The Malt Cask

A few posts ago, I reviewed my first bourbon, the Woodford Reserve distiller's select. As I mentioned then, American whisky wasn't something I drunk too much of, purely because of the image I had of it. Then came Balcones True Blue during a tasting and Woodford, my first purchase. Since then, I decided to try others. I am doing with bourbon what I have done with scotch: I start with less expensive and readily available bottles, generally purchased at a local supermarket, before going further up in the range, or not... So after Woodford, I got a bottle of Maker's Mark (which I will review in a coming post) which in my mind isn't as good as Woodford. Talking to some of the guys at the Whisky shop, they suggested Buffalo Trace and last week, I came across an offer on the bottle so decided to give it a go for £18.  Buffalo Trace is one of the biggest bourbon producer, with many brands such as Eagle Rare, Blanton's, Col. E. H. Taylor, George T. Stagg or Pappy Van Wink...

After having mentioned it a couple of weeks ago in the Lagavulin 16 post, here it is finally, the Lagavulin 8 years old. This is the first release of the year for the distillery which celebrates its 200th anniversary. I had pre-ordered a bottle with the WhiskyShop a couple of months ago, but for around £50, I thought I would buy a second to open and hopefully enjoy, and here I am! You can probably already tell whether I like it or not just by looking at the amount missing from the bottle after a week or so...  Many people commented how expensive the bottle was compared to the 16 year-old one, saying it would only be a money-making dram, selling young whisky with a limited edition badge on it, and to be perfectly honest, I wasn't sure what to expect either. I did ask about it at the distillery at Easter (they didn't have it in the shop or to try as it hadn't been released yet) and the people there told me it was a great whisky (I know, they couldn't really say otherwi...

I haven't really mentioned many of the tasting sessions I attended at the WhiskyShop Manchester since the Old and Rare one at the end of November. I was there a week ago for a customers' favourite session which was rather busy and had some decent bottles for us to try (anCnoc 12, Benriach 10, Old Pulteney 12, GlenDronach 12, Bunnahabhain 12 and we finished on the Loch Fyne Living cask -a peated vatted malt- served with some blue cheese, which announced the theme for this weekend). I was back again this Saturday, this time for my first whisky and food pairing session. 5 bottles on offer and 5 (bite-size) food to go with them. So let me tell you more about what we got to try and mix together. The first dram was Woodford Reserve's Straight Rye, served with a glacé cherry and mint leaves. I think they wanted to try a somehow deconstructed "Old Fashioned" cocktail. For me, the Woodford was the star of the night and the combination of cherry and mint worked a...

As I received a call yesterday telling me my Lagavulin 8 year-old 200th anniversary was ready for collection at the Whisky shop Manchester, I thought it was time I reviewed my bottle of 16 year old Lagavulin. The Lagavulin 16 is one of these bottles I had heard and read a lot about even before getting properly into whisky. So I decided to get myself one a few months ago to see if all the talks around it being one of the benchmarks as far as peaty single malts are concerned, were justified. I remember opening it and having a bit of an "Amelie Poulain" moment (French mega-successful film!). By that, I mean that I had heard so much about it, when I actually got to try it, it just didn't blow my mind as I was expecting. But like with the film, the more I get back to it, the more I enjoy it. And having just poured myself a dram, it continues to be true! It is definitely a rich and complex dram in my mind for which you need to be in the right frame of mind. As much as I like...

Last day on Islay today with quite a line-up: Ardbeg at 10:00, Lagavulin at 12:30 and Laphroaig at 15:15, and all that on foot! So after a good breakfast of smoked haddock and poached eggs, we set off from Port Ellen, heading towards Ardbeg, the furthest distillery on the southern coast from Port Ellen. We soon found a brand new tarmac path which runs all the way from Port Ellen to Ardbeg so it’s great for walking and perfect if you’ve got a bike on Islay. And to top it all off, the sun was out. Timing-wise, it took us 30 minutes from the B&B to Laphroaig, then 20 more minutes to Lagavulin and 20 minutes again to Ardbeg, walking at a decent pace but stopping here and there for photographs. Good breakfast at Askernish! On the path between Port Ellen and Laphroaig We reached Ardbeg distillery on time for our 10:00 visit. We started from the shop/café (which has really good reviews but we couldn’t verified them as we ran out of time at the end of the visit!) and headed ...

After a busy first afternoon on Islay, we were ready for Bowmore on Saturday morning. As we had our own driver for the first couple of visit and he therefore had to miss any tasting (Bruichladdich offered to give him a dram if he had his own container but as he didn’t have one they swapped his £5 off-a-bottle visit ticket for a miniature of their Botanist gin, Kilchoman however did not give him anything…) we decided to make the journey from Port Ellen to Bowmore by bus. I had booked the tour for 9:30 so we had to catch the 8:19 bus which arrived in Bowmore at 8:43. The return ticket cost £5. You can’t really afford to miss your bus on Islay as they are not that frequent (only 5 leaving from Port Ellen for the day). Bowmore the “main town” on Islay with the tourist information office, a bank (and probably the only ATM), a Coop and a few shops including the best Spar ever if you like rare whisky bottles! There is a small harbour too and the famous round church (the fact it ...

Back on the road for the second part of my visit to Islay. We left Bruichladdich at around 3:15 to head to Kilchoman (pronounce “kil-homan”) for the 3:30 visit. 15 minutes to cover 5 miles should be plenty but again, the road to get to Islay’s farm distillery is not the best and we arrived just after 3:30. Unlike at Bruichladdich were the tour was fully booked up, there were only 3 other people on our tour, but I would still recommend you book in advance to avoid any surprise. Kilchoman is Islay smallest and most recent distillery as it only opened in 2005. It is also one of the most authentic as most of the production happens on site, from growing the barley to bottling the end product. the Malting floor Peat and Kiln One of the specificities of Kilchoman is the fact that they still malt some of their own barley on site. Only 7 distilleries have kept a malting floor, 3 of which are on Islay (kilchoman, Bowmore and Laphroaig) The barley they malt is the one they ...