Amrut’s 88th batch of their NAS cask strength series hits hard at 61.8% ABV and, at first, it is not all that pleasant. It shows up like some friend’s uninvited acquaintance, loud, obnoxious and abrasive. But, given enough time, it relaxes significantly and turns into a welcome addition to the party.
Nose: Vanilla infused wood decaying in a damp forest. Some burnt toasted rye bread. Later a bowl of translucent chocolate pudding rises from the depths. It really is oddly dry for something birthed in such a moist arboreal environment. (8.1/10)
Palate: Musty tree bark, lichen-infused coffee grounds and some dog hair stuck to a dried up old chocolate bar that got lost under the sofa somehow. (8.9/10)
Finish: A deep, comforting warmth unfolds and spreads quite quickly until it fills out the entire chest cavity. Remnants of old bits of wood and bark and chocolate dust remain on the desiccated palate, slowly adding up to hints of dried shiitake and porcini mushrooms. (8.6/10)
Balance: This really, seriously, not kidding, requires a good amount of time in the glass. Give it an hour or so to relax and air out its grievances. It’s a bit rough and bumpy right out of the bottle but, if you have the patience to wait, it’ll slowly evolve into a glorious old mess of decay and natural flavors and scents as if your are digging with bare hands through the wet leaf-covered floor of an autumnal forest foraging for wild mushrooms. (8.7/10)
Glenfarclas’ NAS cask strength bottling clocks in at a sturdy 60% ABV and deliveres a decent amount of that typical Glenfarclas sherry influence though it’s more of an ABV bomb than a sherry bomb.
Nose: A soft sourness reaches out of the glass, slithers through a cardboard tube, into my nose and there turns into a irritated cat bent on piercing my nasal flesh with a single, short, but very sharp and pointy claw stab. Temporarily appeased it hops off and away vanishing in a puff of drying grape skins. Not sure what to make of this. Interesting… but do I like it? I don’t hate it but I can’t say I love it. (6.5/10)
Palate: Ah! Much better! Piles of burning wooden logs crash down on the palate and push what must be sherry notes into the background. Except those notes remind me of baker’s plums. When things calm down during subsequent returns to the glass deep, rich smoke emerges that combines smoothly with the fruitier elements. Oddly the usual Glenfarclas sherry notes are rather absent. Perhaps subsumed by the smoke. But who cares. This is great. (8.5/10)
Finish: I sit in a cloud of plum flavored smoke. I feel great. But I’ll probably need to air out my clothes overnight. (9/10)
Balance: I’m confused because this seems to be much more about smokey plums than sherry. But I’m also content because I like smokey plums. Bummer about the strange nose though. Seriously… this one could’ve been a contender. Still, I’ll always be happy to return to it. (8.5/10)
The Scotch Malt Whisky Society’s 25th bottling of a potent single barrel single malt from Old Pulteney located up in the northern Highlands.
Nose: Wait… is this a Bruichladdich? It feels like I’m experiencing those same typical buttery notes of raw cake batter that I’ve always loved about the Islay distillery’s output. Myriads of tiny citrus-flavored lightning strikes burst forth from that misleading doughy mass, skittering about and leaving hints of caramelized brown sugar in their wake. This is very nice! (8.5/10)
Palate: The first sip skips right past the front of the tongue and gathers as a light and sweet vegetable broth in my cheeks. Leeks? Subsequent sips remain quiet in the front except for a noticeable oily coating that’s building up there. (8.5/10)
Finish: Faint hints of gather in the back of the mouth… perhaps some of the veggies used for the stock were roasted? Mostly, though, there is a salty residue on the tongue and a deep warmth in my chest. Quite lovely. This whisky is surprisingly quiet given it’s high-powered ABV but it definitely works for me. (8.5/10)
Balance: It’s a strange thing to say but this whisky is oddly convincing in its lack of pronounced flavors. I am surprised at how much I like this. It’s not exactly aligned with my usual preferences which I will freely admit, lean somewhat toward the bombastic. Either way, it’s always great to have a different kind of rewarding experience! (8.5/10)
The legendary beast, the one whisky to rule them all, the holy grail of Islay single malts. In this reviewer’s mind anyways. The first experience of this whisky, years back, was a knee-buckling, bar-clutching spell of the vapors followed by an exclamation not well suited for public discourse. It remains among my top 3 whiskies of all time. I could say it’s number 1 and it wouldn’t be a lie but the real truth is that there is a range at the top of the charts where direct comparison and relative ranking of whiskies ceases to make sense. Sometimes different is not better or worse but just different. In any case this was the inaugural release of Bruichladdich’s new line of heavily peated single malts matured in warehouses located in Port Charlotte. The whisky was named in memory of a distillery once located there and named the same as the place, which was closed all the way back in 1929. Supposedly the new spirit was distilled in homage to the original 1881 distillate. It is long sold out save for a few bottles hidden away by savvy store owners which occasionally pop up for a high price and for private bottles surfacing in various whisky auctions here and there.
Nose: Huge wafts of smoke from a roaring fire place stacked with quality walnut, almond and sweet butter logs are caught in an ocean breeze carrying notes of seaweed and salt from afar. There is so much going on it’s hard to even pull out specific details. Just beautiful. (10/10)
Palate: Wow. I always forget just how amazing this is. Huge. Mountainous. A raging tempest that on impact instantly fills the entire head space with everything it has to give. Countless tendrils of delicious smoke from that same fire place swirling around and through me while I eat Austrian plum dumpling dough sprinkled with sugar and drizzled with dark browned butter. This is like sucking nectar from the teats of ancient gods. Big. Really big. Utterly and astonishingly beautiful. Beyond words. The mind can only experience this but not hold onto it. Undoubtedly next time it will be a complete surprise again. (10/10)
Finish: The afterglow cannot possibly keep up with the glorious inferno of the palate but, really, it doesn’t need to. Instead you fall gently into an abyss filled with dense, dark and rich smoke and settle into a deep, relaxed state of peaceful content. Bathing, as it were, in that indescribable delicious, all-permeating peat smoke issuing from near infinite stores of glowing embers. Soaking up a deep heat seemingly radiating from everywhere in the universe. I… am. No thought. (10/10)
Balance: Can perfection have a balance? To talk about balance one would have to be able to distinguish parts of the experience. This is a continuous, almost synesthetic, whole body experience that flows gently or violently but always uninterrupted. How can a liquid be this good? I know instantly that I will once again be unable to recall just how good this is until I return to it at some future point in time. And it will be astonishing and glorious all over. The wheels of life and whisky turn in perfect synchronicity. When I die please soak me in this stuff and then burn me. (10/10)
One of the at least 3 batches of Glenlivet’s Oloroso matured version of their Nàdurra series bottled in 2016. The Nàdurra series of cask strength single malt bottlings from the famous Speyside distillery was introduced in 2005. In 2014 they started to release Oloroso matured batches as part of the series and, finally, in 2015 they added peated batches as well.
Nose: A large, rough and sharp wooden splinter is used to harshly cut through coarse baker’s chocolate. There are hints of dried mushrooms about. This one is a prickly guest that, when agitated, emanates small puffs of sweet peat from their pores. (7/10)
Palate: Licking a very dry wooden plank that was somehow infused with milk chocolate. The experience of the dram is geometrically flat. It clings to the tongue and absolutely refuses to lift up or expand in any direction but sideways until it finally slides in thin sheets over the back edge of the tongue and into the throat where it suddenly explodes into a dense and well defined ball of chocolate infused smoke. (8,5/10)
Finish: The ball of chocolate infused smoke wafts and wobbles about in the back and only descends very slowly from there. Oddly there’s not a lot of warmth generated which is surprising for a whisky this strong. (8.5/10)
Balance: Rather harsh up front but quite nice once you get past that. Ver-ey peat-ey chocolat-ey. (8/10)
The Scotch Malt Whisky Society’s 76th bottling of a Bunnahabhain single barrel single malt from Islay’s North Shore.
Nose: I get the canvas but not the burning driftwood from the label. I’m also missing the leather but there is, in fact, some faint shoe polish in there. Also some very mild vanilla flavored wafers. A few moments in someone behind me unwraps a tiny bit of leftover nougat. There is just not all that much here to be honest though much later on a nice autumnal note of drying leaves on trees floats by. (7/10)
Palate: The initial big hit from this beast-strength liquid is quickly subsumed by a velvety, richly buttered dough that is very chewy and thick and that, while not intensely flavorful, sparkles spicily. (7.5/10)
Finish: Again there is not a whole lot of pronounced flavor going on but the whisky does deliver a deep, rich warmth that fills the chest cavity throughout. I can live with this. (8.5/10)
Balance: Everything about this dram is interesting despite being under-powered in terms of strength of flavor. And the whisky ultimately gets lifted up high by the finish. It makes you easily forgive and forget any and all earlier shortcomings. I can barely remember the nose or the palate to be honest. All there is is this deep and cozy warmth everywhere. And I’m good with that. (8.5/10)
Nose: The peat appears in the form of compressed chocolate harvested from ancient bogs. The best such chocolate is often apparently somewhat fuzzy. (8/10)
Palate: The fuzzy chocolate from the nose melts into some mild Oolong tea served alongside it. Also, the table legs appear to be on fire. (7/10)
Finish: Heat stings the flanks of my tongue. These peripheral sensations meet up like the arms of a rather strangely shaped tuning fork back down in my esophagus. A hamster appears to have stored chocolate pudding in my cheeks. For the winter one assumes. (8/10)
Balance: A bit bumpy as a ride perhaps, which is not at all surprising for a 4 year old. Nevertheless absolutely enjoyable and well in line with Bunna’s recent push into bolder and peatier territory. (8/10)
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