskies. The plan was simple – we were to taste the whisky, talk about it and then give him a tasting note from each table to add to a record of the evening and compare against the other tastings of the same whiskies that he’d done around the country. We were the penultimate leg on his tour of the UK and the room did well in coming up with yet another totally different set of tasting notes for Eddie to try and consolidate. I was sat next to Chris Matchett, one of my occasional whisky buddies, a man well known for his lyrical descriptions of flavours – he was the one who came out with comments about bacon at the unsmoky The Glenlivet tasting last month…

First up was a coppery bronze dram that Eddie let us know was between 46 and 50% alcohol. On the nose it was sweaty and muddy, with camphor, apple, sea salt, a hint of oranges and salted caramel. To taste it had vanilla and light smokiness (more woody than peaty), with a syrupy texture and a dry, spicy wood finish. Water brought out more sweet creamy vanilla and some perfume from the wood, as well as some sticky glacé cherry. The tasting note we ended up providing was ‘Soggy marmite toast with salted butter and golden syrup, all spread with the same knife’, although Chris’s ‘Birkenstock sandals that someone else has been wearing all summer’ as one for just the nose almost pipped it. As an overall description his note of ‘A speyside whisky on holiday’ pretty much nailed it – not your usual Islay fair. My prediction for this one was that it was a sherried Bunnahabhain and I was rather pleased to see that I was right – it was Bunnahabhain 12 years old. This is a new version of their standard whisky, bottled at a stronger than before 46.3% and made up of a mix of bourbon and sherry casks. Totally unpeated and quite rich, it was a tasty start to the evening.

Next was a very lightly coloured whisky which we were told was between 50 and 55%. On the nose it was quite a big difference to the previous whisky – woody/muddy peat, mulchy seaweed, mint, mushrooms, pears, strawberry, cracked granite, meaty butter, a hint of the farmyard and a floral centre (maybe roses). To taste it maintained the muddiness from the nose adding in some piney smoke. It had a minerally, grassy finish that lingered around with a hint of the sweetly syrupy middle flavour. Water tamed it nicely, adding orange, lime and a generic ‘fruitiness’ to the nose, pushing the smokiness back a bit. This revealed more stoniness and some sweet citrus hanging around in the middle. I didn’t have much of a clue on this one and put it down as maybe one of the peaty Bruichladdichs, focusing on the mineraliness. As expected I was entirely wrong – it was a Berry Brothers and Rudd 1989 Bowmore, bottled at 50.9% and 20 years old. Probably from a quite inactive cask and totally unlike any Bowmore I’ve tried before.

We then moved on to a darker dram, a nice yellow gold, which were told was 40-50%. On the nose there was sweaty salted butter, leather, marmalade, toast, lemon, mulch and Bisto gravy thickener (the brown cornflour rather than gravy granules). To taste it had a light caramel sweetness to start, with an oily mouthfeel, leading to a hot peaty finish through a core of creamy sugar and woody spice. Water extended the sweetness into the finish and softened the wood to a green twig sappiness. The smoke of the finish gave way to woodiness with orchard fruit and sweet and sour sauce. For this I guessed an Ardbeg, focusing on the peat/wood/sweet combination (which may not be general Ardbeg but for some reason sticks in my head), but was yet again entirely wrong. It was, instead, a bit of a ringer – Jura Prophecy. This has no age statement (although it’s probably 12-16 years old), is bottled at 46% and is the heavily peated expression of their range – a range of whiskies from the next island along from Islay, separated by a mere 250m of water. Eddie got round this ‘semantic’ argument by claiming that Jura was connected to Islay via an underwater causeway, and thus counted. There were murmurings…

Next up was a coppery dram that we were told was between 55 and 60%. On the nose there was turkish delight, dark chocolate, raisins, burned apple pie (very specifically listed by me as the burned bits on the top of the pie where the pastry cracks and the filling bubbles out, and by someone else as the layer between the filling and the pastry when the top has burned), bread and butter pudding, and a bed of meaty peat under it all. To taste it was very smoky, with a heavy coal smoke flavour almost obscuring vanilla and more apple pie. Water helped separate the flavours, leaving a spike of peat at the front leading to a sweet muddy mulch. The coal is calmed down to reveal vodka-like grain. Our note for this was ‘Apple pie and ice cream beside an iron coal stove’. This was the first whisky I was fairly certain of, writing down a definite Bowmore – the specific sweet smokiness is the flavour that I find in Bowmore and few other Islay whiskies, and this time I was right – Bowmore Tempest, a 10 year old whisky bottled at 56%. This one was from the second batch they’ve made of this and was matured in first fill bourbon casks.

Our penultimate dram was very light and between 46 and 49%. From the nose I was certain I knew which distillery it was from – a strong smell of the farmyard, light alcohols, white cabbage, menthol, caraway, vodka, a light oiliness (the smell of ‘flavourless’ cooking oils) and white pepper. It smelled young and was quite thin and prickly. To taste it had a creaminess combined with the smoke, bringing to mind Bavarian smoked cheese tubes. It also had sweet root vegetables, lots of caraway and a pleasantly creamy mouth feel. A drop of water brought out tropical fruit, sour wood and mulchy peat as well as more cream. I was certain that this was Kilchoman, the island’s newest distillery, as the whisky tasted very young and similar to the new make spirit and not-mature-yet ‘whiskies’ that I’ve had from them. Yet again I was wrong – it was Douglas Laing’s Big Peat Batch 10, a blended malt bottled at 46% and made up of whiskies from Ardbeg, Caol Ila, Bowmore and Port Ellen (although as the latter is closed and bottles go for silly amounts of money we assumed that there wasn’t much of it in there). This is a really young tasting whisky and ones that makes me want to crack open the bottle of Kilchoman I have hiding at the back of my cupboard.

The last whisky of the night was a pale gold, and between 55 and 60%. On the nose it had golden syrup and salt, burning grassland, mint, white grapes and a stony minerality. To taste it was sweet with and almost cloying peatiness backed up by wood smoke. There was also sweet fruit (apple and strawberry?), fragrant tea and pepper. Water brought out lime and vanilla on the nose, and sherbert, wet carpet, cinnamon, lemon & lime, spiced orange peel and a tarry finish to the taste. Again, I was fairly certain I knew what this one was (especially bolstered by 6 drams as I was by this time) and both wrote down and called out Laphroaig Quarter Cask, focusing on the sweet peatiness and minerality that I find in that whisky. Predictably I was wrong again – it was a cask sample from Ardbeg. Drawn from the cask (a first fill bourbon barrel) quite recently it was at the cask strength of 56.3% and was distilled in 2000.

In the end I was quite pleased with two out of six, especially as most of my other guesses made sense (at least to me) and weren’t blind stabs in the dark. It was also nice to taste things without any foreshadowing, letting my subconscious whisky snob stay asleep and not jump in with its ideas. The evening was wrapped up by singer/guitarist/songwriter Tim Hain knocking out a quick rendition of his song One More Dram (last heard at The Whisky Show a month or so ago, accompanied by Colin Dunn in the Connosr Whiskypod) before Eddie had to run away to the snowy north again. There are already plans afoot for next year’s events and there is also a new Whisky Lounge dram appearing soon – Dram 101. It’s a blended malt with about 50 components and was put together by Eddie as a follow up to last year’s Whisky Lounge Festival Dram. It should be available from the Whisky Lounge website soon, maybe even before Christmas but so far the only evidence of its imminent existence are a couple of tweets and this video…

At the end of the tasting we all scored the whiskies out of 100 (something that I hate doing, hence the lack of scores on this site) and Eddie is now collating the results from all of the tastings ready for release to see which whisky came out top overall. My favourite of the night was the Berry Brother’s Bowmore, followed by the Big Peat, so I’ll be interested to see what the group reckoned.

Bunnahbhain 12 Year Old (new bottling)
Single Malt Islay Scotch Whisky, 46.3%. ~£30 from The Whisky Exchange.

Berry Brothers & Rudd 1989 Bowmore
Single Cask Single Malt Islay Scotch Whisky, 50.9%. ~£60 from BBR.

Jura Prophecy
Single Malt Jura Scotch Whisky, 46%. ~£50 from Master of Malt.

Bowmore Tempest 10 Year old
Single Malt Islay Scotch Whisky, 56%. ~£40 from Master of Malt.

Big Peat
Blended Malt Islay Scotch Whisky, 46%. ~£30 from Master of Malt.

Ardbeg first fill bourbon cask sample
Single Cask Single Malt Islay Scotch Whisky, 56.3%. Not available unless you go to the distillery and beg or rob Eddie.

September 27, 2010September 27, 2010

Whisky Blending and tasting with Richard Paterson, two times…

As I noted in my last post, some of the current whisky obsessiveness on this blog can be laid at the door of Richard Paterson, master blender at Whyte & Mackay and constant whisky show presence. My first in person encounter with Richard was a few minutes after getting in to Whisky Live Glasgow, where I was dragged on to stage to take part in a blending session. However, something that I’d forgotten was that I’d signed up to do a blending class and tasting with Richard at Milroy’s a week later. There was a lot of crossover between the two blending sessions, so I’ll stick them together.

The basic premise of the session was to get people to understand blending with a ‘simple’ task – blend together 6 whiskies to try and represent the character of the person on a card in front of you. We were given some grain, lowland, Speyside, medium highland, heavier highland and smoky Islay as our ingredients and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ronnie Corbett, Leonardo DiCaprio, Nicole Kidman, Jordan and a sumo wrestler as our inspiration. At Whisky Live I got Jordan, and after being told off for saying I wanted to make a “cheap tasting” whisky, settled on something with a heavy perfume and hint of smoke – heavy on the speyside with a body of grain and a hint of Islay at the end. I deservedly didn’t win that time, the honour going to Nicole Kidman, but my team picked up the accolade at Milroy’s with our sumo wrestler whisky – big and heavy with a slap at the end. Lots of heavy and medium highlands with a bit of Speyside, some grain (at cask strength) for welly and a hefty slug of the Islay for a late punch. According to the rather large certificate that Richard signed for me I am now an official Whyte & Mackay master blender, but I won’t be giving up my day job quite yet – I have a small sample jar of ‘Jordan’ on the side and opening it for a smell does not fill me with enthusiasm for my skills.

If you want to see the fun and games of the Whisky Live Glasgow session, social media king Craig set up a camera at the side of the room and captured almost all of it – part 1, part 2, part3. Including my being rubbish on stage in part 2.

The more interesting bit (for a blending ‘veteran’ such as myself) at the Milroy’s event was the tasting we started off with, running through part of Whyte & Mackay’s premium range. We started off with Jura Prophecy, distilled in 1992 with 90% matured in bourbon casks and 10% in sherry. On the nose it had salt, grass and seaweed, toasted wood, caramel and hint of, maybe, sweet cooked carrots. It also had a bit of wood polish, some olive oil and a slug of damp peat at the end. To taste it had a tannic end led to by fizzy lemon, tarmac and polished wooden floors. Water definitely helped, bringing out more salt and some custard on the nose. The taste had sherbet lemons, bitter wood, sweet smoke and the custard from the nose. I’m already a fan of Jura, but this one was really rather nice – not as peated as I would expect from the ‘heavy peat’ reputation that Willie Tait (former Jura manager) pushed at Whisky Live and nicely balanced, with wood, citrus, smoke and sweetness all rolled together.

Next was a bit of a move up, going on to the Fettercairn 24. I’d tried the 40 year old bottling at Whisky Live and not been blown away, and was interested to see what the younger expression would offer. It was a lovely bronze colour and had orange, sweet fruit, liquorice, pine and lemon scented floor polish on the nose. To taste it had almonds and cinnamon with a bitter wood finish and a buttery mouthfeel. Water calmed down the bitterness of the wood, turning the almonds into marzipan and the fruit from the nose into fizzy fruit chews. On top of this was some hazelnut and a spicy woody finish. Much closer to the nose of the 40 year old (which was fantastic, even if the taste wasn’t to my liking), but maybe not to the tune of £120 per bottle. The marzipan flavour is something I’m definitely going to be looking out for in other drams and I may have to have a try of their regular 12 year old.

We jumped up the price scale to the Dalmore 1974 Matusalem – named for its year of distilling and the type of sherry barrels used for its finishing. After an initial 27 years in rare palo cortado casks it sat finishing for 5 years in barrels formerly used to mature Gonzalez Byass’s rather special 30 year old oloroso, for a total of 32 years of maturation. A rather limited release this one compared to many from Whyte & Mackay’s stable, with only 780 bottles of it in the wild. It was deep bronze in colour with a nose of candied orange slice cake decorations and perfumed almonds. To taste there was an initial burst of sweetness leading to raisins, marmalade and buttery lemons. Water brought out more floral notes, creamy vanilla, fizzy refresher chews and a woody finish. Quite impressive, as you’d expect for the second most expensive whisky I’ve ever tasted.

After the Matusalem the only way to move in price was down and we moved on to the Dalmore 1992 King Alexander III. I’d missed a chance to grab a dram of this at Whisky Live in London earlier this year, turning up moments too late and seeing a tray of glasses emptied before I could get to it. It is made up of whiskies that have been finished in 6 different cask types – port, madeira, marsala, cabernet sauvignon, Knob Creek bourbon and oloroso sherry – for 2-6 years depending on the type of wood (with the port taking 6). It poured reddy bronze with heavy raisins, woody sweetness and vanilla on the nose. To taste it had sugary sweetness, orange and vanilla, moved to a mid-taste of sweet raisins, and finished with spicy oak. I didn’t add water to it, and I wish I had – it was a bit of a muddle and I think it might have helped bring the various flavours out a bit. There was definitely a hint of all of the different finishes in there, but I’m not sure that it all worked together at bottle strength, only 40% though it was.

We then moved on to our last dram of the night – Whyte & Mackay’s 30 year old. This is W&M’s premium blend and one that I’d got to have a quick sip of at Whisky Live Glasgow, enough to make me want to try it again. It’s definitely the top end of their range – with a boasted 25-27 components (a far cry from the John Glaser small batch approach) and bottled in black glass, it’s a cut above Whyte & Mackay’s regular range. On the nose it had custard, raisins and perfumed wood and to taste it had sweet custard with spicy oak bitterness and a lingering sherried fruitiness. Water bittered things up a little bit with dark orange chocolate joining the rich mix. Rather nice and further demonstrating that blends needn’t all be rubbish, grain heavy, Tesco’s shelf filler. This stuff does cost £180 a bottle, but it is pretty good. It’s not got the sort of backing and reputation that Chivas Regal’s top brands and Johnny Walker Blue Label have yet, but it’s definitely in the same league as them.

All in all a thoroughly enjoyable couple of events. Richard Paterson is definitely someone to see do his act in person, with over the top hand waving about ‘the pussies’ who don’t know what they’re missing, throwing whisky on the floor and audience, and the occasional party popper, although outside of that he is just a nice guy to have a chat with. I’ve not been to Milroy’s for a tasting before and while this one was a bit more than I’d usually pay (£40) it was an impressive whisky range that I’d not see elsewhere, with the 1974 Dalmore going for at least £40 a shot if you found it in a bar – I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for more from them.

Jura Prophecy
No age statement (16 years old?) Jura single malt scotch whisky. 46%. ~£50

Fettercairn 24
Highland single malt scotch whisky. 44.4%. ~£120

Dalmore 1974 Matusalem Sherry Finesse
Highland single malt scotch whisky. 42%. ~£600

Dalmore 1992 King Alexander III
Highland single malt scotch whisky. 40%. ~£120

Whyte & Mackay 30 Year Old
Blended scotch whisky. 43%. ~£180

The photos above are a bit rubbish because Milroy’s do their tastings in the basement under their Soho shop. It’s dark down there…but nice.

Whyte & Mackay are currently running a competition to win a bottle of their 30 year old – find one of the bottles of their ‘regular’ Special Blended Whisky that has been filled instead with 30 year old (as indicated by a note under the cap) and you can win one of 250 additional bottles of neat 30 year old. There is more info, including a video of ‘Richard Paterson’ breaking into the bottling plant to be nefarious with the whisky, over on the Master Blender website.

September 22, 2010April 9, 2017

Whisky Live Glasgow 2010

A couple of weekends back I found myself on the 6am train out of London Euston bound for Glasgow and this year’s Whisky Live Live Glasgow. It was rather a last minute thing, as I’d answered a request for help on Whyte & Mackay master blender Richard Paterson’s blog the week beforehand offering my services as a tweeter or liveblogger during the event. Whyte & Mackay’s social media supremo, Craig McGill, invited me along, blagged me a freebie ticket and jammed a Flip camera into my hand for part of the day – it was rather good fun. While I was there under the auspices of a free W&M ticket the brief was very much wider – wander round, talk to as many people as possible and just get a sense of the whole day for everyone. However, as a large part of the day focused around the W&M whisky media front man, Mr Paterson of the post title, I did spend more time with my sponsors than I planned.

The day started off in slightly random fashion with me being pushed towards a stage by Craig and Richard to take part in a whisky blending session, but more of that in my next post. The day continued with stops at pretty much all of the stands in the small ballroom of the Glasgow Thistle and a break after lunch for the main Whyte & Mackay event – Richard Paterson’s 40th anniversary at the company.

Richard Paterson is rather well known in the whisky industry. I’m not certain how much time he can devote to the duties his job title suggests, as for a master blender he seems to spend most of his time away from his blending room. He acts as the ambassador for almost everything in the Whyte & Mackay stable, including their range of blends as well as Dalmore, Jura and Fettercairn single malts. They are now part of United Breweries which, Richard announced, would soon overtake Diageo as the largest drinks company in the world. Richard has whisky in his family, with him being the third generation working as a master blender, and the week after Whisky Live Glasgow marked his 40th anniversary of working with Whyte & Mackay. In celebratory fashion there was a cake and to accompany it there was a, less traditional, ‘tache mob, with free drams of Whyte & Mackay’s 30 year old blend and Fettercairn 40 single malt offered to anyone who turned up dressed as Richard, or at least moustachioed as he is. There was also a box of rubber noses, to honour his trademark nose, immortalised in the title of his book (Goodness Nose) and his twitter account (@the_nose). Suffice to say this was the most surreal part of the day.

Outside of the fuss focused on Richard there was a good range of stuff going on. Each of the stands had things going on with the most noticeable being Glenfiddich’s, with one of their coopers (as they are one of the last distilleries with on-site barrel makers) demonstrating the art of building and disassembling barrels all day, complete with loud banging noises as he beat the increasingly beaten up looking barrel with a hammer:

I started the day with a dram of the Tweedale Blend. One of the ‘lost’ whiskies, similar to the Bailie Nicol Jarvie from Whisky Squad #6, that stopped production due to the second world war it has been recreated by Alasdair Day, great-grandson of Richard Day, the blender who produced the original whisky. Working from his grandfather’s recipe book (containing the recipes from 1899 to 1916) he’s put together a new version of the old whisky which was released earlier this year. I’d heard about it on WhiskyCast (with an update after Whisky Live in episode 278), was intrigued (especially with it appearing at the time when I was starting to want to reexamine blends) and have since been looking for a chance to try it. Annoyingly I don’t have any notes but I remembered that it was rather tasty, with a nice bit of woodiness and some good sherry-ness to it. It’s still on the list to be tried again and I would have bought a bottle of it, purchased from Alasdair himself at a knockdown “I don’t want to have to carry this back to the office” price if I hadn’t spent all my cash on new spirit…

The new spirit came from the Glenglassaugh stand, where they were showing off their newly released range of ‘spirit drinks’. Mothballed in 1986, the distillery restarted production in 2008 and has been keeping themselves afloat until their new whisky comes of age by selling off both old stock and new make spirit. They started off with ‘The Spirit That Dare Not Speak Its Name’, new make whisky (the ‘whisky’ before it goes in a barrel) diluted to 50% (from the normal mid 60s% ABV), and progressed to ‘The Spirit That Blushes To Speak Its Name’, young spirit that had been matured for 6 months in red wine casks. These were quite popular, leading to them creating a range of drinks that were release recently. I grabbed a bottle of the Blushes, the new name for the wine cask matured spirit, while visiting Edinburgh recently but hadn’t had a chance to try it yet, so decided to have taste of some of the rest of the range at their stand. I first tried their Fledgling XB, spirit matured for 1 year in american oak casks. It had taken on a light yellow colour, and combined the caraway seed hints of new make spirit with vanilla essence on the nose. To taste it had a little edge of wood but was mainly a worryingly drinkable new make spirit. I moved on to the Clearac, the new name for the ‘Spirit That Not Dare Speak Its Name’. On the nose it had a touch of citrus as well as the usual new make aquavit punch and slight oiliness. It tasted similar to how it smelled, but yet again was worryingly drinkable. I stopped at this point and grabbed a bottle of Clearac and Peated, the version of their spirit made with peated barley, to go with the Blushes I had at home, to be doled out when I have people round to taste whisky in the future. I’ve been looking for commercially available new make spirit for a while, of which there are a few brands although generally either not very good or very hard to get hold of, and while these aren’t at still strength they are both educational, if you want to see how whisky matures in wood, and quite tasty.

The next whisky I have notes on was a surprise on the Bruichladdich stand. I was walking past and heard someone mention Octomore 3.0 and doubled back quickly to make sure I hadn’t misheard. Bottled the week before this was one of the first outings for the distillery’s super-peaty whisky, with this one allegedly coming in at 155ppm of phenol, rather more than the 50-60ppm that you find in the regular ‘really peaty’ whiskies on Islay. After trying the Octomore 2.2 Orpheus the other week I was interested to see if this one lived up to my opinion of that previous release – in short, not really. On the nose it had strong peat with mulchy undertones, an underlying meatiness, some wood and a hint of ammonia. To taste it had the expected burst of sweet peat and smoke but it was backed up by a sweet synthetic rhubarb taste, almost like rhubarb half of a rhubarb and custard sweet. It was interesting and definitely one to try if you’re a peat lover, but it didn’t beat the Orpheus in my book.

The last whisky I have notes on was courtesy of the folk at Whyte & Mackay. I first helped out at group tasting by the stand, running out of hands and thus not writing anything down about the Jura Superstition. However I did grab a video of Willie Tait talking about it and passing around some Haribo sweets to go with the whisky:

The one I got to taste was Fettercairn 40 year old. Fettercairn sits on the edge of the Grampian mountains and isn’t particularly well known for its distillery bottlings, as most of its production going into Whyte & Mackay’s blends, but the brand seems to be being resurrected recently as an avenue to continue their release of some old and rare single malts. Only 463 bottles of the 40 year old have been released (and as the drams we got where poured from a variety of randomly branded bottles pulled out of bags behind the stand I assume this is some of the whisky that didn’t get officially bottled) and it costs over £700 – it is the most expensive whisky I have ever tried. This was handed out to everyone who was dressed as Richard Paterson, or at least either had a moustache (real or fake) or expressed an interest in facial hair while standing near the Whyte & Mackay stand. On the nose it had heavy vanilla and almonds, with light honey, heather, salt and candle wax. To taste it had a sweetness down the sides of the tongue with a sour fruit centre, with a slab of orange peel, that turned quickly into spicy wood. A drop of water brought a some sawdust, fragrant wood and a hint of dryness. An interesting dram with a fantastic nose that I didn’t particularly like the taste of. Not to the tune of £700, anyway.

I wandered out of the show with my two social media companions, Scott of In With Bacchus and Blair from the Aberdeen University Whisky Society, and settled down for a swift half and some reflection before we went our separate ways (me to my hotel, Blair to find more pubs and Scott to run back to Edinburgh and move into his university rooms to start a brewing and distilling course). The show itself was quite small and distinctly missing the big companies other than United Breweries (no Diageo, no Edrington group, no LVMH). Glenfiddich was there, along with the cooper and the second biggest stand in the room after W&M, but other than that it was the smaller names in whisky, along with some independent bottlers and a couple of food producers (with some excellent cheese, meat, fish and chocolate to nibble on). I got to try some interesting things, although as usual was rubbish at making notes, and the people on almost all of the stands were happy to talk about their whiskies and also knew what they were talking about, something you sometimes don’t get in larger shows, with distillery employees and whisky experts sent over rather than brand managers and professional stand staff. This is quite different to Whisky Live Taipei, which Blair helped out at this summer – a huge conference centre, all the big names, tens of thousands of visitors and a convention the likes of which you only find in the far east these days. The Glasgow show wasn’t something I’d normally travel a large proportion of the length of the UK to visit, but my trip does now mean that I have used the three oldest underground railway systems in the world and two of the three in the UK (Newcastle – you are next on my list).

Many thanks to Craig McGill and Richard Paterson for getting me a ticket and giving me a reason to get on a train to Glasgow. Also my fellow bloggers Scott and Blair for being lovely. Our coverage from the day, along with a load of other tweets, can be found on the Master Blender blog. There’s also a load more video up on their YouTube channel. I also bumped into Victor Brierley, often referred to as The Bagging Scotland Bloke, who has started doing whisky tours around Glasgow – you should all go.

The Tweeddale Blend
Blended scotch whisky, 46%. ~£28 per bottle.

Glenglassaugh Fledgling XB
1 year old spirit drink, american oak aged, 50%. ~£15 for a 200ml bottle.

Glenglassaugh Clearac
Unaged spirit drink, 50%. ~£15 for a 200ml bottle.

Glenglassaugh Blushes
6 month old spirit drink, Californian red wine cask aged, 50%. ~£15 for a 200ml bottle.

Bruichladdich Octomore 3.0
5 years old Islay single malt whisky, 59%. Not yet available.

Fettercairn 40 year old
40 year old highland single malt scotch whisky, 40%. £725 per bottle.