Reviews of scotch and world whiskies by a history professor, his wife, bird, and three cats.
No Name is a salty maritime dram laced with tar and coal soot. It is definitely peatier than the Peat Monster, but is still restrained— far from being a peat bomb— the teenage peat and additional of creamy highland malt round off some of the phenolic bite.
The bottle is delicious and thought provoking, a worthy pick up for anyone looking to explore American Single Malts, barley, yeast, or sherry casks.
It is a dinosaur, fun to see in a museum, but probably not the ideal animal to have as a pet.
The spectrum of earthy, mineral, and clay notes on this were as stunning as they were unique. I have never had anything quite like the burning cow paddy I found inside this bottle— the sort of savory, musty, earthy, grassy smoke. It was delicious, dung and all.
Maybe this dram was a unicorn, maybe a snowflake, whichever metaphor works, it was amazing, it was unique, and while I am sad I won’t be having another pour of it, I know there are always other fish in the sea.
I love the funky profile of Ledaig. This is the perfect dram to sit back with and explore the layers of funky umami that just roll out. It is savory and salty with just enough sweet wood spices to keep you looking, trying to figure out how to describe the profile.
No one could blame you if you took a dram of this for breakfast. It has cereals, fruits, and milk— everything you need to get your day started.
Not the worst blended whisky I have ever had— nor the worst grain heavy mash-bill. It’s not very complex and the whole of the Amrut single malt lineup towers over it in terms of the depth and complexity of the flavor profile. While it was alright, I won’t be searching it out again any time soon. I think I’ll stick to my Amrut single malts.
The bottle has grown on me, slowly. Now that we’re about two thirds of the way through with our first bottle we’ve started grabbing it out of the cupboard a little more often. It is still not a bottle we pull out with any reverence, it’s more like a bottle we have two of and might as well polish off. I think on the whole I still prefer the Quarter Cask and the travel retail PX Cask.
Apple is probably my wife’s least favorite note to find in a whisky. If she describes a dram as ‘apple juice’ then I know it is not something she ever wants to drink again. While we’ve had other great pours from the Elements of Islay series, this one did not hit the spot.
There is something intensely romantic about cupping an older whisky and getting lost in thought.
A friend of ours called this bottle a masterpiece of wine influence. I think my wife and I both found it far too sweet for our tastes. The bartenders at LMDW seemed to feel the same way, after they tried their own taste of it, they quickly pulled out a 7.3 for my wife to taste in comparison.
My introduction to Westland and what a cracker it was: peat, sweet, and bbq all come together beautifully.
I was surprised how much I enjoyed this. While the finish was weak, the nose was wonderful and the body was more complex than I expected with both sweet and savory notes present. My experience with mass market blended scotch has not been very good, lots of cheap entry level bottles are mixer material and not always good to drink straight up. This blend is a much better testament to what a blender can achieve combining some 20 different component single malt and grain scotches.
The Glen Scotia had a fascinating blend of ripe, sweet, and starchy tropical fruits with an unmistakeable dose of bleach. It is the antiseptic bleach, Clorox, or chlorine that ties this dram together from faint hints on the nose to a dominant part of the long finish. For a boy who grew up in the midwestern United States, the pungent smell of swimming pool cleaner chemical is the smell of summer.
