Comparison: Redbreast 15 Year Old versus Redbreast 21 Year Old

Redbreast 15 Year Old (43%, distiller's bottling)

nose: sweet and nutty, oily, sherried, mellow, and with a slight rum-like note. Definitely oily, in a mineralic way. With water it seems more rummy, sweeter, and curiously more oily.
palate: burnt brown sugar, oily, slightly mineral. A little fruity and rather woody. The finish is all dark wood and gravy browning. Overall very grippy, even chewy. With water it becomes softer, although still somewhat chewy. The flavours open up into icing sugar, toffee, dry spices, and oak. The finish now longer and more mellow.

Redbreast 21 Year Old (46%, distiller's bottling)

nose: rather more high toned than the 15. Similarly rummy, but also very nutty and oily - linseed oil. Over time the tones darken, and some oily red fruit comes out (red apple oleosaccharum perhaps).With water it becomes huge; savoury-sweet like Jamaican rum, thick, meaty, with old sherry wood, and a sweet brandy snap note.
palate: very rummy (Jamaican for sure), with green fruits, ice cream and warm brown spices. The finish is very hot and spicy, but also like rum ice cream. The aftertaste is savoury-herbal. With water some malt comes out, and the savoury notes grow stronger. The finish is very long.

Conclusion

The Redbreast 21 Year Old is an absolutely immense dram, with intense,complex flavours. The pure pot still style of whiskey makes for a thick, mouth-coating kind of whisky which is deeply satisfying to drink. If you are tired the 21 will overwhelm you, so it's a dram for early in the evening.

The 15 Year Old is rather easier to drink, while still offering the same thick, oily mouthfeel and rich fruity flavours. A great after dinner drink.

I tasted these two alongside samples of Redbreast 12, Powers John's Lane, and Midleton Barry Crockett Legacy. The Redbreast 21 was, for me, head and shoulders above all the others.

About Pure Pot Still Whiskey

Fermented from a mix of malted and unmalted barley, and then triple distilled in pot stills, this uniquely Irish style evolved in the 19th century as a way of coping with onerous malt taxes.

As Irish whiskey declined, it became less and less important, until only Midleton distillery near Cork continued to make it, with Redbreast as the standard bearer for the style. Now that Irish whiskey is once again on the rise, I hope we'll see more and more of this lovely style of whiskey.

A wee Brora (as you do)

I've been lucky enough to taste a handful of Broras over the years (once even at Clynelish distillery), and like many people, I consider it to be one of the finest old malts to be had.

On the other hand, the Connoisseurs Choice label tends not to be held in such esteem. It is indeed admirable that Gordon & Macphail offer so many different malts under so many labels, but they can't all be good, and in my experience the poorer ones end up as Connoisseurs Choice.

So it was a delightful surprise to find this dram so delicious. The nose was powerfully fruity, all ripe yellows and reds, with a strong strand of wax, and all very sweet. This being a late period Brora, there is no smoke to found.

The palate was even sweeter than the nose had suggested, with strong red apple notes and something yellow which might have been mango. The sweetness reminded me of brown sugar, and towards the finish I found a touch of beery malt. By the time I had finished the dram it was becoming a little astringent in the finish.

When Brora is peaty, the fruity flavours slip into the background, but this unpeated example served to emphasise the kinship between it and Clynelish. There's very few things to beat that ultra ripe fruit character in a whisky, and very few distilleries that can do it like Clynelish and Brora.

Brora, by the way, stands as a fine example of how the Scotch industry is so bad at forecasting. The old Clynelish distillery was closed when a much larger replacement was built next door in the mid 1960s. Shortly after that the owners (unexpectedly!) found themselves short of peated spirit and reopened the old distillery to cope, calling it Clynelish B and then, after a while, Brora. Then in the early 1980s another unforseen fluctuation (downwards this time) led to the final closure of Brora. Although, if you ask me, it didn't look too dilapidated when I was shown round...

Tasting Note: Springbank 15 Year Old Rum Cask

I tasted this at the end of a brilliant evening of whiskies and sherries, so my notes may be slightly more euphoric than is strictly justified.

Whiskybroker Springbank 15yo Rum barrel #300 52.8%

The nose is light and smoky. Perhaps brown sugar? It's sweet, but sweet without being syrupy - it is noticeably light in body. Fresh and maybe a wee bit salty.

With some water it becomes distinctly metallic; iron (which I often find in whiskies from Campbeltown) and aluminium. I should explain that when I find iron in a whisky that's a good thing, whereas aluminium is nearly always a bad thing.

The palate is very light and sweet. There's that lovely Campbeltown smoke in the finish. Just delicious.

Adding water doesn't change the palate so much. It remains soft, rounded, and smoky. Perhaps a little peppery note creeps in.

Conclusion: This is just ace. I'm a Springer fan, but even if you're not I think you'd find this to be a superb whisky. I'm not sure how much sweetness the rum barrel added, but it was certainly a good cask.

Glen Garioch 1998

Until I complete the move of whisky posts from my other booze blog, Smell the Cork, here's a link to my post there about Glen Garioch 1998.

http://smellthecork.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/glen-garioch-1998-vintage.html

Comparison: Càrn Mòr Strictly Limited Mortlach 1998 vs Wemyss Pastille Bouquet Mortlach 1998

Wherein I make invidious comparisons between similar whiskies from different bottlers, and indulge in a moan about pricing.

Càrn Mòr is the brand of a family run Perthshire based bottler of malt whisky. Wemyss Malts is Fife based, but similarly a family affair.

Càrn Mòr's packaging is, to be kind, cheap and cheerful, while Wemyss is rather more classy, with a retro bottle shape, pastel coloured labels, and poetic names (or, if you want to be unkind, word salad).

I tasted Càrn Mòr's Strictly Limited Mortlach 1998, which is a bottling from two ex bourbon hoggies, versus Wemyss Malts Pastille Bouquet Mortlach 1998, from a single hoggie. Both are bottled at 46% ABV. There was a great deal in common between the two, with plentiful confected fruit flavours tending to the yellow and red parts of the flavour rainbow (or map or wheel or mandala or whatever it is these days) in both bottlings. Both also showed an elegance, and had a rounded and long finish.

But, whereas the Càrn Mòr whisky had well integrated wood notes, which added to the overall complexity of the dram, the Wemyss bottling seemed rather dryer, and the oak tannin was slightly aggressive in the finish. Only in the direct comparison, mind you. Having previously tasted both these whiskies separately (or rather, against other malts, not other Mortlachs), I would have struggled to describe the differences.

It seems to me that Càrn Mòr obtained the better casks, or were able to produce a better whisky by selecting two casks of contrasting character. So it's probably about right that the Wemyss is a fiver cheaper (£53.50).

Both of them, however, seem cheap when one contemplates the forthcoming new official Mortlach releases. On commercial grounds Diageo can't be faulted for their decision to reposition Mortlach as a luxury brand, competing in the same segment as Macallan and Dalmore. But in going from £55 for 70cl of 16 year old malt to  50cl of no-age-statement malt for the same price they're really taking the piss underlining the arbitrary nature of whisky pricing. Their costs haven't suddenly jumped up (although I suppose that bottle design doesn't come cheap)

To me, a whisky drinker with a long memory (and an obsessive note taker), the current steep upward trajectory of malt prices, despite rising demand, looks awfully like greed and short-termism. Here's hoping it doesn't precipitate another crash and a wave of closures. Caol Ila as the Port Ellen of 2050, anyone?

The Scotch Whisky Regulations – Reading Between the Lines

Recently at work we've been debating where to fit AnCnoc whiskies on the shelves. Partly, in truth, because the Highland shelves were over full, but partly also because the whiskies from Knockdhu distillery are fine examples of the classic Speyside flavour profile, even if it does say 'Highland' on the tin.

Now, prompted by some twitter chat regarding what constitutes Speyside, I've been having a read at the Scotch Whisky Regulations 2009 (the SWR), and also the Scotch Whisky Order 1990 (the SWO).

The SWR gives a detailed geographical description of the Highland-Lowland boundary, and also defines the protected localities of Speyside, Islay, and Campbeltown. Speyside and Campbeltown are defined by refering to electoral wards, Islay is defined as the island of Islay.

The SWO is less particular; its definition of Scotch runs to just 175 words and doesn't mention anything at all about regions.

So here's my interpretation of these bits of legalese. It was always (or at least since 1893, with the Sale of Goods Act) the case that the label on a bottle of Scotch had to tell the truth – you couldn't label a bottle of Lowland malt as being from Islay. So it wasn't necessary for the 1990 order to specify regions because other legislation would effectively do the job.

But in order to give the same sort of protection to Scotch that is enjoyed by Parmesan, or Barolo, or Grand Cru Burgundy, it is necessary to follow the kind of geography based definition that's used by those other tasty products (PDOs or PGIs, if you're interested).

Hence the minutely detailed boundaries in the SWR-2009. However, since whisky making isn't like grape growing, the boundaries don't need to follow the line of a valley or a river, and so electoral districts are a handy pre-defined set of units to use.

However, the regulations had to be framed to accommodate existing practice. Macallan chooses to label its own bottlings as Highland, whereas Gordon & Macphail, for example, sell Macallan under the Speymalt name. Glenfarclas calls itself Highland; Tormore, just up the road, is 'The Pearl of Speyside'.

And thus, confusion reigns. It could be worse though. Burgundy is so complicated that people can't even agree on the number of appellations. Is it 300? 500? 700? And of course, there is an entirely separate debate as to whether regionality or terroir even exists in Scotch whisky, but I think I'll leave that one for another day....

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.