The Malt Cask

I have just posted a video on youtube with my updated whisky collection. It only covers the bottles which I have opened so I might have to release another one soon to update the 'to-be-opened' bottles!

Keeping to my New Year's resolution of buying older/independent bottles, here is my first purchase of 2018, and it ticks both the older (20 years old) and independent (Càrn Mòr) boxes. I actually didn't go out and spend £130 blind as this is a whisky I had in Glasgow a few months ago and really enjoyed. As it is a single cask bottling, there are only 581 bottles out there and having looked for it online, it didn't seem there were many left around. I was therefore very amazed to come across one in one of my local spirits shops in Manchester, and as it was there, I could not help myself. I bought it and 10 minutes later it was opened. So what is it? It is from a not very well know distillery called Clynelish. Many people have heard of Brora as it has been closed for a few years and the bottles available on the market now fetch quite a lot of money, well Clynelish is its still-working sister distillery. It is part of the Diageo group and mainly releases a 14 years old as a...

Before starting with today's whisky, I would like to wish you all a very Happy New Year, hoping 2018 is full of good things for us all! I would also like to thank you for following my whisky journey on the blog as well as on my Instagram page @themaltcask. My resolution for this year is fewer bottles but more from independent bottlers and older ones if I can! So let's start the first post of the year with a slightly older whisky from a distillery I have not really reviewed on the blog: Glenfarclas and its 21 year-old single malt. Glenfarclas have got quite a following as it is one of the only distilleries in Scotland still family run. They also focus essentially on ex-Sherry casks for the maturation of their single malt and these casks are laid to rest in one of their 28 on-site warehouses.  I have tried a few Glenfarclas in the last few years, but none really struck me apart from the 15 years old which I really enjoyed. The 12 wasn't bad, the 105 was okay too but th...

Still keen to pursue my whisky journey, I decided to celebrate my birthday a couple of weeks ago with this bottle of French whisky, bought by my parents last summer. Even if this bottle comes from a French company, it is actually not the most French thing you can drink. The reason why is very simple, Michel Couvreur was a Belgian whisky enthusiast who used to source barley distillate from Scottish distilleries as well as quality sherry casks from southern Spain, and ended up combining both in his man-made cellar in Burgundy where the end product would be left to age for a while. Michel Couvreur started his career in the wine business. He bought the cellars in Bouze-lès-Beaune in 1956 before moving his business to Scotland in 1964 as he was mainly selling Burgundy wine to English and Scottish wealthy customers. His initiation to whisky happened courtesy of a Scottish soldier, owner of the Glenlivet distillery at the time. This newly found passion took him back to his cellars in Bur...

I have not reviewed a blend for a while, so here is one. Black Bottle is a blend I have heard mentioned several times in the last few years but never really managed to cross path with until about a month ago. My local supermarket decided to have a bit of a shuffle with several aisles, and the wine and spirits moved. I did not think too much about it until I actually found myself standing in from of the whiskies, realising a few new things had appeared on the shelves, and that included Black Bottle. Wait a couple of weeks and the already decent £18 price tag dropped to £14 so I had to buy one and open it straight away. However, the Black Bottle so many people rave about is the pre-2013 version, when the blend was much peatier with a lot of Islay malts at its core. The old version was also available as a 10 years old as well as a much rare 15 years old. In 2013 the Burn Stewart brand had a bit of a relaunch and did something a bit unusual in changing quite drastically the flavour pr...

Back into a more standard post today with a new review of a single malt, courtesy of Glen Scotia in Campbeltown. I have already reviewed another Glen Scotia before with the  Double Cask  on the 19/11/16, concluding it was a very worthy bottle to have in any collection. Since then, my interest for the distillery has grown quite a lot. I got to try their 15 years old as well as the Victoriana and the 25 years old which were all absolutely delicious (I actually bought a bottle of the 15 which will be for a future review). So when I heard they were releasing an 18 years old, I didn't think too long before having one on order, which is quite unusual for me as, when I go up in price, I like to try the bottles before buying them.  What I like with Glen Scotia is the fact that their whisky experience is pretty authentic. By authentic I mean it is bottled at higher strength (generally around 46%), it is non-chillfiltered, I doubt they use much if at all any colouring. They ar...

You buy bottles of whisky and you get to know them. Before long, you have bought new ones, some with the same flavour profile as the previous one, some with a completely different taste. It is a truly fascinating thing to be able to try such a varied and extensive range of flavours coming from the malted barley, the distillation process, the length of maturation, the type of wood used, whether it is a full maturation or only a finish... And you reach the stage when you actually start thinking about experimenting yourself. Of course, I have no control whatsoever on any of these parameters, but I can still play with the end result.  It is not the first time I give this a go (as per my previously created A'bunadh 16 or Caol Dronach) and it sometimes works a treat and sometimes leaves me rather disappointed. Today I have decided to follow on in the Sherried/Peated area with a mix of Aberlour A'bunadh and Bowmore No1. Unlike with the previous experiments, I let both malt marry in...