Archive For February 27, 2017

Opinion: The Death of House Style and the Rise of Whisky Profiles

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Opinion: The Death of House Style and the Rise of Whisky Profiles

I recently published a review of the GlenDronach Peated, and that got me thinking that there’s a major shift happening in the tectonic plate alignment of the whisky world. We’re moving away from distillery house styles to a whole new way of looking, experiencing and thinking about whisky. The second decade of the third millennium…

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Aberlour 12 Non Chill Filtered (48%)

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Aberlour 12 Non Chill Filtered (48%)

Pernod Ricard did so many things right with this expression, that I’m not sure even where to start. I have a serious gripe with single malt entry level expressions that are chill filtered and presented at 40%. I think that’s the perfect way to serve up whisky to the “smooth seekers” crowd, but most of…

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GlenDronach 8 The Hielan’ (46%)

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GlenDronach 8 The Hielan’ (46%)

Together with the news that Billy Walker is moving on, which is hardly surprising following the BenRiach’s sale to Brown-Forman,  came the announcement of his successor, Morrison Bowmore’s Rachel Barrie. Rachel will be taking over the helm for BenRiach, GlenDronach and Glengalssaugh, and I admit to being curious to see what she’ll do with the…

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G&M Speymalt – Macallan 2006-2015 (43%)

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G&M Speymalt – Macallan 2006-2015 (43%)

G&M’s house expressions need no introduction and the Speymalt has been a pretty steady feature coming out of their seemingly unexhaustable warehouses. The Speymalt label has been used for Macallans as old as the 1938 vintage, all the way up to this youngish nine year old. The older releases were released at 40%, and later…

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Glenmorangie Bacalta – Private Edition VIII (46%)

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Glenmorangie Bacalta – Private Edition VIII (46%)

Rituals have power, and I wasn’t surprised in the least when I got a message from Yoav on Whatsapp “So, am I ordering our annual Glenmo?”. My obvious answer was “of course”, as traditions must be kept up. This will now be the fourth or fifth year that besides the bottles each of us buys…

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