Archive For The “Whisky Tasting Notes” Category
I tasted the 25 year old on two occasions, both of which were batches of the newer 25 year old, bottled at 45.8% ABV. The first (the 2011 version) left me pretty unimpressed, but it was tasted with some seriously fabulous whisky all around it – some of it at cask strength, so it might…
With the Islay festival behind us, and having reviewed eight Feis ile bottlings, it’s time to return to the second half of our Talisker series, which runs up the age stated part of the Talisker lineup, and we get to start with my favorite Talisker of them all, the 18 year old. I’m not starting…
Ardbeg, masters of marketing hype that they are, have attempted (and are reasonably successful) to make the Fèis Ìle open day into something more global than just the festival on Islay. Despite being a rather small operation (1.3 million liters per year, smaller than Bruichladdich and about a third of Laphroaig). How was this done? The…
In 2014 (and 2015), Bunnahabhain released two festival releases, one is the “normal” festival bottling and another is an older “exclusive” bottling, priced accordingly. This year, there is an 11 year old called Rubha A’ Mhail (pronounced ‘rooaval’) that was fully matured in Manzanilla sherry butts, and an 18 year old Moscatel finish, kept in Moscatel wine hogsheads for two…
Bowmore open day is today, and we honor the self proclaimed oldest distillery on the island with a dram of the 2014 Fèis Ìle bottling. This was a particularly good selection of casks, which shine even through the relative youth of the whisky. The Bowmore Small Batch seems to be of a similar age, but doesn’t…