November 2023 Digest

December 2, 2023 Whiskery Turnip

Welcome to a wrap-up of reviews from November 2023!

I cannot believe we are in the last month of 2023… where has the time gone? The school semester feels like it began only a few weeks ago, yet here I am, furiously grading paper drafts and preparing for a deluge of final exams and work. Lectures and course meetings are all finished, and it was a bit bittersweet to say goodbye to seniors and wish them luck in their future endeavors.

The end of the semester also means it is time to begin planning more seriously for Spring and complete all of the publication obligations waiting for me to have some free time. There is rarely any time to rest and relax, though the wife has laid down the law that I have to take a few days off once grades are turned in. That sounds like a perfect excuse to do a bit more whisky writing and start drafting more of the distillery, bottler, and style blurbs that I want to attach to future reviews— hopefully aiding any lost soul that finds themselves here looking for guidance.

December will be a bit different as our online whisky group (whose reviews can be found on maltrunners.com but which extends beyond the confines of that site, is doing a second annual blind whisky advent calendar. So the month will feature reviews from that— all of them completed 100% blind at first, though most I will try a second time before pushing them to the site. This means no themes or organizing principle beyond the randomness and fun the organizers planned.

Once the advent calendar is complete, one or two other reviews may slip in, but by about Christmas, I will post the end-of-year review and take a break until 2024!

So how about whisky in October?

The month began with a lineup of special SMWS bottles. The actual tasting occurred near the end of the summer, but I always love to try things multiple times, and with the school year just flying by, it took me a good quarter of the year to finally return to these whiskies. The Teaninich, distilled in 1983, the birth year of SMWS, was the highlight of the event, while the 1.9.8.3. collection, featuring more recent SMWS bottles, was an eccentric mix of very good and slightly disappointing.

A spell with Glen Moray arrived in the mid-month. I absolutely underrate Glen Moray more often than not, so whenever I pour some, I am almost always pleasantly surprised. If I learned anything that week, it is that I really enjoy what happens to Glen Moray after a couple of decades in the cask. I do not usually think of myself as particularly age-obsessed, but I had a clear preference that week for more mature casks from the distillery; look no further than a 33-year-old from SMWS, which topped the week in score and age.

I left Scotland in the mid-month for a jaunt across the global whisky scene. Stopovers included my first whisky reviews from Lark in Tasmania and the Picadilly Agro Distillery’s Kamet Single Malt. I traced a route from India to Milk & Honey, Miyagikyo, and RedBreast. No doubt the standout that week was again the oldest malt and my first time reviewing a Millstone from the Netherlands’s Zuidam Distillery. I have a bottle from that distillery— a young, heavily peated thing— and it is nothing like this very mature and very sherry malt from TBWC.

The month ended with blends— blended malts and blended scotch of all kinds, with highlights coming from a 1990s bottling of the Ballantine’s 30 Year and the unique 25-Year Blended Speyside Malt that Gordon and MacPhail created for the closure of RAF Kinloss. That unique blend combined malt from 1939, the year the base opened, and some slightly younger fare to build a wildly special bottle.

December is here— and the advent calendar countdown will begin shortly! Until then…

A few numbers from November:

23 reviews

6.22 average score

18.9 Years average age