It’s always with a bit of trepidation we approach these Macallans. Like many of you, I’ve had oodles of great old Macallans through the years and still hope for some sort of ‘spiritual renaissance’. The clock keeps ticking, however, and those beautiful old sherry casks seem to be a thing of memory and rue at […]
Decadent Drams ‘Old Style Sherrywood Malt Whisky’ Blended Malt 23 yo‘Guaranteed 23 Years Old’ (Filled 2001 – bottled 2024)Sherrywood587 bottles45.1% abv Damn. Old school. Like… ‘one-room schoolhouse’ old school. This is cherry brandy run through a coal miner’s work shirt; a 1930s train engine mechanic’s Pall Mall extinguished in a wedge of black forest cake; […]
Or something along those lines anyway. Sorry, Kenny and Dolly. Anyway… let’s dig into a neat little duo from Whisky Sponge. There was a vision here: release a single cask bottling from both beloved Hebridean islands, Islay and Jura. A bottling that was naked in spirit and cask dressing, matured entirely on its respective island, […]
Ardbeg 17 Committee Exclusive (2024)Bottled 2023 (Released 2024)40% abvWe screamed for years for Ardbeg to give us back the 17 instead of another cleverly concocted (and marketed) limited release*. It seems our pleas have not fallen on deaf ears or, more likely, the good people at Ardbeg were already miles ahead of us. I’d almost […]
First session back in the saddle: Cambus. One of the lost grain distilleries, of course. Cambus gave up the ghost in 1993 as Diageo continued streamlining operations in a more challenging time (as regards whisky, anyway), so there are a fair few well-aged examples out there by this point. In particular, plenty of 1991s. While […]
Heya. Been a bit. There’s been a lot going on here. Lots of moving parts in our lives. Lots of things that have kept me from having the time and desire for this little vanity journal we started all those years back. Most, I will keep to myself, but I’ll be honest: one of the […]
Dear Lord, I miss the days of distillery visits and scooping up distillery exclusive releases. Lagavulin, in particular, has always had cool bottlings only available to those folks who make the journey to Islay. Or, y’know, those savvy enough to watch the auctions and swallow the inflated prices. That’s not my scene, though; I’d rather […]
Ah, Macallan. I just want to ask…why? Oh, yeah. The money. How ’bout we just move on to some notes. This feels lazy, but it’s just really unremarkable (though, not, to be clear, flawed) whisky. Sherry-seasoned European and American Oak. 44% abv. Tasting Notes Nose: Very clean, actually. Some typical (and kinda boring, I realize) […]
Been a hectic week or two. Had a misguided chap drive a truck through the front of the shop, and then ran into some unexpected (and extremely expensive) hiccups in our basement development. It only spiraled from there. Back to tastings and shit as of …
