The Manzanilla of the North

The blessèd Michael Jackson knew how to turn a well formed phrase, and he was the writer I turned to when I was first trying to learn more about Scotch, but some of the things he wrote about whisky have never made sense to me. 

I've always thought that his description of Pulteney as the Manzanilla of the North was one such utterance, a phrase coined more for its similarity to "the Athens of the North" than for its aptness. And I am fairly sure that the phrase was coined by Jackson.

For example, in The World Guide to Whisky (1987) he says, "The whisky, called Old Pulteney, has been compared to a Manzanilla", but neglects to tell us who was doing the comparing.

But this bottle, a Cadenhead's 11 year old bottled at cask strength, from a bourbon hogshead, has given me pause for thought.

Initially it merely seemed like a whisky which had been bottled too early, a harsh raw dram lacking in pleasure, and very awkward alongside the handful of well aged malts also tasted that evening. But that brash, abrasive character is coming in my mind to seem more and more like the saltiness of youthful fino from Sanlucar. 

I recall that Jackson began writing about whisky during the last boom, at a time when demand was running ahead of supply, and before the filling of the whisky loch in the Eighties led to many producers promoting well aged expressions as the norm.

In the World Guide to Whisky many of the expressions he describes are fairly youthful - Highland Park, Strathisla, Rosebank, and Blair Athol all at eight years old, Balblair as a five year old, Glenfiddich Pure Malt without an age statement, and plenty of others.

The expression of Pulteney included in the Guide is the eight year old bottled by Gordon & Macphail. I wonder if the whisky I tasted last night - youthful, with little cask character, rather abrasive - is the modern equivalent of that early eighties expression?

I suspect that I'll never have an answer to that question, but at that time there wasn't anything like the same level of interest in cask management as there is today, and I reckon it's at least a plausible suggestion to say that the malt that Jackson tasted and described was dominated by distillate character, just like last night's dram.

And whilst I'm waiting for an answer, I shall go and reread Jackson in the light of my Pulteney revelation.

Springbank Private Bottling for Distillery Visitors 2017

So I just drank a £50 dram.

Which is more a reflection of the weird state of Scotch in 2017 than of the true value of this whisky.

But that's not the reason for this post, ho no missus. Nope. I'm writing this because Springbank seems to provoke logorrhea in a way that other drams don't. Look at this:

Can you tell that I really liked this whisky?

Here's the transcription, for those of you using Lynx or another text-only browser.

Nose: malt and iron. age-patina-ed old iron and brown sugar. If you took a handful of long grass (forage, destined to be hay) and held it tight to an old horseshoe until it had become damp. That. Grubby small children, but your own, beloved children, not anyone else's. Faintly, a curry spice (cumin?)

Palate: Sweet and malty, but somehow suggesting sweeties made from seaweed. A salty-sweet finish. Sweet round malt, beautiful brown sugar (muscovado, the darkest of sugars). Oh, and sherry.

Conclusion: the perfect dram for my mood tonight. A great Springbank.

I absolutely love it when this happens. To be honest, this is why I drink. I don't care for the other effects of alcohol, the drunken-ness or the hangover, but when the booze provokes me into wordiness, oh man, I'm so happy. I don't mind that these words likely don't mean much to most of you. The process of turning ethanol-plus-congeners into letters on a screen makes me unreasonably happy.

PS If you haven't already arrived at this conclusion, then let me say that the take-away from this blog post is that you need to get yourself to Campbeltown and do the tour, just so you can have the whisky.

Benromach 1973

It can be difficult to let go of one's prejudices, and this is doubly the case when one is tasting (that's why blind tasting is such a useful tool).

Alas!, when I first tasted this wee sample at the end of last year, I let my mental picture of pre-Gordon & Macphail Benromach interfere with my perception of what I was actually tasting, so that it seemed, if not humdrum, then perhaps pedestrian, not worth it's £1400 price tag.

So I was pleasantly—nay, delightfully—surprised when I polished off the last of the sample tonight. Why? In a word, rancio. This is such a rare thing to find in a Scotch, and it's such a delicious flavour. Especially when it's combined with maltiness rather than the fiery fruit of brandy.

Now, I've described rancio as a flavour, but it's perhaps more accurate to say flavour modifier. In very old brandies of good quality, the fruitiness will sometimes take a turn to the dark side, with suggestions of over-ripeness or a faint hint of hothouse rot.

By contrast Scotch, perhaps because of the cold climate in which it matures, is more likely to acquire a slight fust, something which speaks of the damp, earthy warehouses and old oak casks in which it has aged.

So as I say, it was a delightful surprise to taste a malt with rancio. Aside from that, there was some of the fust that old whisky takes on, as well as the faintly grimy, garden-shed-and-old-engine-oil character that I only ever find in Springbank, Benromach, and some other whiskies distilled in the Seventies or earlier. It wasn't a very intense dram, but oh! such lovely flavours.

(Thank you to Benromach and to Steve Rush of the Whisky Wire for the sample)