Youthful Malt Not Considered Harmful

The cyclical nature of Scotch Whisky sales, forever moving from boom to bust to boom to bust, has occasionally led the industry into difficulties of its own making.

The slump of the eighties led in turn to an oversupply in the oughties of well aged malt, which the industry attempted to tackle by emphasising age as the one true mark of quality.

The (inevitable?) consequence of that tactic, of course is that during the most recent boom many producers have been reluctant to admit that they are bottling younger whiskies, resorting instead to the modesty blanket of a fanciful brand name, and taking advantage of the fact that they aren't actually obliged to state the age of a whisky.

This has led to much public argumentation between, broadly speaking, two camps. On the one hand there are those irate persons, generally not employed in the industry, who consider Non Age Statement whiskies to be a bad thing, and on the other the more emollient voices, often of those in the trade, who defend the practice as a sensible response to a shortage of aged stock.

(It has also, amusingly, led to Compass Box's clever dancing round the rules, and to Bruichladdich's rather more low-key activities in the same vein. Both of which I consider to be a good thing.)

But few bottlers have bitten the bullet and released young whiskies with prominently displayed aged statements. Which leads me to Càrn Mòr.

Càrn Mòr is the single malt brand of Morrison & Mackay, the Perthshire independent bottler and erstwhile maker of whisky cream liqueurs. I'm a fan of their whiskies for several reasons. Their labels are admirably clear and informative; young Peter Mackay, their envoy in the West, is an entertaining and charming fellow; their bottlings offer, in my opinion, good value for money; and most importantly, they generally bottle good whisky.

I expect I'm wrong (and please do correct me) but I believe they were the first bottlers in recent times to offer a malt with a '4' prominently displayed on the label, on a Glentauchers distilled in 2010 and bottled from a sherry puncheon in 2015. That was a fine dram; fiery, but also packed with marmalade and demerara sugar flavours, and ridiculously good value for money.

Tonight's bottle, by contrast, is a venerable five year old. It's from the blessed Glenburgie, and is a very fine example of the fruity style at which that distillery excels. The nose immediately shouts out "Fruit!" at you, and a deeper sniff reveals it to be Opal fruits. The palate is light, soft, fresh , and fruity. It's not complex, and there is a wee bite to it, but that fruit is just charming. A lovely wee dram, and very sensibly priced too. Oh, and it's really rather fruity.

I suppose I need hardly say that I wish more bottlers would follow the example of Càrn Mòr. I'm not that fussed about the age of a whisky, as long as it tastes good, but I don't care for smoke and mirrors. Or heritage and haggis and no age statement.

A Modest Proposal

Although it rather seems to have been superseded in recent decades, the kitemark scheme was generally some sort of guarantee of reasonable quality. Doubtless it was, or is, as fallible as any other human run scheme, but to my youthful eyes it always seemed like a Good Thing.

Last night's meeting  of Glasgow's Whisky Club reminded me once again that there's a crying need for some mechanism whereby the whisky drinkers can be alerted to the presence of whisky for collectors, thus saving themselves the pain of overpriced, underperforming malt, and leaving more sealed bottles for the auction fiends.

The day had started with the unexpected appearance of two new drams from Compass Box, Flaming Heart 2015 and This is not a Luxury Whisky. A tasting of the latter quickly revealed that it wasn't worth the asking price, which arguably is almost the definition of a luxury good.

The Club night featured only one standard dram. It was a strong line up, with the dram of the night being an Auchentoshan 22 Year Old (bottled by the Creative Whisky Co. for my employer, the Good Spirits Co.)

But the shiny bottle, the one that provoked the most chat, was the new Arran Illicit Stills Volume 1. It was a fine drop, and didn't seem too youthful, albeit somewhat harsh in the finish. As with the Compass Box in the morning, the complexity of the dram didn't justify the price tag. However, the blooming thing is all sold out already. A quick rummage online suggests most retailers presold their stock. And that's despite there being 8700 bottles. What the heck?

So. We need some sort of classification or scheme whereby collectable whisky is separated out from the drinking drams. If bottles such as This is not a Luxury and Illicit Stills were marked with a 'guaranteed collectable' kitemark, then those of us who prefer their whisky to taste good, first, last, and foremost can safely pass them by and go find something tasty in an ugly container.

Anyone?

Tasting Note: Compass Box The General

The Scotch Whisky Regulations (SWR) are written by the industry, and thus arguably don't serve the consumer as well as they might.

This fine dram is, I think, a case in point. Compass Box are so constrained by the SWR that they can only say that one component of the blend is 33 years old. We can infer that the other is older, and I've been verbally assured that the second component is forty years old, but it's all a bit unsatisfactory really.

Compass Box can tell us, however, that the two components which make up the General were both blended at a much younger age and then left in barrel, which isn't usually the case. Most blends will have only a brief marrying period, often in a huge steel vat, before bottling. I think that extended second ageing has contributed to the flavour of the resulting dram.

My grumblings about rules and regulations aside, I do think that this is a very, very fine dram indeed. Here are my notes.

Nose: A promising mix of woody and fruity aromas. Caramel, butter, and oranges. It seems very fresh and lively for such an old whisky. The caramel is evolving into Cream Line toffee, and the woody notes are growing stronger. There's even a little touch of fust or dunnage warehouse. Adding water releases much more sherrywood character, and now the toffee is moving over into tablet territory, and then further into Murray mints.

(For those of you who didn't grow up in Scotland in the 1970s: Cream Line was a brittle toffee with very strong creamy character. Tablet is a Scottish delicacy made by boiling up cream, butter, and sugar. Murray mints were a mildly minty boiled sweet.)

The palate is rather grippy with wood tannins, but also super-sweet, in the same toffee and fruit vein as the nose. There's also a touch of struck match from the sherry influence. The finish is malty, in a beery sort of way, but then loops back to the fruit toffee notes before going out on a kind of herbal mintiness. With water it settles down to an unctuous creamy toffee, underscored by a savoury note which rather reminds me of a Madeira-based gravy.

In conclusion, this is an absolutely superb blended whisky. It's thick and sweet and deeply satisfying to drink, but also complex enough to intrigue malt snobs. I recently tasted the Whyte and Mackay 40 Year Old, which costs about twice as much as this bottle, and I reckon this is the better of the two. Well done Compass Box.

For another take on this whisky, have a look at Steve Prentice's review over on Somerset Whisky Blog.