Category: Review
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Blends in their 40s
It’s been a lot of single malt recently. Not only recently, but in general. Time to take things a little less seriously with some unassuming blends. Let’s see what we have in the cupboard. Ah, according to my secret files, I acquired some blend samples on October 31st, 2022, though a UK order at master…
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Three Deanies
For no very particular reason, I’m doing a Deanston tasting with the samples I’ve got. Two were thrown in with with other stuff in online shop purchases, and the third one I actually picked up at the distillery last year. Without further ado… Deanston | 11yo (2009) | 46% | Home of Malts 🌐 Scotch…
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Missing number 36
When I was formatting my Review Index, I made a horrifying discovery: there was no review #36! Where could it have gone? Finding no review between #35 Jura and #37 Glencadam, I concluded I must have simply skipped a number. Or perhaps it was one of a couple of spoiled samples that in the end…
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Glen Keith im Vergleich
“Glen Keith” must be the least sexy distillery name in Scotland. At least it’s not Glen Kevin… He’s a big boomer boy, Keith, built in 1957 to produce 6 million litres a year for blends geared towards the American market (Chivas Regal, Passport and 100 Pipers Blends). Mothballed in 1999 and reopened in 2013. There…
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The Newbies, Pt. III
Bang on to a new set of four distilleries in the new wave (The Newbies, Part I; The Newbies, Pt. II). Eden Mill was founded in 2012 (production started 2014) in St Andrews and runs both brewing and distilling operations. It’s a small independent distillery with 100’000 L yearly capacity (that’s one 150th that of a giant…
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Springtime
Springbank call themselves “The whisky drinker’s whisky”. It is indeed a whisky that’s for very long been highly regarded among whisky enthusiasts, and certainly among many of my more whisky-seasoned friends in WOLS who in large part inducted me into the whiskyverse. Springbank is the stalwart of the Campbeltown style of single malt, and family-owned…
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Good grog from Gordon
Gordon and MacPhail: the most venerable of Scotland’s independent bottlers, with over 125 years in the business and an enviable stock of old and rare malts. Today I’ll review some not too enviable stock, but still worthy enough to be bottled under their premium “Connoiseurs Choice” range, instituted in 1968. In both cases, the dram…
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The Newbies, Pt. II
Sound like the second instalment in some Scorsese Gangster thriller? Well, this is a thrilling tasting but but I hope it take less than 3h40 to complete. We’re continuing with the theme of trying out whisky from the New Wave of Scotch (malt) distilleries. There are currently 43 distilleries in this wave (with more in…
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The Nordic casks
For being a Swede and a whisky geek, I’ve tried embarrassingly little whisky from the Nordic countries, where, just like in Scotland, distilleries have been popping up like zits on a teenager’s greasy mug. Indie bottler Berry Bros. have released some rather exuberantly prices bottles in the Nordic casks range, but I got my hand…
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Christmas calendar 2023: second half
It’s time to finish the calendar. One might say, what’s the rush, I missed the Christmas season anyways? Well, I’ve had some bad experiences of whisky samples deteriorating rapidly with time, causing cardboardy off-notes. My hypothesis is that this is mainly related to over-oxidization and that it happens faster in samples bottles in general, and…
DuckDrams 