July 2023 Digest — Whiskery Turnip

Aug 1

Aug 1 July 2023 Digest

Welcome to a brief wrap-up of reviews from July 2023!

Back safely home after a month of travel, I have spent most of July prepping for the Fall semester and rushing to complete last-minute research and writing tasks. On the whisky front, I wrapped up my reviews from Singapore and kicked off several theme weeks.

While it is great to be home and to finally enjoy some home-cooked meals again, I have missed the Singapore whisky scene and the friends we made. There is nothing quite like that where I live, and while Singapore may not have quite the same variety and richness as Japan, the existing bars are fabulous, as I hope my reviews in June and the first week of July highlighted. I draw particular attention to the last whisky we tasted in Singapore, a righteously delicious Highland Park from The Single Cask.

July featured one massive development on my whisky front— the launch of maltrunners.com. The website is still under construction as a group of whisky friends, and myself iron out all the kinks and get things set up, but the response so far has been excellent. The motivation for creating a shared site for posting reviews emerged from the chaos that enveloped Reddit during the summer. I was not the only one that had become a bit burnt out on the site (as I tend to do with all social media) and been subconsciously looking for an exit— or at least a reason to cut down on the doom scrolling.

Several of us already had our own sites, so setting up a new one we could share felt natural. So if you like my reviews and want to see even more, maltrunners is definitely worthy of a visit or even a bookmark. I would suggest starting with our first group review, a delightfully mature Linkwood bottled for Taiwan and picked up by a good friend. You can also check out my solo review on this website.

Post-Singapore, I turned my attention to Highland Park, riding the enthusiasm of the last dram we enjoyed there. While the distillery is incredibly popular, I always feel I am missing something. Undoubtedly, a few of my scores from that week will be a bit disappointing. I would rather not focus on the negative, though, so I will direct attention to the “mystery” Orkney bottled by Abbey Whisky, which happens to have the coordinates for Highland Park on the label. It was a fantastic example of the elements I enjoy in the malt.

The month continued with a round-up of SMWS reviews and a two-part series covering the Society’s festival releases for 2023. There were so many that I could not taste them all, but our local whisky group made sure to hit the highlights. You can find an overview of three unpeated releases in part 1 and peatier fare in part 2. I considered the Bowmore rare release in a solo review and, to keep it short, it was fantastic… though I remain non-committal on the pricing.

From SMWS to Glen Scotia, the last full week of the month featured a turn to Campbeltown. The week still had a significant SMWS contingent; considering how much Glen Scotia they bottle, it is hard to avoid their presence when doing a review series on the distillery. I usually do not pay too much mind to the flavor categorizations SMWS uses or put too much stock in their notes. However, when it comes to navigating Glen Scotia bottles, I find them incredibly valuable. The distillery distills a range of malts from unpeated to heavily peated and can produce some absolutely wild flavors. You never quite know what you will get, so just having a hint helps quite a bit. See, for example, the wild, delicious, and maybe a bit strange qualities of SMWS 93.122 or 93.173 that I reviewed this month.

August is on the horizon, and with it comes a wave of world whiskies— expect stops for American Single Malts, French single malts, and Japanese whiskies! More exciting times to come.

A few numbers from July: