The Malt Impostor

Bill's Best Night Drinking--what's yours?

2012-01-29T19:32:00.000-05:00

     Recently Bill approached us about doing a post based on his "Best Night Drinking". Now, we would have thought that Bill's Best Night Drinking might have been one he shared with the two of us, maybe a whisky festival or cruise or even a night out on the town, but noooooooooooo. But then again, we've witnessed Bill's loyalty to us evaporate in the presence of whisky brand reps, complimentary dinner buffets, and all manner of chocolate confections, so we've learned not to take too much offense.
     We should also note that in recent months, Bill has developed an unhealthy obsession with Pappy Van Winkle Bourbon, sparked by the realization that he couldn't find it so easily any more. Now, the Pappy 20 is clearly one of the better bourbons we've ever tried, but Bill's fascination with it now far exceeds the value even he would place on it--if he hadn't willingly gone off the deep end in his quest to find it. Gotta love stoking demand through deliberately maintaining scarcity. It helps if you have a great product, though.
   At any rate, what follows is Bill's account of his Best Night Drinking. Inexplicably (despite his attempt at an explanation), he writes it in the present tense and, following the Bob Dole/Rickey Henderson/Sméagol (Gollum) tradition, refers to himself in the third person. What a tool.

     To me, a recent dream-like night seems blog-worthy, and to get it out, I find need to tell it third person, as if it happened to someone else. Identifying details have been removed to protect the innocent, the guilty, and the ferrets.
     After a delicious glass of single-origin hot chocolate at [really cool local cafe], Bill and his old friend stroll to [wonderful place to get a drink] to have a glass or two or three of scotch before dinner. Bill has small glasses of:

Highland Park 18
Balblair 19
Bowmore 18

and the total cost is under $15! (The friend, new to scotch, on Bill's recommendation, tries Oban, Talisker 10, and Lagavulin 16.) The menu includes a small glass of [extremely expensive premium scotch] for [more money than Bill has ever paid for a glass of whisky]. Bill asks the waiter about it. "Is it worth it?" The waiter nods at [elegant gentleman employee] by the bar. "Go ask [name redacted], if you can get his attention."
     Bill manages to catch his attention. [Name redacted] is lovely to chat with. He talks about the coming wave of non-age statement scotches, and offers a rave review for the [extremely expensive scotch]. Bill nods sagely. [Name redacted] says something about "the best bourbon ever," and he reminisces about [a brand of bourbon that is no longer produced], of which he at one time managed to procure 32 cases at $9/bottle for the [wonderful place to get a drink]. Bill nods, agreeably, but not sagely, never having heard of the brand before.
     Bill inquires about Pappy Van Winkle. "Bah," [name redacted] scoffs. "I'll get you better than that." About one minute later, two glasses of bourbon appear, comped by [name redacted]. Willett Pot Still Reserve and Parker's Heritage Collection. Both are outstanding. Bill quivers like a puppy dog and wets himself. (One of those two assertions is fictitious.) Glug, glug, glug.
     Bill and his friend head to [trendy new restaurant]. No table is available for 25 minutes! So, Bill and his friend sit at the bar waiting for a table. Bill sees Pappy Van Winkle 20 on the drink menu, and promptly orders a glass from the absolutely stunning bartender. She comes over with the bottle, and holds it for Bill to stroke. Which he does, mildly lasciviously. They chitchat idly about the PVW20--she's says it's the only bottle they have, she doesn't know how it got there, it came in a red velvet bag, and it's half gone.* She pours Bill 125ml. (125ml!!!!!!!!!!!!) A table opens up, so Bill asks the gorgeous bartender to close the tab. While she begins the work of ringing them out, Bill hands her a $5 bill, and offers sincere thanks. She smiles appreciatively, then says that register can't ring up PVW20, and she hopes that that is okay. Bill looks at the bill.

Instead of the PVW20, Bill's bill lists Elijah Craig for $10. Bill swoons, doesn't know what to say, says nothing, saves his marriage.

                                                                 --Bill

* Note: Bill has since been back twice, and now it is 3/4 gone. Glug, glug, glug.

We'd love to hear from you: what is your best night drinking? Leave us a comment and let us know. The best story wins a prize of dubious merit.

The Glenmorangie 18 Extremely Rare (750 ml mondo mini)

2012-01-25T23:20:00.002-05:00

Tasting notes:
The nose on this dram is gorgeous and refined, with oranges and figs from a well-integrated grove from pre-war Lebanon. As the dram opens up, the nose turns downright exquisite, revealing caramel and bananas flambéed with Barbados rum in a copper saucepan from the kitchen of the court of Louis XIV. On the tongue, it is so smooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooth, it's ridiculous: it's as smooth as a pale twenty-something New Englander imagines he can be on the beaches of Aruba in January. Amidst the nearly tactile smoothness (that's right, it's that smooth), subtle and complex flavors come through: the meat from Korean barbecue spareribs expertly centered within the best dim sum bun you've ever tried, or a full buffet at the Kakawa Chocolate House after completing the Santa Fe Chocolate Trail (and no, that’s not a euphemism). Still, the smoothness is overwhelming. It's as though the liquid itself has been blended to the point that all of its molecular bonds have been broken, leaving only bosons and neutrinos. (Bill: I'll go you one further: it's a fractal, it's non-rectifiably delicious, it's 1.5 dimensional.) (John: Ok, I call bullshit.) (Bill: I'm gonna box dimension yo' butt with my Hausdorff measure, poseur!). This dram finishes more like a liqueur than a scotch, but the complexity is amazing. It's like someone turned a huge red peppercorn into a jawbreaker, but instead of eating it, decided to cross-breed it with a Fabergé egg complete with a reproduction of Versailles' hall of mirrors inside. Accordingly, this metaphoric mutant spawn echoes sweet spice infinitely down your tongue and throat.

Rating:

--On the scale of things that one hopes are infinite—
The Glenmorangie 18 Extremely Rare is time—I mean, come on: if space were infinite and time weren’t, seeing it all would be hopeless. This way, you can conceivably cover everything and use what’s left over to sit and drink the Glenmorangie 18. This last bit also happens to be my own personal vision of what heaven would have to be for me to want to stay that long.

--Stephen

Our thanks to David Blackmore and the good people at Glenmorangie for the sample!

HAPPY BURNS NIGHT EVERYONE!

The Linkwood 1988 Classic Cask (50 ml Zim the Great* potion bottle)

2012-01-20T19:46:00.000-05:00

Tasting notes:
Pears. Honey-pears. Candied honey-pears. Honey badger? The nose of this lovely dram wafts around like an over-perfumed first love. Scented duct tape included in a hastily-assembled Mother’s Day gift basket. More sweetness than Walter Payton. Distilled molasses aged inside of a gigantic Jolly Rancher™. It really smells like wine and has a super light runny mouth, like the sassy 9-year-old girl that lives down the street and likes to talk to your dog in some sort of language fit for elves. On the mouth it’s high, fresh, lovely. Elegance and refinement abounds. I’m getting the taste of a buttersoft high-grained white leather belt worn by Liberace and now used to fasten my wrists to a headboard (“We’re just joking here, right? He-he-he… he?”). Perhaps it’s more like the mineral taste of the metal buckles on Charo’s high heels. Now there’s spoonfuls of sugared grapefruit and rosewater syrup. The finish brings a touch of salt collected by fairies from the tips of saffron stamen overlooking a Mediterranean port. And yet there’s an edge here, too, like that put into a fancy straight razor polished noisily on a leather strap. Volcanic ash and peppercorns muddled in a Jefferson cup with a rhinoceros horn pestle. Late wisps of smoke from a wood-fired Jacuzzi set in the Mongolian steppe.

Rating:

--On the scale of failed attempts to prove one’s divinity to onlookers--
The Linkwood 1988 Classic Cask is Empodecles throwing himself to his death into Mt. Etna, then an active volcano--As I think about it, is there any more spectacular failure to prove one’s divinity to onlookers? And yet it did secure a measure of immortality for him: there is an underwater volcano off the coast of Sicily named “Empedocles.” What’s more, when the tip of the volcano rose up above the surface of the sea in 1831, an international kerfluffle ensued as four nations attempted to claim it. The only thing that settled the dispute was the submersion of the volcano back under the sea five months later.

--John

*--Our thanks to Jerry Zimmerman (and Aron Silverman and the good folks at the Classic Cask) for passing on this sample to us. In our book, that makes him Great. Slàinte, Jerry!

The Balvenie Tun 1401, Batch #3 (200 ml generic glass flask)

2012-01-15T23:59:00.020-05:00

Tasting notes:
     Today, class, we're going to explore a new topic in journalism by examining the works of novelists Kingsley Amis, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe. What did they all have in common? Yes, yes, they each had two eyes and only one nose. Very good, but I hoping for something else. Indeed, they all wrote in English, and they all used typewriters--I'm impressed you know what those are--to produce their books. And yes, surely they are all dead...is Kingsley Amis dead? Oh, okay, thanks for checking that out on Wikipedia while you were also updating your Facebook page. Anyone else? Aha! That's what I was hoping for: They were all hard drinkers, and today we will see if we also can do as they presumably did: Produce memorable and dynamic prose whilst schnockered and hungover. (Although I couched it in terms of Plato's Symposium, this is why I asked you all to drink all night long last night.) I concede, in advance, that it's odd that we will be drinking an expensive whisky, as opposed to cheap gin, but this is a MacArthur genius-grant-supported experiment. [Editor's disclaimer: Not really.]
     The Balvenie Tun 1401, class, the Balvenie Tun 1401. You'd say, wouldn't you, that on the nose one detects traces of unroasted filberts, lemon soufflé, and marzipan foam swimming pool noodles? What's that, Cuthbert? Can you speak louder? YOU WANT TO BE EMBALMED IN THE BALVENIE TUN 1401WHILST STILL ALIVE? What is this, Edgar Allan Poe's The Cask of Amontillado? Oh, you mean you want it used as your embalming fluid? Very ancient Egyptian; I can see that, indeed I can. An A+ for you, Cuthbert.
     You claim to be smelling rashers of boiled Canadian Bacon glazed with raisins, Elizabeth. Aren't you a vegan? I don't think I fully trust you on this one. Hmmm, "bacon" starts with "B" and "Canadian" starts with "C." So, a B or a C? I'm giving you an F, Elizabeth, but the two of us can always discuss how you may improve your grade later tonight in my office.
     "Cruelty-free bamboo shoots"? "Yang Guang and Tian Tian's bedding"? How do you even know the names of the new Scottish giant pandas, Nigel, let alone what their bedding smells like? I'm not sure I can even assign you a grade. Leave and never return! You're voted off the island! You're fired! You are the weakest link! Goodbye!
     Okay, class, now drink. Mmmmmm. MMMMMMMmmmmmm. Like coal tar smoke hanging in the air at the end of a fireworks display after the home team takes the lead. Balanced like a Key West Mallory Square itinerant juggler, tossing kerosene-lit torches, rusty sickles, and a box of cayenne-pepper-spiked cinnamon red hots intermingled with Pina Colada-soaked raisins. What do you mean, Cuthbert, that that's not what you smell? Get out of here! You're fired, too! Now, what else, have another swig, all of you. "Sprigs of mechanical pencil lead," Victoria? Intolerable! Leave at once, Victoria!
     Like an old thin wire brush used to curry a springer spaniel. "Like sandalwood duct tape...patching a birch bark canoe or a pagoda built by an eccentric millionaire in Ohio"??? Begone at once, Edward, and take Charles with you!
     Well, Elizabeth, we're alone; just the two of us. Yes, just the two of us. What?! After swallowing it, all you can say is that, "It's not fire-y, but kinda warming, like, you know?" You're irredeemable, too! Depart, and never trouble my sight again! Good gravy, young woman, if I'm ever stranded with a broken limb in the alps, this what I want a Saint Bernard to bring to me in a very small tun around its neck: The Balvenie.
     I guess now I'm truly alone, but not alone. It's you and me, Balvenie Tun 1401. I'm...very happy to be alone with you. I find I want to keep smelling you as obsessively as Michael Jackson kept washing his hands, disinfecting his surroundings, and getting plastic surgery. Mmmmm. Another sniff? Don't mind if I do. Old wood. Very old wood and wine aged way past the due date. Mmmmmm.

Rating:

--On the scale of things to visit again and again and again and again and again--
The Balvenie Tun 1401 is The Mountains--Anywhere in the world (that I've been so far), any season, any weather, they always provide a cornucopia of smells and sensations, from X-treme heli-snowboarding in the winter, to ferret hunting in the spring, to running with gray lobos in the summer, to chanterelle picking in the fall. Every day is a new adventure.

--Bill

Our thanks to Andrew Weir and The Balvenie for the sample!

The Macduff 11 Year Old 2000 TWB Exclusive (3 cl TWB* mini)

2012-01-07T12:04:00.001-05:00

Tasting notes:
This is a post-holiday dram if I've ever had one: on the nose, there's smouldering mistletoe strewn along the side of the road, with marzipan reindeer at regular intervals, chewing placidly on the sherried merry cherry berries. On the mouth, there's pepper and cinnamon and sweet cranberry heat, much like I found on my tongue after peeling myself--and my tongue--off of my neighbors' driveway the next morning, only to find that I did actually dance there the night before on the fruit cake they'd given me as a gift, but only after I'd doused it in Tabasco in front of them to convey more clearly my true feelings about said gift. But don't get me wrong, I could swim in this stuff: it's wonderful and sweet, just like the feeling of realizing what I'd done--once the horror of realization had worn off and the wry joy of the truth had set in. On the finish, asphalt butterscotches, definitely asphalt butterscotches--you know, the kind Santa leaves for naughty kids or for unrehabilitated juvenile delinquent neighbors--and I'm not just saying that because of my proximity to the driveway, I assure you. The smoke lingers on the finish, but it's the smoke from an oil drum trash fire on the banks of the River Deveron that hobos have used to smoke the pork tenderloin, plums, and lingonberries they stole from my house whilst I was passed out
on the pavement. The finish tingles with magical sparkles and hints of tar, not unlike those I feel in my head at this moment--and not unlike those I would imagine I'd find if, improbably, I made it to the roof just a moment after St. Nick's sleigh pulled away.

Rating:

--On the scale of regrettable holiday escapades I've had--
The Macduff 11 Year Old 2000 TheWhiskyBarrel.com Exclusive is the night I got drunk and got into a tiff with my girlfriend, only to find the next morning that I'd torched my own car, not hers--You know, I'd cut back on the drinking during the holidays, but it's the only thing that gets me through.

--Stephen

Our thanks to Alastair and the good people at The Whisky Barrel for the samples!

*--The Whisky Barrel (Macduff 11 Year Old TheWhiskyBarrel.com Exclusive)

You can also find The Whisky Barrel's Facebook page here and their Twitter feed here.

The Compass Box Orangerie (50 ml holy water travel vial)

2012-01-01T20:34:00.000-05:00

Tasting notes:
Dutch undergarments? No, it’s Scotch whisky infused with orange zest, cassia bark, and clove. We’ve had occasion to remark on the ad copy before; we’ve seen the lovely art nouveau bottle at whisky events; and even had a memorable sip while bobbing in the Boston Harbor on a fog-filled night. But as our palates have matured over the years and become refined through countless tasting sessions, we believe we are now ready to subject this offering to our uncompromising and thorough review process. In fact so confident are we that we’re willing to pull the curtain back a bit and show you a transcription of our first encounter with the Orangerie which we chose not to publish at the time.

On the nose it’s orangey. It’s the smell in my nostrils of oranges put into a fluid, perhaps a liquid. On the mouth—yes, there is it again: the unmistakable taste of oranges. Citrusy and really orangey oranges. This time it’s like there is a literal orange wedge in my mouth. The finish reminds me of nothing more than the feeling you get after eating several of those wedges that still have a lot of the white stuff on it. What’s that stuff called?

Ah, youth. At any rate, we’re ready for our more discerning review. To begin, we noticed immediately the Navalino orange peels hand-zested by a crew of mostly right-handed zesters not all of whom were wearing plastic food-handler gloves (We won’t tell!). But in addition, we found other, more complex notes.
Pumalo sections muddled in a julep cup, then strained over Carr’s® Table Water® Crackers. Calamondons ripened almost to the point of fermentation, then added to an allspice chutney. The whole of it is a triumph of subtlety. We get a hint of blood orange, but a rare variant, like AB-negative. And there’s a reminiscence of Terry’s Chocolate Oranges, but where—even at close range (the locker room, the boudoir)—Terry’s gender is indeterminate. As for the Cassia bark, we had trouble placing those notes at first but then Bill realized the obvious: the tree from which the bark was used in our batch had, decades earlier, served as the slate for a futile declaration of love carved by a pocketknife. That and the stress from Mottled Emigrant caterpillars perhaps muted the cinnamon’s trumpet and allowed the nutmeg’s overture to win the day. As you can see, there’s much on offer here, and it will suit a variety of tastes. For conservatives, it’s like a Grand Marnier to gift to Francophobes, and a marvelous complement to Freedom Fries. For liberals, it represents the hope for a brighter future where good ideas jostle the tired postures of tradition.

Rating:

--On the scale of failed blog ideas--
The Compass Box Orangerie is right up there with “Fruit Reviewer”--The closest we could find to someone even attempting this concept were these, and you can see how well they did: Miracle Fruit Review consists of one post (that was probably planted there by someone from the miracle fruit industry), all that remains of Fruit Review is this, and Fruit - Review is actually just a review of a book called Fruit.

--John

Our thanks to Robin Robinson and Compass Box for the sample!

Announcing The 2011 Malty Award

2011-12-30T23:37:00.002-05:00

We failed to award The Malty in 2010 for reasons that remain opaque to the three of us to this day. One thing we know for sure: it wasn't for lack of material. We were probably just focusing on our "serious" whisky reviews and lost sight of the need to consider this venerable and utterly useless blogger-contrived and blogger-awarded prize. After awarding the first inaugural Malty to The Compass Box Orangerie way back in 2009, we're back here on the second to the last day of 2011 and very proud to announce that the winner of...

The 2011 Malty for Best Unintentionally Parodic Marketing Materials for a Whisky Product is:

The Southern Comfort Pepper

We love the marketing here, but it's so far into over-the-top range, it's fired itself like a rocket over the shark into new and truly wild territory. The box, the overt reference to the most common venereal diseases, the glowing shot glasses, the USB drive, the working smoke detector: the combination is a thing of beauty and undeniably worthy of a Malty. See for yourself.

The taste, you ask? We haven't been bold enough yet to try it, but it does contain Tabasco, so it can't be that bad. Plus, with this kind of packaging, does it matter?

Glenfiddich 50 yr at the Ultimate Whisky Experience Nth 2012 Show

2011-12-28T19:29:00.000-05:00

Update on the Ultimate Whisky Experience in Las Vegas on March 2-3, 2012:

In case you weren't sure if the Ultimate Whisky Experience would be exclusive or elite enough for you, this has just come to us via the exclusive MaltLine: There will be an exclusive private tasting of the original Glenfiddich 50 year-old, valued at $16,000-$20,000!!!! Hosted by Ian Millar, Glenfiddich Global Brand Ambassador, this private tasting is part of the High Roller Dinner Reception on Saturday, March 3rd. If you can afford it, it's a no-brainer.

You can find details on the High Roller ticket package here.
Details on other tickets are here. And use our exclusive discount code UWECT1 during checkout and receive a $100.00 off of a Connoiseur Ticket (normal priced at $525.00)!

And let us know if we might see you there. Slàinte!

The Caol Ila 27 Year Old 1984 TWB Exclusive (3 cl TWB* mini)

2011-12-21T13:14:00.000-05:00

Tasting notes:
    I must confess, I'm cheating on my brethren Malt Impostors. I'm having a bromance with the Caol Ila 27: everything about it, even the name, which I delight in mispronouncing as "Cool Island" is giving me the chills. Uncorking the bottle is like letting out a GGG-genie sporting a sherry-soaked violet velvet vest liberally doused with a briny, iodine "briodine" cologne. It's a platter of vegetables grilled over cedar coals, from bro-ccoli to dude-cchini. It's the (clean honest) sweaty bandanna of a lumberjack who's been swinging an axe in the Great North Woods, and over smouldering cedar bark he's smoking salmon that he caught by grizzly-like swatting them out of a stream.
     Redwood cinders containing
the seeds of life, and szechuan peppercorns (thanks, Dr. Whisky!) on the fraternal kiss, with afterglow of burnt lambchop fat. (Even a vegetarian bro would love this lambchop.) In the substrate of fossilized cherry blossoms, there are flecks of shimmering sparkling sparrow liver pâté flavored shrapnel commingled with flint shards. This is a dram that drinks like a Roman banquet.
      Finishing with pine needles left over after a forest fire; out of many smoking bro-chettes, one new mushrooming cloud of bro-ken hearts: a bro-haha over who gets the last drop. Who knew a one dimensional race to the tape could be so rich in experiences? Well, bro me down, as Popeye might expostulate.

Rating:

--On the scale of volcanoes that bro-up X-tremely large--
The Caol Ila 27 Year Old 1984 TheWhiskyBarrel.com Exclusive is the 1883 Krakatoa eruption--Shockwaves traveled around the earth seven times, registering for five days afterwards. Clouds of smoke and particles wreaked havoc on the weather for five years afterwards. It was world-changing, and so is the Caol Ila 27. My, my, my Caol Ila!

--Bill

Our thanks to Alastair and the good people at The Whisky Barrel for the samples!

*--The Whisky Barrel (Caol Ila 27 Year Old TheWhiskyBarrel.com Exclusive)

You can also find The Whisky Barrel's Facebook page here and their Twitter feed here.

The Dalmore 14 Year Old 1996 Single Cask (3 cl MoM* mini)

2011-12-18T23:44:00.001-05:00

[This is one Master of Malt sent us just to get us to review it for them (see our Disclaimer here). Our thanks to Natalie and Master of Malt for the sample.]

Tasting notes:
On the nose, there's freshly soaked barley left to malt in a Highland field that was already overgrown with switchgrass. There's also a sweetness, like a silo full of corn heated slowly to coax the sugars out without popping a kernel. Some citrus notes come out on the palate, but then you realize they're really notes of raw sugar cane. Lest you think that this expression is a biofuel wetdram, however, there's old tech here, too: the mouth holds brininess that acts like a salt-bridge separator, allowing the free flow of ions, but not water molecules, and resulting in a serious drying effect. And in the spirit of a good biofuel, the mouthfeel is decidedly free of oiliness or any other hints of fossil fuel action. The finish brings vanilla and spice, but they're
both faint and slightly synthetic in character, like a Vanilla Spice Little Tree™ car air freshener that's been hanging from the rearview mirror of a Prius for three years. At 55.5% abv, this dram could serve as a high test biofuel all by its lonesome. And if you put this in your flex fuel car, it'd smell a whole hell of a lot better than french fries.

Rating:

--On the scale of promising renewable energy sources--
The Dalmore 14 Year Old 1996 MoM Single Cask is landfill gas or "biogas"--While this is as viable a source for energy as any we have available to us, let's face it: it's just not nearly as sexy as solar.

--Stephen

*--Master of Malt (Dalmore 14 Year Old 1996 Single Cask)
Check out other Master of Malt Drinks by the Dram here.
Check out Master of Malt's Facebook page here and their Twitter feed here.

The Hakushu 12 (50 ml airline bottle)

2011-12-14T23:32:00.000-05:00

Tasting notes:
     Any time there are three actual literary sisters, such as the Brontës, or three fictional brothers, such as the Karamazov's, the three tend to fall into roles. Being triplets from different mothers, the Malt Impostors stay true to type-casting: I am the serious, grounded brother, Stephen is the rainmaker, and John is the flibbertigibbet. In this review, I seek to "live large," and try to become someone I am not, such as a combination of Bill Gates, Brad Pitt, or Robin Williams: Rich, handsome, and manically unfunny.
     Filling a glass with a dram of the Hakushu 12 is sitting on a whoopie cushion filled with an intoxicating blend of passion fruit body wash combined with Clive Christian Imperial Perfume. It's spraying distillate of artisanal Fuji apples into one's nostrils in the reverse of spraying apple orchards with insecticides: I want the gently sweet acidity to inveigle fruit flies and aphids, as worlds are being created in my nose. Those cloudy orbs are filled with swirling smoke and peat, drawn by Peter Max lounging in a field of alfalfa grown by the Findhorn Foundation. And yet, so refined: A Roman Patrician nose; certainly not a honking middle European---read: Jewish---schnozz. [Note: The former sentence has been approved by Joshua (The Man) Hatton, President and Founder of the Jewish Single Malt Society.]
     This strikes me as almost a Zen koan: If a thing be perfectly balanced, doesn't that suggest that it can be unbalanced? And if it may, in some possible world (filled with apples, perhaps) be unbalanced, how can it be perfectly balanced? I am happy to report that it is impossible to conceive of the Hakushu 12 as unbalanced. Therefore, it transcends balance: It is below the bedrock of the Platonic foundation of any eternal steady state non-entropic universe. It is extraordinary.
     Oranges metamorphosing through estrous cycles on my tongue, and ultimately running long and plummy. Bonsai wood used as flooring in Victorian dollhouses. On the very back end, primal rack of lamb, grilled on an omega-3 cured iron shovel, along with scallions and ramps coated in large granules of sea salt, held on by the barest mistings of monkfish oil. And long plums. Very long plums.

Rating:

--On the scale of almost perfectly balanced things (that aren't Platonic ideals)--
The Hakushu 12 is Nadia Comaneci at the 1976 Olympic games--She knocked down the first perfect 10 in Olympic history, and followed it up with six more perfect 10s. Her only flaw? She's not a triplet.

--Bill

Our thanks to Yoshihiro Morita and the good people at Suntory for the samples!

The Glenrothes 1995-2011 (750 ml mondo grenade)

2011-12-12T23:01:00.000-05:00

Tasting notes:
Glengarry Glenrothes. Too obvious? Do I care? Let me tell you something. This baby was bottled in twenty-ten. Two-oh, one-oh. So do the math. That’s 15 years of waiting for this moment. Waiting for YOU. Waiting for THIS MOMENT. And you’re sitting there like you’re holding a teacup? Like your book club is about to start? C’mon, you gotta remember how it goes. It goes like this. A-B-D. A-Always, B-Be, D-Drinking. Always be drinking, always be drinking. I don’t care that you have a family, that little Timmy has a little game today, that you promised your wife you’d clean out the garage. Forget that! No, it’s you and this bottle and this moment. So lean in and do it!
Okay, so it’s in your glass. You and this glass and this moment. And you’re getting extra virgin olive oil with a sachet of cardamom and flash dried daffodil petals. It’s heavy on the nose like—I swear to god—my fist if you don’t get this done. And now it’s this whisky and your mouth. And it’s root vegetables and fingerling potatoes left to cool in a Mauviel copper pan. A meaty mouth of Tournedos Rossini substituting the filet mignon for something gamey. What’s that? You say lamb? Lamb? What, are we still at book club with your Sleepytime Pamperpants Tea? No this is closer to a mountain lion you took down with only the help of a Rolodex and a stapler. You got strips of mountain lion jerky cooking on the engine block of a Cadillac El Dorado in Death Valley National Park. It’s August. It’s hot. And you put a cinder block on the accelerator so the heat just explodes out into the desert in shimmering waves that could almost ignite the air. Yeah, there’s peppermint bark there, too, and anise seeds gently crackling open in slowly-browning pan of ghee. So what? Do you think this whisky cares what you think? That it worries about you? The signature of Glenrothes runs through this with the tenacity of your fear of failure. It’s like prune caramels wrapped in little wax papers, each with a failed lead pressed onto it with the edge of a thumbnail.

Rating:

--On the scale of first prizes in a sales contest--
The Glenrothes Vintage 1995 is a Cadillac El Dorado--Pre-modern dreams of a city of gold, awakened into the machine age, and set on a postmodern journey along a signless highway. Second place is a set of steak knives. Third place is you're fired.

--John

Our thanks to Danielle Katz and Glenrothes for the sample--and for the wonderful roll-out event for this one!

The Balvenie Tun 1401, Batch #2 (200 ml fill yer own bottle)

2011-12-07T23:59:00.003-05:00

[Balvenie Distillery Ambassador David Mair was kind enough to provide Stephen with this sample and an amazing tour when Stephen visited The Balvenie Distillery in September of this year. For more on Stephen's visit, check out his account here.]

Tasting notes:
     In a search for maximum authenticity on this review, we thought we would try to capture the magic of letting things intermingle in a marrying tun by sequestering ourselves in an actual marrying tun (that’s right, all three of us at once) to generate our tasting notes. The marrying tun we used is the full-sized one John constructed in (and for) the MaltCave during a recent (and particularly slow) overnight shift there, using up every last discarded plank of wood from the boat I’d made from my family Giving Tree. While John claims he was just recycling, I think he was just trying to make me feel even guiltier than I already do (that’s the part Shel Silverstein left out: in most families, anyway, you can’t get away with much of anything significant without getting seriously guilt-tripped). Bill affectionately named it eiπ = –1, claiming that it was as elegant and beautiful name as he could imagine. John and I just call her “Mary.”
     At any rate, we spent the better part of a Friday night sitting in Mary, concocting the singular marriage of tasting notes that follow. We would have taken pictures, but it was dark in there.
   We should also note: our esteem for this dram is so great that our transcription service uploaded the rough cut of the review on BitTorrent and WikiLeaks. We decided to act quickly and just release the transcript ourselves.

Stephen: The nose is round…

John: It’s rummy. Rummy, chummy, yummy.

Bill: Oranges with underlying citrus

John: Citrus underneath citrus, Bill?

Stephen: The nose is soft, but really stands up. Would that make it “perky”?

John: On the mouth, I’m getting gun smoke…

Stephen: …from an execution!

John: Yeah, blue steel, flint, graphite…

Bill: There are definitely notes of a War of 1812 re-enactment here, but in this one, all the boats actually sank…

Stephen: …because Somali pirates came upon the re-enactment…

John: …and ruined the authenticity of it altogether. But in a very enjoyable way.

Stephen: It’s bitter like myrrh…

John: But it’s also smooth and honeyed, unctuous and pleasing all at once....

Bill: It’s a Hegelian blend of thesis and antithesis.

Stephen: That would be a synthesis, Bill.

Bill: The finish is long, like ringing the changes at Big Ben.

Stephen: Leaden circles dissolve in the air…

John: There’s an indistinct umami on the back half of the tongue…

Bill: Yeah, a phantom relish fermented like kimchi.

[After fumbling around in the dark for fifteen or twenty minutes, we finally found the water dropper.]

Bill: With water, wine or maybe sherry comes through more…

Stephen: Orange oil, bitter, maybe cat medicine…

John: We’ve used “cat medicine” before. I think you suggest it for every other whisky we try.

Bill: It’s oilier, smoother with water—really removes the sting…Do you think we could have brought in the dropper of lidocaine by accident?

Stephen: Apples dipped in caramel…

John: I’m getting the cigar residue in your mouth when you wake up after a night of stogies and whisky.

Bill: Did someone say “cigar”?

Stephen: Hey, we’re not finished with these notes, Bill!

John: Let him go. Just leaves more for us.

Stephen: Ooh. Good call.

Rating:

--On the scale of great marriages—

The Balvenie Tun 1401, Batch #2 is Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio—Ok, so it didn’t last that long (but neither will this whisky—after all, it is a consumable, and a really good one at that). But by all accounts, they really loved each other, they both understood well the price of fame, and there may never be a classier, more beautiful married couple than they were.

--Stephen

Our thanks to David Mair and Balvenie for the sample--and for the wonderful reception at the distillery!

The Yamazaki 18 (50 ml airline bottle)

2011-12-05T23:15:00.000-05:00

Tasting notes:
The Yamazaki 18 opens with picnic lunch in a dappled grassy meadow, with you passed out full frontal on top of a fruit salad. As the sun beats down harder from the heavens, you stir, and roll over face first into a not-yet-dressed salad heavy on the arugula, sprinkled liberally with bamboo shoots and indifferently masticated eucalyptus leaves, lovingly regurgitated by a pregnant koala suffering morning sickness. There's dust, but not the outdoor pollen-dense dust, but rather the dust that's accumulated in odd nooks in a Venetian palazzo. Or maybe old-growth mahogany dust, wafting off of a table leg being worked on slowly and precisely by a Ningen Kokuhō, a Living National Treasure of Japan. That is, if a Ningen Kokuhō swigged sherry and whistled whilst he worked. Hai ho, hai ho, it's off to the mouth we go!
Smooth, balanced, light. A concerned orthodontic surgeon at a teaching hospital working with a talented hygienist who is secretly lusting for romance, who dreams of plucking harps strung with golden and silver strands, making Merrie Melodies as bards of yore were wont to do, the both of them working a kind of novacaine magic in your mouth. A slight heat, as of a low-hung westering sun poking through the branches surrounding the meadow. (You may wonder how you went from the meadow to the dentist, and back to the meadow. I wonder also, but am so enamored of the gentle,yet authoritative, pond-ripplings of the dram, that I allow it to take me where it will.) Boysenberry syrup, angelic effluences, flower nectar, delightful diminishings of the dust, as of putting your nose to the f-hole of an Amati violin. Feel the Cremona resin!

Rating:

--On the scale of movements of string quartets to listen to during a twilit summer picnic dinner in Tuolumne Meadows--
The Yamazaki 18 is, of course, the first movement of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik--Bum, bum bum, bum-bum-bum-bum-bum Bum! Bum! Bum bum! Bum bum bum bum-bum-bum. Bum bum, bee ah dee doo dee bum bum!

--Bill

Our thanks to Yoshihiro Morita and the good people at Suntory for the samples!

The Glenmorangie 25 Year/Quarter Century (350 ml thing o' beauty)

2011-12-03T22:02:00.000-05:00

Tasting notes:
     Ben Franklin said that beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. What, then, might he say of the distillation of beer into whisky? Is this proof not only of God’s love and providential concern, but also of God’s invitation to us to become gods ourselves? What we have, after all, is not so much the water of life as the self-apotheosizing elixir of immortality. Who among us hasn’t felt that kiss of divinity on her lips? Who has not concluded, with the warmth of a wonderful dram overspreading the breast, that any other god is superfluous, like a vestigial organ, or an over-crowded Elysian dance hall? It’s thoughts like these that my enjoyment of the Glenmorangie 25 yr brought out. As I nose it—
     --No, wait. That’s not where the first impressions of this whisky are formed, and you know it. Look at the beautiful bottle, the impeccable label and even the booklet inside the presentation box. I’ll be damned if the whole Glenmorangie line isn’t simply exquisite. It stirs in me the same reverence and expectation as the sight of a Tiffany box might stir in a young woman hoping to be affianced.
But there is also a tug in the opposite direction, if I’m going to tell the truth. The Glenmorangie is not only too pretty; it’s too tasty. No right-thinking Brooklyn hipster will wrap his angsty fingers around a glass of this as he struggles to say something original about the latest album from M83 or deliver a contrarian bon mot about Occupy Wall Street, all while his skinny jeans are turning his compacted scrotum into a FryDaddy® for his sperm. It is fortunate for me, however, that the invitation to enjoy a great whisky overstrains whatever hipster impulses in me might manifest themselves. To the nose we go.
      The first note is grassy, to my great surprise, and then the expected resonances of wood surface. I hear the Modern Jazz Quartet during Milt Jackson’s solo. No, actually it’s a vibraphone quartet where all four vibe players are wedged into a cedar-lined master closet. Quickly enough, the wood and grass notes settle out and I survey a plate of petit fours, along with tiny pineapple custards in rice paper cups and coconut sorbet scooped into walnut shells (smaller than a coconut half, you see). On the mouth there are more confections: Ghirardelli dark chocolate caramels with sea salt, and several rhomboidal cuts of penuche—the kind with maple syrup, and the only candy of which I am aware that was named after a Boston Bruin hockey player. Throughout there is the unmistakable signature of Glenmorangie. My admiration for the stunning consistency of the master blender quickly shifts when I lean in and see that the signature is in fact my name written by Satan’s hand in a strange vellum book of indeterminate provenance. The dram, you see, has taken hold of me. It is a confidence man whose manipulations I was fully aware of but unwilling to resist for their stupendous charm. I’m moving now along a dark current, less sweet now but deep and rich. It's a simple syrup of lamb splanchna and I'm caught in a tub drain-spiral and sucked down into a siren of mermaids in a vast aquapolis. Not mermaids at all, in point of fact, but people in fancy clothes gathered in a vestibule. They are waiting to get into a ball, and I suppose I am, too. As I rise up on my tiptoes to see better a pickpocket brushes against me. No, it’s a tailor making measurements for my own bespoke attire so that I might match the members of this party as they wait. As I add a few drops of water to the dram, the nose and mouth become more distinguished, and I learn the final truth. It is not I who have become god, after all. And I shall be waiting in this hall for a very, very long time.

Rating:

--On the scale of disappointments occasioned by research--
The Glenmorangie 25 Year/Quarter Century is my great chagrin at discovering that Ben Franklin was talking about wine, not beer--Dammit! The only consolation is the Franklin turns a wonderful phrase here in his 1779 letter to André Morellet:

We hear of the conversion of water into wine at the marriage in Cana as of a miracle. But this conversion is, through the goodness of God, made every day before our eyes. Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy. The miracle in question was only performed to hasten the operation, under circumstances of present necessity, which required it.

Do also read the postscript of the letter, as Franklin finds proof in the anatomy of our elbow that we are fit for raising glasses to our lips. Slàinte!

--John

Our thanks to David Blackmore and the good people at Glenmorangie for the sample!

The Glenrothes Editor's Cask (100 ml bottle, 4 ml liquid)

2011-11-29T23:59:00.005-05:00

[This whisky is a collaboration between The Glenrothes and Noah Rothbaum, Editor-in-Chief of Liquor.com. You can find more of the details here.]

Tasting notes:
     In the bottle, this stuff looks like oxblood shoe polish dissolved in the tiniest splash of naphtha, but in the glass it looks a lot more like liquid heaven. The nose offers notes of candy, but the most singular candy ever: chocolate sherry paint drying on the walls of your harem room, redwood sap turned into a candy cane, and saffron threads encrusted in organic brown sugar.
     On the mouth, though, you realize that this dram is truly special: this could just as well be the marrow from the bones of Zeus mixed with liquified diamonds, with a dash of puréed rosemary pecans thrown in just to push the taste envelope a little further yet. It’s like drinking a sour dough starter, but in the best possible way: this dram is a quintessence of a quintessence.
     The mouthfeel is as extraordinary and complex as the taste: it wraps your tongue in the silk scarf Grace Kelly wore in To Catch a Thief, and then continues with alternating layers of Christmas wrapping paper and mica. This is ossobuco from a magical bull raised in a magical field and prepared in a magical pan by none other than Ferran Adrià. You’ll want to take a couple of gold bars out of your safe to make room for this bottle. What to do with the gold bars, you ask? If you have a bottle of this, you won’t care.

Rating:

--On the scale of drinks of the gods—
The Glenrothes Editor’s Cask is Dr. Pepper—It’s not appropriate for all occasions, and its chemical makeup must be mind-boggling. But when the time is right—and maybe this is just my bias as a southern boy—there is absolutely nothing better.

--Stephen

Our thanks to Danielle Katz from Exposure and the good people at Glenrothes for the sample!

The Hibiki 12 Blended Whisky (50 ml airline bottle)

2011-11-25T23:50:00.004-05:00

Tasting notes:
     The first thing that strikes this reviewer is that this dram has great gams, much like an anime version of red-headed toon-bomb Jessica Rabbit! "I'm not bad. I'm just distilled this way." Hai! The second thing to strike this reviewer is Jessica Rabbit. [ba dump bump...chish]
     It is tempting, and completely wrongheaded, to attribute the legs to some sort of a molecular memory of the exquisitely fluted nip. I counted 24 scalloped facets to the bottle, and an indeterminate number of legs. Moving up the generous body to the nose, it's an atomizer filled with pheromones, the distillate of cherry blossoms, and the diaphonous play of light of the setting sun glinting off of a pair of twittering dragonflies' wings.
     Very light in the mouth, delicate and lovely like the ritualized movements of a geisha pouring tea for a group of Malt Impostors. An undertone of something less feminine---perhaps the geisha is carrying a sandalwood dagger inlaid with nacre, ivory, and abalone shell in her obi? On the back end, candied mandarin orange slices and a dab of men's cologne behind her ears. She's...Jesse Rabbit?!?
     The finish goes on and on, like thick honey and fruit pouring slowly out of a cornucopia, or perhaps shincha being poured slowly, slowly, slowly from a ceramic Tokoname teapot. By anime geisha Jessica Rabbit.

Rating:

--On the scale of improbable juxtapositions that are imbued with awesome possibilities (whisky and plum wine?)--
The Hibiki 12 Blended Whisky is MC Hammer and M. C. Escher--the most self-referential rapping/artist duo imaginable. That, or a Noh theater performance enacted by the juggling troupe The Flying Karamazov Brothers.

--Bill

Our thanks to Yoshihiro Morita and the good people at Suntory for the samples!

The Whisky Explorers Club is New and Improved

2011-11-22T22:30:00.000-05:00

The Whisky Explorers Club is back, and it's new and improved, as they say (though in this case, the saying is both particularly apt and true). We were a bit disappointed in the first iteration of the WEC, as the whiskies in the little black bags turned out to be less sophisticated than we'd hoped. As it turned out, though, Douglas Stone from ForScotchLovers, the man behind the concept, was also a bit disappointed (ok, he was more than a bit disappointed) in the WEC's first run. In the process of getting the WEC off the ground, Doug ran into a number of unexpected bouts of bad luck, including ending up on the wrong side of some less than fully scrupulous government officials (we're not saying which government). The result was less than optimal and certainly less than Doug had envisioned.

As a student of history, Doug was keen to avoid being doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, so he set himself to learn from the past and then headed off in a somewhat new direction for the second version of the WEC. He kept the basic concept in place--offer members small, blind tastes of a number of different whiskies--but turned away from miniatures. At first, this made us a little sad, since we got our start on minis and still review them whenever possible, but then we heard what he was replacing them with: MoM minis! It was a brilliant move, to our minds. As you likely all know, we're big fans of Master of Malt and their Drinks by the Dram offerings.
Well, this time around, Doug has partnered with Master of Malt to provide drams with their actual identities so well hidden that the blindness of the tastings are completely idiot-proof: you couldn't ruin the blindness of the tasting if you tried. OK, you could do so by obviating the whole point of the exercise, but if you're inclined that way (and that much of a tool), you might do better to buy a bottle of something cheap, drink half of it really quickly, then slap a blank label over your own eyes and then try to remember/guess what you're drinking.

     ForScotchLovers Managing Editor Ian Buxton, who is the author of the top-selling 101 Whiskies to Try Before You Die, personally selects the whiskies that go into each flight. Each membership includes four flights with five whiskies in each. And if you act now, you can receive a free signed copy of Ian's book, 101 Whiskies to Try Before You Die--and yes, that's signed by the author!
     To receive your free signed copy of Ian's book, make sure you add the book to your shopping cart along with your Whisky Explorers Club membership and then enter promotional code "101ForMe" (without the quotation marks) in the coupon/promotion field in the shopping cart--and choose "FedEx Ground" for shipping.
     But that last bit is the gravy, and there's still some potatoes and veg to tell you about: Whisky Explorer Club memberships include a free Glencairn nosing glass, early access to hard to find/ limited production whiskies, and discounted tickets to whisky events like Whisky Live and Whiskies of the World!   You can purchase your WEC membership here:
http://www.forscotchlovers.com/distillery_row/whisky_explorers_club
     Hurry and order now before Black Friday consumes you and all you hold dear. In other words, it seems to us that this deal would make for a great gift for the whisky lover in your life this holiday season.

     And so you have a better idea what you'll be getting if you do purchase it, here's a brief set of our "tasting notes" (narrative elements omitted) on the drams in the sample flight we received:
Tasting notes:
1) raisins, cinnamon...it's a distilled bear claw at the airport Cinnabon, ferret whiskers, and warm, spicy caramel...
    Dram #1 was the Glenfarclas 21 year-old!
2) saltiness, followed by butteriness, flavors from whisky aged in a Chardonnay cask. We thought this dram was positively Balblairian, perhaps even rising to the level of Conan the Balblairian, but then we thought maybe it was a blend, like Mortbank or Springlach...
     Dram #2 was the Springbank 15!
3) pantyhose on the nose, orange zest, wonderful balance, something solventesque or solubilizing or something of that sort just under the surface, a finish that is both fast and satisfying as the follow-up to a 8:15 am weekday booty call...
   Dram #3 was the Compass Box Hedonism!
4) Lemon Pledge®-dusted antiques, a Tuffy scouring beef fond off of a stainless steel frying pan, chocolate, sherry, a leather humidor for Arte Cubano cigars (no products were hurt in these completely uncompensated product placements)...
     Dram #4 was the Hibiki 12!

So you can see, Mr. Buxton has chosen some serious quality for this deal, and we're very excited to see what's coming in the regular flights! We find the site associated with the Whisky Explorers Club to be a bit less than completely straightforward, but we were very pleased with the overall experience, especially as compared with the first iteration of the WEC.   Our kudos to Doug for a wonderful revamping of the Club. Stop by ForScotchLovers to check it out!

Enjoy and slàinte!

The Compass Box Great King Street Artist's Blend (50 ml holy water travel vial)

2011-11-16T23:59:00.002-05:00

Tasting notes:

[Knock, knock!]

Who is it?

[Knock, knock!]

Hold on, I'm coming. Who's there?

It's us, the King Street wedding caterers!

Who?

The Compass Box Great King Street wedding caterers!

I don' t think I'm getting married today.

Well, maybe it's a suprise gift of a cinnamon roll honey fine-grain Madagascar-bourbon-and-Calvados-drenched vanilla-twig-inflected-butter-triple-layer-studded-with-Persian-sultana-raisins-sauteed-in-oloros0-sherry-(and a drop of port) wedding cake extravaganza special.

Excuse me?

Maybe someone loves you? Wants you to be happy? Has given you a delightful gift?

Is this a practical joke? Am I on Candid Camera or being Punk'd? Are you Ashton Kutcher?

No sir. And this comes with sculpted bison-shaped butter balls on a recently-polished sterling-silver platter, engraved with Islamic-inspired arabesques, sprinkled about (tastefully) with cleaned and sterilized, but not denatured, cherry blossoms.

Well, it certainly looks lovely. More to the point, it smells wonderful---are you sure this isn't a prank?

Yes sir.

Then what's that other smell rising up? Kind of like the, the, the, what was your word, the "denatured" musk of Rajah from the cartoon Aladdin?

That's me, sir. I'm a eunuch, and I've been baking all night.

Excuse me!?

Putting loaves in hot ovens, sir. So to speak.

I've had about enough of this!

Please sir, just try one bite. You've said yourself that it smells spectacularly delicious.

No, that was you who said that. But I must admit, it is one of the most savory smelling wedding cakes I've ever shared a doorway with.

Let me give you this lightly hazelnut-oiled teak fork to nip a bit off with...

Oh. My. Goodness. I need a second bite. A second layer. Let's drink two! (Editor's note: An homage to Mr. Cub, Ernie Banks) Er, eat two. Whatever.

You see sir? No joke.

My mouth is...is filled with sheaves of golden grain; grilled ghee and scalded cream poured with Chardonnay into a bowl of steel-cut organic oatmeal.

Of course, sir. And what else?

Anise, pimpinella anisum bursting with dense umbels. Festooned with an oblong dry schizocarp.

My word, sir! You're the first person ever to say that to me! And I'm a eunuch.

Pfeffernüsse...yum.

Hasenpfeffer, sir?

No, you knuck (lehead)! Pfeffernüsse............yum, yum, yum. I want to be dissolute. I want to be solubulized....

"Solubulized," sir?

Okay, I made that one up. Give me more, now! ---Much better. Much, much better. I want to be rendered, tendered, splendored.

A poet, are we sir? I like a wee bit of the Robert Burns.

It's peppery in my tummy. I feel like toasting a book contract, like eating an XXL chalupa, laughing at IRS agents, chasing after Jehovah's witnesses, talking with car mechanics...

I knew you were a poet, sir.

Rating:

--On the scale of alchemists who failed to transmute lead to gold, but accomplished amazing things, such as being famous mathematicians, advisors, and spies (and are currently having operas written about them)--
The Compass Box Great King Street Artist's Blend is the founder of the Rosicrucian Order, translator of Euclid, navigator, astronomer, and Warden at Oxford: Dr. John Dee. 'Nuff said. Mum's the word, keep it on the QT.

--Bill

Our thanks to Robin Robinson and Compass Box for the sample!

Glenrothes rolls out Vintage 1995 and Editor's Cask at New York event

2011-11-14T23:59:00.023-05:00

A week ago today, I was lucky enough to attend a journalists-only event to celebrate the roll out of Glenrothes' Vintage 1995 and Editor's Cask. That's right, we were invited to a journalists-only event. Since I'm the only member of our little triumverate who is both childless and unmarried, I was the ~~only one who could attend~~ the easy choice to be the one to represent The Malt Impostor there. So I made my way to Mary Queen of Scots, a very cool bar on the Lower East Side of New York City, for the event. To make sure I did all I could to play the part, I bought a little flip-style notebook, a ballpoint pen (we Impostors prefer to write with fountain pens, of course), and a bottle of Reportage by Mennen™. I considered a bottle of Journaliste by Yves Saint-Laurent™, but I am an Impostor--and have you seen how much that stuff costs? I also managed to sit across from a real journalist at the event (Hi, Alexandra!), and that counts, right? But seriously, I have received shipments to The Malt Impostor that actually say "Journalist" on the shipping labels, and I know that whenever I see something in print, it must be true, so I knew I was in the clear.

Anyhow, the event was held in the back room of Mary Queen of Scots, the entrance to which is, appropriately enough, a large, black wrought iron prison door. Ronnie Cox, the ever smooth and affable Brand Ambassador for the Glenrothes, conducted the tasting, which included the Select Reserve, the new Vintage 1995, the 1994 (which the 1995 will replace), the 1988 (which is replacing the 1985), and the frankly unbelievable Editor's Cask. I won't go through them in detail here, as we'll be reviewing the 1995 and the Editor's Cask each in our typical idiosyncratic detail on these pages in the coming days. But I will say this: the Editor's Cask is the product of a careful selection process not by the Glenrothes distillery team, but by Noah Rothbaum (whom I also had the pleasure of meeting at the event), Editor-in-Chief of Liquor.com, who visited Glenrothes in May of 2011 and selected a Spanish oak hogshead with 16 year-old spirit in it. It is simply amazing. If you don't believe me, just look at the damn picture. That says it all! At any rate, there are only 120 bottles of the Editor's Cask available, and they price out at $375 a bottle. If there's anyone out there who really, really loves me and wants to be my friend forever, get me a bottle of this as a present, and I'm yours.

There's more I could say here, like how cool the bartenders were or how killer the assortment of grilled cheeses were that the staff served to us throughout, but the important thing here is the whisky. The 1995 is a great addition to the Glenrothes line, in my opinion, and more details on that presently. The Editor's Cask...well, more on that later, too, because I could keep going on and on and on here.

Our thanks to Danielle from Exposure for the invite and for making us feel like maybe we aren't Impostors after all. Of course, when I managed to stumble out of Mary Queen of Scots to my train, I realized otherwise, as we inevitably seem to do before the night's out...

But stay tuned for more details on some very exciting new whiskies! Slàinte!

--Stephen

Ultimate Whisky Experience Discount Code!

2011-11-13T23:31:00.002-05:00

We've managed to secure for our readers a discount code for The Nth 2012 Ultimate Whisky Experience in Las Vegas, Nevada on March 2-3, 2012. It's a seriously high-end whisky festival that features some ridiculously rare whiskies on taste for those who attend. And Stephen's actually going to make it, albeit solo, to the 2012 event--so look for the Groucho Marx glasses at the event and say hello!

Here's the deal: use our exclusive discount code UWECT1 when you sign up and receive a $100.00 off of a Connoiseur Ticket (normal priced at $525.00). You can find tickets here:

http://universalwhiskyexperience.com/tickets-for-nth-2012

Now, you may say to yourself, $425 after the discount?!? That's really expensive! Is it worth it?
Our response: Well, first of all, talking to yourself is, as they say, a sure sign of madness. But second of all, if you're into some super exclusive whiskies, then the answer is definitely "Yes!": the Connoiseur Ticket gets you 2--count 'em, 2!--Super Pours, each valued at over $300 each! Do the math, it works out. Now, if you're not into super exclusive whiskies and you have no way to get to Las Vegas in March, then this may not be the event for you. But for the rest of you, click on the link and check it out: Stephen's going this year to check it out for himself and report back, but you can join him there at a discount--just use the code!

Hurry, as this is a limited time offer! How limited is the time on this offer? We have no idea! So don't delay! Get in there before it's too late!

The Glenfarclas Movember 2011 Master of Malt Bottling (3 cl MoM* mini)

2011-11-10T23:58:00.003-05:00

[This is one Master of Malt sent us to celebrate Movember (see our Disclaimer about Master of Malt samples here). After our abject failure on getting the Cragganmore 21 tasting notes out on time, we thought we'd get ourselves in gear and get this one out before it was too much later in Movember.]

Tasting notes:
    This Glenfarclas 9 year old is part of “Movember,” an initiative that invites men to show their support for men’s health by growing moustaches during the month of November. What a great idea! For years, women have had all the fun. They have the Susan B. Komen Race for the Cure to support breast cancer research. But that’s where the key difference lies. A 5k race or fitness walk requires both organization and effort. Movember, by contrast, is my kind of movement. The genius is that by doing nothing, you mark your solidarity with a good cause. I think I’ll start leaving toilet seats up to show support for Parkinson’s research, or refrain from making the bed until we have a cure for Restless Leg Syndrome. You lookin’ at my untucked shirt? That, my friend, is me standing up for my brothers with erectile dysfunction.
      The only problem is that I could grow a moustache about as fast as your average nine-year-old. By Thanksgiving my family would notice a vague shadow under my nose, as if I’d been sketching a charcoal still life during allergy season. But I think the Glenfarclas is actually looking out for me. Let me explain. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I was nosing bourbon. There’s a distinctive note of charred corn and caramel in an already ruby-red dram. And on the mouth there’s an almost
newmake aggressiveness on the top note, like the whisky is looking at itself in the mirror with menace and ill intention. So why do I think this Movember is looking out for me? The 53% dram presses itself in on me with such assertiveness it puts hair on my chest and upper lip. Think of wrapping a huge, newly dried tobacco leaf around a red onion and then eating it like an éclair. Or imagine using Benamin Moore's anise-scented primer when painting an outhouse behind a pit barbecue joint; the splintered toilet seat will man you up as fast as one bracing slug from this dram. Life is all about first impressions, and what I’m taking away from this is not unlike the experience of being kissed by mustachioed great-aunt after a breakfast of radishes and instant coffee. Believe me, at this moment I am all about men’s health. What keeps me in the game is water. A few drops alter this dram as lastingly as the wicked witch of the West. There is a garland of flowers and I look down to see tobacco barn-dried hay rubbed on the hind quarters of a Derby winner. (No Derby winners were harmed in the making of these notes.) A finish of mild corn tortilla chased with a room temperature glass of rocky mountain oyster-flavored Meat Water. Mmmm…. Delicious. Now I need only to wax my ‘tache with parade gloss shoe polish and I’m ready for anything.

Rating:

--On the scale of great 19th Century mustaches--
The Glenfarclas Movember 2011 Master of Malt bottling is Friedrich Nietzsche’s--It's big. It's bold. It's punchy. It's a danger to all who end up standing close enough to it (and by that, I mean the whisky is dangerously tasty). It's something any philosopher would envy. And it has its own Facebook page.

--John

*--Master of Malt (Glenfarclas Movember 2011)
Check out other Master of Malt Drinks by the Dram here.
Check out Master of Malt's Facebook page here and their Twitter feed here.

The Cragganmore 20 Year Old 1991 Single Cask (3 cl MoM* mini)

2011-11-06T23:41:00.001-05:00

[This is one Master of Malt sent us just to get us to review it for them (see our Disclaimer here). We took so long getting to this one for review that it is now sold out. To Natalie and the good folks at Master of Malt, please accept our apologies--we just flat blew it on this one, as we did with the Cambus 18. Back then, we promised to do better on future posts, and we still blew it. But damn, they sold out of this one really quickly! As such, we take our failure to be as much a positive comment on Master of Malt's ability to move product as it is an indictment of our tardiness. We hope you enjoy the review nonetheless.]

Tasting notes:
    Before opening the Master of Malt mini-Me vial, my first impression of the Cragganmore 20 is that if it were a test I was grading, it would be a fail: 54.2% is an F-. (Stephen: Bill! That's the abv: It means that it's 108.3 proof!) Oh, well, thanks guys. I guess that it's an A+. Was there extra credit on the test?
     Speaking of tests, I just had a major blood draw to check up on if my malaria is likely to recur, so I am feeling vitiated and anemic. And grippe-y and ague-y. You'll pardon me in advance if this review veers off topic, yes?
     In the glass, the legs are like soda straw stalactites, slow dripping down the sides. I wonder if we left the Cragganmore in the glass for a long epoch if it would calcify, seep through the glass, and resemble an upside-down pincushion--but I digress.
    Apricot, peaches, and marzipan peeps are ground in a marble mortar with a walnut pestle, and poured into a full-bodied sweet lassie. (John: Bill! That's supposed to be "sweet lassi," the Indian drink, not "sweet lassie," the 20-year old, red-haired, *maltgonewild*!) This must be what top-shelf cough syrup is flavored with for children of Brahmans in Mumbai, especially if a pinch of quince were minced on top, since it evinces minced quince. That, and peyote buttons. (John: Have you been into the peyote buttons again?!? East Indian! East Indian!)
     This is eminently guzzable--is it bad to drink drink drink while bleeding bleeding bleeding?--light on the tongue, exceptionally well-balanced like Jacques-Louis David's masterpiece, The Oath of the Horatii, and light, like kirschwasser-flavored eggwhites in a cherry soufflé. Improbably, the soufflé is topped with cockles, dripping with butter and Neptune's tears.

Rating:

--On the scale of well-balanced scales (and self-referential ratings)--
The Cragganmore 20 is Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier--(Am I running a temperature? Well? Is the Cragganmore a well whisky? Decidedly not.) Music today wouldn't sound the way it does without Bach's Meisterwerk, which reconciled accidentals, grace notes, wolf notes, mash notes, Lotus notes, post-it notes, and the diabolus in musica.

--Bill

*--Master of Malt (Cragganmore 20 Year Old 1991 Single Cask)
Check out other Master of Malt Drinks by the Dram here.
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Mackinlay's Rare Highland Malt, a.k.a. The Shackleton (2 cl smelling salts vial)

2011-11-03T22:15:00.000-04:00

When the three of us tried this dram, there was as much intense disagreement about this whisky as a dram has ever generated amongst the three of us. But we wouldn’t let a replica of a 100+ year-old whisky come between us, even if it was Richard “The Nose” Paterson who created it. I took on the yoke for this one, because I had more good to say about it than did John or Bill (but then again, I’d tasted it before, during a Twitter event with other journalists and The Nose himself). But I must be true to my compatriots as well as to my own views here, so please forgive the schizophrenic character of what follows:

Tasting notes:
Imagine an arctic—or, in this case, Antarctic—dystopia: you’ve been moving for a long time now, and your Tauntaun is tired. While it’s really cool to be on a Tauntaun, toting a lightsaber, Tauntauns smell…about as you’d imagine. It’s quiet out—too quiet—and you sense a tremor in the Force, but there’s really nothing there [this is analogous to the part where I explained to John and Bill that the absence of good does not equal evil]. Next thing you know, the probes are plummeting into the snow all around you, and as they rise out of their crashed pods, you smell something akin to snowmobile exhaust. You take off, pushing your beast as hard as he’ll go, but then he falls over, exhausted, near a highly anomalous and gnarled tree—or what’s left of one. So you do the whole lightsaber-turns-Tauntaun-into-sleeping bag-trick [and no, despite what John and Bill might want to say here, there is no awful smell nor the “intestinal turmoil” characteristic of getting into an animal’s body cavity]. You pull open your face mask, and the cold hits you like the Shackleton does (at least to Bill’s and John’s minds, like the bracing slap from a Whyte & Mackay
blend—or from Richard Paterson himself). You make a small fire from the gnarled tree, and you realize as it burns that it’s an almond tree, oddly enough, and the flavors of almond, wood, and charcoal fill your palate with intoxicating effect: so much so, that you soon think you can see—and even taste—marzipan. But this is no normal marzipan: this is marzipan in the shape of a buffalo—a whole herd of them!—quietly approaching your position and rooting around in the snow, digging up bits of black licorice and blackstrap molasses [in the spirit of giving even time, one of my co-conspirators thought the term jockstrap molasses more appropriate]. As you fall asleep, there’s lingering pepper on your tongue, but the sensation is a bit thin and completely lacking the flavors you’d expect: seal blubber, ambergris, and penguin feet.

Rating:

--On the scale of stories that leave you hanging—

The Shackleton is the strange and surreal story you just read, above—but don’t fret: it ends well. You wake up to the warmth of a room inside an Imperial cruiser (the probes, and not a Wampa, found you), your hands and feet shackled to a block of carbonite. But hey, you’re going to get to see your father soon!

--Stephen

--Our thanks to Jennifer Butler and the good folks at Weber Shandwick for the sample--and to the inimitable Richard Paterson for blending it!

Our Review of the 2011 SMWS Extravaganza at the Taj Hotel in Boston

2011-10-30T23:59:00.003-04:00

Sorry this took us so long. Many things have been cooking back at the old MaltCave, and these various projects have divided our attention. The result, it seems, is that we’re a little slower than we would be otherwise with respect to each and every one of them. That said, this time around, we give our account of the SMWS Extravaganza held at the Taj Hotel in Boston in the form of a three part conversation, with Bill leading off the discussion.

Bill: I think it might be better named the SMWS X-travaganza, to evoke both the X-Files and the X-games. This, because these whisky evenings strike me as being simultaneously about what we don't know, and also about the limits of human endurance in a highly competitive setting.

John: Couldn’t agree more. This sentiment captures perfectly the tone and theme of the whole dad-burn thing.

Stephen: I’m right there with both of you on this, though that last turn of phrase did make me worry that I may have inadvertently walked onto the set of Deliverance.

Bill: Boy, you got a pretty mouth…sorry. Moving on. The pre-X-travaganza Whisky Panel, staffed by affable insiders Simon Brooking from Laphroaig, Kristina Sutter from Skyy, David Blackmore from Glenmorangie and Ardbeg, Andrew Weir from Balvenie,

Ewan Morgan from Diageo, Ross Hendry from BB&R and Glenrothes, Iain McCallum from Morrison Bowmore, Ricky Crawford from The Glenlivet, and Gardner Dunn from Suntory, took on a sheaf of audience-submitted written questions---a veritable open case probing the mysteries of the history, the ongoing creation, and the marketing and distribution of the Water of Life. I learned a lot; for example, it seems that the royal road to get a job in the whisky industry is to either be born in Scotland (fail, sadly, for me), or to work as a bartender in New York City. As usual, my juvenile deliquency vocational counselor gave me the wrong advice.

John: In many respects the panel was the highlight of the evening. Two things struck me: First, the representatives spoke with great insight and expertise. But the central message was one that empowered the audience to "have it your way," as the fast food chain encourages. Rather than promote the exclusivity or inscrutability of fine whisky, the panelists sought to democratize it. Second, the warmth and banter among the representatives of competing companies spoke volumes about the world of whisky. It shows how the love of the water of life breaks down walls and joins people together. One feels privileged to enjoy whisky in moments like these, as though one has discovered, if not the fountain of youth, at least a fountain that makes a life more worth living.

Stephen: (playing Socratic interlocutor) Yes, it seems so. (then, decidedly not playing Socratic interlocutor) That is, as long as you’re not going to ask us to join hands and sing kumbayah or anything, John…

John: [muffled imperative directed at Stephen to do something or other obscene with himself]

Bill: Carrying on: Once the panel disavowed all knowledge of us, the usual hurly-burly began: A gazillion amazing things to try, and not enough time (or stamina) to get the job done. Memories that jut out like mountain peaks socked in by a low-lying ground fog: The Ardmore 30, my goodness, and Simon Brooking walking me and my friend MiniCooper John (shout out! Holla!) up a vertical flight of Laphroaigs, each glass punctuated by a witty toast. The Scapa 16, which I managed to taste earlier in the evening than I did at my last X-travaganza. Jerry Zimmerman leading me through the Classic Cask's offerings, starting with the Ben Nevis, ambling through the Tomatin 16, and finally triggering the Double Barrel, that double-barreled shotgun wedding of the Highlands and the Islands, culminating, as usual, with the Classic Cask 35 year-old. And finally, Noah Goldstein encouraging me to pound glassfuls of the Usquaebach 15 as if I were back in my rinky-dink honky-tonk in Hong Kong, playing quarters and skittles with the expats. Oh, and as always, Gabby Shayne was exceptionally gracious and looked maaahvelous!

John: I went looking for the advertised Lagavulin 12, but learned it wasn't there; instead I "settled for" the Lagavulin Distiller's Edition. And then, Ewan Morgan broke out the Glen Spey 21 year-old for us. So woody and delicious. I also thoroughly enjoyed one or two of the SMWS drams on offer. One was a Port Charlotte, and it was excellent. I echo Bill's love for Scapa and Usquaebach. I was also more selective than last year--I didn't try the beloved Laphroaig and only sipped one Ardmore--so I flew at higher altitude than Bill and with clearer skies. I also enjoyed the lavish spread of food, by far the best food on offer at any of the whisky events we've tried. And it was great, as always, seeing our good friend Joshua Hatton, President of the Jewish Single Malt Whisky Society, at the event.

Stephen: Agreed on all fronts. Alan, Gabby, and all people Shayne were their usual magnanimous and utterly hospitable selves. And I should note that the food was also laid out better than last year's event and was much more easily accessible. The SMWS Port Charlotte was a highlight for me, too, as was revisiting the Loch Chaim with Jerry Zimmerman, and having a couple of Glenrothes with Iain McCallum (standing in for Ross Hendry at the time). It was also great to meet Andrew Weir and to catch up with David Blackmore and once again try to slake my insatiable thirst for the Glenmo 18. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention Kim from VisitScotland and the amazing haberdashery she contributed to our photo spread.

Bill: Ah yes, the haberdashery: utterly unforgettable and a welcome addition to the Groucho Marx glasses. A year ago, à la the X-Files, several hours vanished between the time we staggered out of the Taj and the time we arrived at our downscale imposterish hotel, which was one mile away. This time, although I beileve I recall everything correctly, at a certain point, as I usually do, I fell asleep. This time, though, as I usually don't, I woke up in a chicken-wire mesh cage in Stephen's ferret farm, with 15 or so of them curled up around me, including a few that had slithered inside my shirt and up my trouser legs. I need to work on my stamina.

Stephen: You have a way with the little guys, Bill, you really do. You should consider a sideline of ferret husbandry, if not herding. I am still disappointed that the conference I attended in Scotland wasn’t more worthwhile, especially given that it covered both activities. Such a great idea, such poor execution…

John: Did they have any sessions on tying wee lassos for use in herding them?

Stephen: Shut up, John.