Sep 30

Sep 30 September 2022 Digest

Welcome to a brief wrap-up of reviews from September 2022! September means a new semester is officially in full swing; I am back on campus and loaded with student material to review and grade. Even as my need for a nice dram grows, the time I have available dwindles. That is the way of September.

The start of the semester is a bit like opening a new bottle of whisky— but more significant and exciting. The first few weeks, or the first few pours if I want to stretch this metaphor, are full of possibilities. It is a tabula rasa onto which students and faculty are free to imagine their future success. It is invigorating.

However, it leaves less time for whisky. So rather than one post per day, I have fallen back to my previous pattern of four a week: Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. I am not always in the mood to sit with a whisky at the end of a long day, so I do my best to keep a little queue of reviews to edit and finish. I once heard a media-marketing professor explain to students that regularity is critical if you want to succeed with a social media account or blog. While I measure my success through whether I am having fun, I appreciate having something to share regularly.

If there was a theme this month, it was "old." Old as in vintage, including a tasting of vintage blends and a vintage SMWS Glenrothes. And, old as in very mature, I tasted four whiskies over thirty years this month: a Caol Ila, Auchroisk, Laphroaig, and Craigduff. They were among the oldest malts I have tried, so this theme will likely not repeat itself until we are all a bit older, though probably none the wiser.

It was a busy month between whisky, whiskers, and the start of a new university semester! Let us begin with a few numbers.

23 reviews
6.26 average score
18.2 years average age

Here are a few standouts from the pack:

Best of the Month

The Craigduff 33 Year was a surprise treat— not something I expected to sample, but when the wife says go for it, that is what you do. YOLO. We were both amazed at just how good this once-in-a-lifetime whisky was. It built up slowly as if the first sips were just the orchestra tuning their instruments, but before we knew it, the flavors reached a delicious crescendo.

Even better, we sampled the whisky at a beloved pub that recently reopened after a two-year hiatus with a much-expanded whisky selection. The cherry on top is the intriguing history of Craigduff— a lightly peated malt partially distilled with heavily peated water. It was an experimental product in the 1970s, distilled, according to Signatory at Glen Keith and Chivas at Strathisla. No matter the location, this was one of just a handful of casks to see the light of day as a single malt, and it was stunning.

Value of the Month

Value is a relative term, yet I had some trouble deciding what bottle represented good value this month. There were beauties in this month’s reviews, but those were by and large not good values. Some of the old blends from September 4th were excellent, but anything sitting in a bottle for twenty to forty years is a gamble. It is not necessarily good value when the product might be no more than copper-colored cabbage water.

Some may find I am stretching the notion of value by highlighting the Ledaig 11 Year from Whiskybase’s Archive series as my value of the month. The bottle clocked in at $100-120 dollars at US retailers— currently $120 at Binny’s but sure to be discounted. While the price is not bad compared to other independently bottled Ledaig in the US, the quality of the malt was superb. It was the quintessential essence of Ledaig and a pure example of Ledaig’s funky maritime malt with minimal cask influence.

Of all the things I reviewed this month, this was one of two that I would legitimately go out and buy right now if I could. The other was Lost Lantern’s McCarthy’s 3-Year.

Surprise of the Month

I will quote from my review for this one: “I would never have thought this was Auchroisk— it was interesting, varied, complex, and well-integrated. Not that Auchroisk cannot be those things, but it rarely is all of them all at once” That is right, the 37-year Auchroisk from Thompson Brothers was my surprise of the month— and a great surprise at that!

I typically find Auchroisk pretty milquetoast and effectively one of the plain old vanilla ice creams of the scotch world. There is nothing wrong with that; these things need to exist, especially as tools for blenders, and no doubt they will attract fans along the way. This Auchroisk was nothing like that, and while you would hope a 37 Year whisky would be great, they do not always live up to expectations. This exceeded them, and it was easily the biggest surprise from September.

Honorable mention to the 1990s Dimple Pinch 15 Year. That was also unexpectedly good and surprisingly fragrant.

A full list of reviews can be found below:

Sept. 1 Glen Keith 15 Year (1998), Gordon & MacPhail for Hopewell Buy-Rite

Sept. 3 Glen Ord 28 Year SMWS 77.65 "Pure dead brilliant"

Sept. 4 Dimple Pinch 15 Year (c. 1990s), Crown Royal (1971), Chivas Regal 12 Year (c. 1970s)

Sept. 6 McCarthy's 3 Year, Lost Lantern 2022 Release

Sept. 8 Glenrothes 10 Year (1989) SMWS 30.27

Sept. 10 Craigellachie 15 Year (2006), Douglas Laing for K&L

Sept. 11 Macallan 13 Year SMWS 24.167, Macallan 12 Year SMWS 24.157, Glengoyne Teapot Batch 8

Sept. 13 Caol Ila 30 Year (1991), Douglas Laing for K&L

Sept. 15 Auchroisk 37 Year (1982), Thompson Brothers

Sept. 17 Laphroaig 32 Year (1983), 2015 Edition