The Malt Impostor

The Highland Park Loki (100 ml mischievous demi-bottle)

2013-05-24T20:36:00.002-04:00

[A while back, Stephen was lucky enough to attend the launch event for this whisky. You can read his review of the HP Loki launch here.]

Tasting notes:
     There's no nose! Some sort of trick?? WTF, Highland Park?
     --Oh, I hadn't yet unsealed the bottle, thus not poured it into my glass. Fine, be that way, Highland Park Loki; you pranked me already.
     Moving forward, the nose is an understated, dare I say, low key red velvet cupcake with green apple buttercream frosting. John, who collects ephemera of the famous, who bid on Judy Garland's Wizard of Oz shoes, wonders about the availability of Katy Perry's cupcake bra "for comparison purposes only." Well played, John. On the other hand, Stephen doubtless alluding to other Katy Perry garments detects...a "bucket of lutefisk." (He's referring to her shrimper boots!) I, the third leg of the stool, get the Beauty and the Beast ballroom after Mrs. Potts accidentally spills hybridized green hibiscus tea while tangoing with Cogsworth. That, and desalinized sand and dried coral bits crusting a lemon atoll in the North Sea.
     On the mouth, satyr hooves trampling red hot chili peppers into a very special red libation. Wait, what? Who's taking over my keyboard? I meant to write "rosined bowstrings made from ferret guts being drawn over Pinewood Derby entries."
     Provolone, rather the tang of provolone minus the cheese of provolone. Al Capone at home alone, eating provolone. It's a damped harmonic oscillator with peaks at Highland Park qua Highland Park and valleys at a marzipan sea urchin masquerading as a lily pad in a koi pond. It's like being on a see saw with a kangaroo, and you're holding the joey. It's alfresco dining tête-à-tête with Ivanka Khristova, a Bulgarian shotputter with a 40-inch vertical leap.
     The finish converges slowly to a Highland Park feel, giving the sense that it is protean and labile, stably eruptive. It's a silk-canopied howdah on Dumbo, a block-print Indian print cloth hanging decoratively on the wall. It's saffron wisps woven with rosemary sprigs into a Palestrini motet by Rumpelstiltskin's sweet-natured little sister, who always has to apologize for her brother's odd behavior. (Her name is "Humpelforeskin.") Loki! Quit messing with what I'm typing! Her name is "Sintastarfin," or something like that. She never sang her song loud enough for me to hear.

Rating:

--On the scale of tricks that teach something about ourselves--
The Highland Park Loki is the optical illusion--Our brains are fooled, but our intellects are not. With the Loki, our senses are fooled, but our hearts know the truth.

--Bill

--Our thanks to Steph Ridgway and Highland Park for the sample!

The FEW Rye Whiskey (750 ml no-roll travel tankard)

2013-05-22T21:43:00.000-04:00

Tasting notes:
     Crushed rose stems under golf shoes and stiletto heels. Fresh rye, like a wet-hopped IPA but in this case, a wet-ryed whiskey. Cornmeal biscuits with Smithfield ham. Green pepper on a grilled arugula salad. In short, the nose is nothing if not aromatherapy designed to induce crippling nostalgia. Once I steady myself, I find note of a pinewood sauna set in the littoral zone near Bolungarvík. (Note to self: submit t-shirt design to Café Press that says “Beachcombers do it littorally.”) Where was I? Oh, yes, the nose. There’s an echo of youth, but I’m totally down with with. It’s young like Young MC on “Bust A Move,” which is to say timeless. Also celery sticks, the expensive kind held up to expensive microphones in a plush recording studio to simulate bone crunches in a noir action thriller mystery. The mouth proves what the nose only promised: this does not need to be watered down like some ryes, or used exclusively in mixed drinks. However, if this were to be the feature spirit in a cocktail, we would add equal measures of rye, green chartreuse, and crème de menthe, then quail eggwhite froth dusted with moustache clippings (from a new pair of Malteser scissors), and a dash of Angostura bongwater, which is much harder to find in the States than you would think. (Note to self: Send one of those portentous cease and desist letters to the Malteser Company; try to convince them that the “’-eser” root is Indo-Semitic for “Impostor.”) Where was I again? Oh, yeah, the finish. Bill was so taken with the whiskey that during the finish he said “Dolphin through a hoop at SeaWorld.” We wanted more from him, something to put it into context, but that was all he had. And Stephen and I knew it was enough. The FEW Rye has verve. Not your father’s rye or your mother’s vanilla, but awfully close to your great-Aunt’s patented Anti-Aging Whisky Salve™: you never laid eyes on it, but she always reeked of it and seemed much happier for it.

Rating:

--On the scale of self-referential acronyms--
The FEW Rye Whiskey is “For Ever Winning”--Yes, we’re aware that "forever" is one word, but the vintage label recalled Stephen’s fondness for “to-morrow” and similar locutions during his days as a Williamsburg hipster.

--John

--Our thanks to Paul Hletko and FEW Spirits for the sample!

Suntory: The Art of Japanese Whisky event in New York City (Stephen's review)

2013-05-17T23:58:00.001-04:00

Earlier this week, I had the distinct pleasure of attending a one-off tasting event at the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, NY put on by The House of Suntory Whisky and chefs David Bouley and Isao Yamada of Bouley and Brushstroke restaurants, respectively. This collaboration between the House of Suntory and the two Michelin-starred restaurants was nothing short of extraordinary, especially given that the whole event occurred amongst Isamu Noguchi's sculptures in a clean, open museum interior and a gorgeous Japanese rock garden outside.

Suntory's global brand ambassador, Mike Miyamoto and chef David Bouley introduced the whisky tasting and an "interpretive kaiseki-style food-pairing menu." Of course, at the time, I had no idea exactly what was meant by that last bit. Shortly thereafter, however, I came to understand that whatever else it entailed, it apparently also meant elegant and delicious. It was also the best pairing of food with whisky I've ever experienced. Easily.
The event began with a tasting of three whiskies at standing tables in the sculpture garden: the Yamazaki 18, the Hibiki 21, and the Hakushu 25. The last of these I'd never had, and of course I found myself comparing it to the Hakushu 12 (which they had served us in a great highball as we walked in).

To put it in very general terms, the Hakushu 25 is to the Hakushu 12 as the Laphroaig 18 is to the Laphroaig 10--only the level of subtlety is much higher in both of the Hakushu expressions. Oh, and I learned that it's pronounced more like HOCK-shoo (emphasis very much on the first syllable). Now, go back and re-read this paragraph and pronounce "Hakushu" correctly this time. Good. Well done.

With that Hakushu 12 Highball, the chefs paired a canape of green apple meringue with smoked salmon roe, trout roe, and white truffle honey, and also a small plate of press sushi with Sansho pepper and bamboo shoot, served with kinome leaf. Inside, Suntory U.S. (East) Brand Ambassador Gardner Dunn hand carved huge ice balls for a drink termed--interestingly enough--the "Hibiki Ice Ball." Paired with that big bag ball o' ice drenched in Hibiki 12 were...well, I'll come back to that, because those two were my favorites of the night. Also inside was a station devoted to making a drink called the "Yamazaki Mizuwari," which blended Yamazaki 12 with a little water and (much smaller pieces of) ice. With that drink, the chefs paired a canape of wild mushrooms with toro and a foam of spring garlic and coconut as well as a small plate of organic wild duckling with Nevada dates and Canadian wild rice and topped with kumquat. I enjoyed the duckling plate quite a lot, but I think that in my case, the multinational character of the dish pleased me (would've been even better if they'd specified that the duckling was Chilean), as did the word, "kumquat." Really, how do you beat "kumquat"?!?

I'll tell you how: you pair an oddly named drink with two of the better dishes of the night. Of course, I'm talking about the eponymous Hibiki Ice Ball and the canape of Wagyu beef jerky served with watercress and sesame. Let me just let that sink in for a second. Yep, that's right: jerky made from Wagyu beef. I mean, who does that?!? Unbelievable, both in concept and execution. I had at least three. And since at that point in the night, a waiter called Jean-Luc was serving them, I immediately deemed him the very best of the servers (and my favorite). More on him later.

The small plate paired with the Hibiki Ice Ball was Chawan-Mushi, a Japanese egg custard served with a rich dashi broth. Now, let me be clear: I am not a fan of egg custard, egg curd, or really any other way of cooking eggs--other than scrambled (and even then, there's a lot of Tabasco involved). That said, not only was the Chawan-Mushi exquisitely presented (see the pic to the right), but it was fantastic: so silky and creamy and light, and beautifully contrasted with the strength of the broth flavor. And paired with the Hibiki, the two dishes highlighted the breadth of good stuff the whisky has to offer: the custard complemented the spice and backbone of the Hibiki, while the beef complemented its balanced, creamy mouthfeel. Amazing all around.

And as if all of that weren't enough, there were desserts. At some point, we were directed toward truffles, only to find my favorite man in black that evening, Jean-Luc, having shifted from Wagyu beef jerky to whisky truffles. Seriously? It may have been just a coincidence, but the man had an uncanny knack for showing up with exactly the thing I was looking for at the moment he showed up. Thank you, good sir: you materially improved my evening, and on that evening, that was no small feat.
Besides the whisky, the food, and the interesting people I met at the event outside of the whisky industry, I was pleased to meet Allison Patel, the young whisky innovator behind Brenne, the French whisky finished in Cognac barrels (ahem, ahem...samples, please...ahem, ahem). Meeting and chatting with Neyah White, the U.S. Brand Ambassador (West) for Suntory, was another treat. And of course, I loved catching up with Brand Manager Yoshi Morita as well.

     I also had the great pleasure of meeting a few whisky bloggers with whom I'd chatted online. It was awesome meeting Joshua Gershon Feldman, the mind behind The Coppered Tot blog (pictured right), as well as the wonderfully pseudonymed G-LO and limpd from the It's the Booze Dancing site (pictured below). See "Whisky Links" in the column to the left for links to their sites. There's a LOT of great information and fun on their sites, and their whisky geek-dom is developed enough that I had many moments talking to them that left me acutely aware of the fact that I am still, like it or not, an Impostor.

     The event itself had a similar effect on me--that is, when I finally stopped basking in the glow of it all and realized how inadequate I was as either a whisky expert or a journalist. Having two whiskies worth roughly $1000 each (the Hakushu 25 and the Yamazaki 25) on offer at the bar didn't do anything to diminish that feeling, either. Interestingly, having them on offer also did nothing to diminish my interest in going back to the bar to drink more of each.

      --Stephen

The Old Forester Birthday Bourbon 2012 (100 ml party favor)

2013-05-15T19:10:00.002-04:00

Tasting notes:
     The nose on this bourbon presents with lots of cherry and lots of heat. There are also notes of vanilla extract evaporating off of an orange, if the orange is the size of the sun, collapsing in on itself until it in-densifies down to a tiny cherry of hydrogen and helium in the proper proportions and at the proper temperature. In other words, a nose of cosmic proportions. On the mouth, it's a red velvet cake presented to you on your birthday, and one that is so good, you wouldn't think twice of consuming it in your birthday suit (same goes for the whiskey itself). While the mouth isn't as full and round as the nose, it drills into the palate expertly and sets up a perfectly balanced platform there. Think of an off-shore oil rig, only it's spouting ultra high quality vanilla ice cream. And it's shaped like a petit four (and tastes kinda like one, too). A petit four spouting great vanilla ice cream? Now that's a birthday treat if I've ever heard of one. The mouth eases into the finish with what seems to be light, straight goodness adulterated ever so slightly with a touch of really good rye. Think Donna Reed jokingly trading dry barbs with Jimmy Stewart between takes on the set of It's a Wonderful Life (you can't create great sap if you take it too seriously at the time). The finish blossoms into a re-creation of that birthday celebration I held for myself that year I was stuck on a deserted island in the Pacific: volcanic dust, cane sugar, beach sand, molting horseshoe crab ("Here, let me help you out of that shell."). Ah, those were the days. In other words, this is truly a birthday bourbon for all occasions.

Rating:

--On the scale of sitcoms about people deserted on an island--
The Old Forester Birthday Bourbon 2012 is Gilligan's Island--Whether your preference is Ginger, Mary Ann, the Professor, the Captain, or even Gilligan (can't include the Howells here: they're insufferable), there's something for everyone. And it's much funnier than Lost.

--Stephen

--Our thanks to Andrea Duvall and Brown-Forman for the sample!

The Glenlivet 15 The French Oak Reserve (750 ml Party Starter (and Finisher) Barrel of Wholesome Fun for Soccer Moms)

2013-05-13T23:38:00.002-04:00

[A little over a year ago now, Bill wrote a review of a mini of this whisky. Recently, we received a sample bottle and worked up a full set of notes on the basis of which Bill wrote up a new set of tasting notes. But since the vebmeister never got around to publishing Bill's original review, we're publishing both here, new one (full bottle) first and older one (mini) second. Leave us a comment and let us know which set of tasting notes you like better!]

Tasting notes:
     Ze Glenlivet 15 Ze French Oak Reserve noses like papaya-flavored Robitussin™ specially formulated for children in Costa Rica and ze Dominican Republic. Instead of "papaya," ze British say "paw paw," as does Baloo ze bear, which is not surprising since Rudyard Kipling was British—even though he was born in Mumbai. (Ze older I get, ze more confusing categories become.) Nosing as smooth as Brancusi's L'Oiseau dans l'espace (Bird in Space) and as moistly-fruited as a still-life painting executed in a steam room by Delacroix.
     On ze mouth, lentil dal with apricots served à la tandoor, vidalia onions, charred lemon slices, and coriander. [John: Bill, please explain to our readers HOW YOU GRILL SOUP!] Smooth and thick, a bit of ze burn on ze lips: Think of kissing cayenne-coated Corian™ kitchen counters. Some Skor Bar™ at the back of ze throat, giving way to ze muskiness of down pillows slept on by the young Cameron Diaz. Or Junot Diaz, I always get ze two of them confuzzled. Ze dried and styled hair of a St. Bernard in ze tack room of a royal Swiss château after ze doggy ran off mimeographs for a missing skier.
     Ze finish is robin feathers somehow coupled with highly attenuated lemon syrup used in cocktails that call also for cinnamon sticks. Very round without being voluptuous, but still bringing ze sexy. Curvaceous, circular, and toned like ze hot person at ze fitness club you surreptitiously scope out from ze elliptical trainer.

Rating:

--On ze scale of movies with ze actors speaking with preposterously bad French accents--
Ze Glenlivet 15 Ze French Oak Reserve is Monty Python and ze Holy Grail--Too many classic lines to write here, so I'll settle for "I'm French! Why do you think I have this outrageous accent, you silly King!"

--Bill

Tasting notes:
     Before tasting this, I confess that I felt some, well, reserve at the thought of a fine Glenlivet whisky languishing for an extended finish in French Oak. I do loves me some white Bordeaux wine--especially coupled with fresh-catch brook trout almandine garnished with grapefruit-papaya relish--but inflicting that on scotch? Really? And while the French have generally been enemies with the English since the Norman Conquest of 1066, were the Scotsmen behind this idea, thinking along the lines of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"?
     Fortunately, as soon as Drammeister Stephen unscrewed the lid of our 50ml nip, my fears were assuaged and allayed, massaged and acupunctured: They quickly deflated under the upswelling butterscotch hot air balloon whose basket was made from the wood of Pinocchio's nose while he was explaining about all the weapons of mass destruction stored in über-secret bunkers and redoubts in Pleasure Island. Or maybe a special toffee space shuttle created for adults by Willie Wonka, piloted by a miniaturized Oompa Loompa who recently bathed in vat of dark chocolate and almond dust.
     The mouth is so very, very smooth, it's like surfing on a koa wood surfboard sanded and polished by a Big Kahuna while listening to a band of daemons playing ukeleles and Hawaiian slack key guitars as they orbit around your head. The syrupy legs are like the spit-up of cherubim who overly indulged at a heavenly banquet--that is, if cherubim eat. And spit up. Imagine further ambrosia spiced with elderberries, lingonberries, and tiny tart wild blueberries speckled, like dew, with pixellated grains of gulab jamun. As much as I enjoy the normal mapping of my senses to my brain, this expression unleashes a crazy synesthaesia, like an old-time phone operator hysterical with joy, plugging in cords and cables to all the wrong sockets, and yet finding that the surprising connections led to marriages, mutually beneficial deals, and the reuniting of estranged children with their parents. (Mom? Are you reading this?)

Rating:

--On the scale of improbable alliances--
The Glenlivet 15 The French Oak Reserve is Bono (not Sonny Bono, but Mr. U2) and former Senator Jesse Helms--One wants peace, love, and universal harmony, and the other, well, I'm not sure what Jesse Helms wants, but based on his voting record, I don't think it's the same thing. Nevertheless, a toast to the two million AIDS sufferers in Africa saved by this unusual partnership. Slàinte!

--Bill

Our thanks to Craig Bridger and The Glenlivet for the sample!

The Wemyss Spice King 12 (50 ml Vasco de Gama mini)

2013-05-11T21:59:00.001-04:00

Tasting notes:
From the start, we see this dram has aged some since we saw it last. On the nose we pick up notes of aftershave from the Vermont Country Store. For a laugh, I pantomimed daubing it behind my ears only to look over and see that Bill had poured the bulk of his measure onto his chest, and was now rubbing it in a seductive figure eight while muttering to himself. Yes, I thought to myself. They really put the Spice in Spice King. On the mouth it’s a freshly sanded pinewood derby car wiped down with a tack cloth made by Frederick’s of Hollywood. A milk caramel. Apple cider blasted by an espresso machine steam wand into a creamy, buttery froth. An orange studded with cloves made into a morning star for an especially festive Renaissance “faire.” The mouth is fast and light, but the finish lasts longer than we expected. Fat free hazelnuts dried in the smoke of a bamboo fire tended by a Red Panda. No, the fire is tended by that shearling-jacketed monkey that walked up to IKEA and into Internet stardom. And does he ever have a way with fat free hazelnuts. There is much to like here, but being bottled at 40% does take a little away from the impact of this balanced and winning dram. We recommend a bloodless coup and the rank of Spice Undersecretary.

Rating:

--On the scale of job titles that can be randomly generated--
Wemyss Spice King is Human Group Representative--This one is funny and has the wide applicability/appeal characteristic of this dram. The others are frighteningly realistic. Go ahead. Generate a new title now.

--John, Dynamic Paradigm Architect at The Malt Impostor

--Our thanks to Karen Stewart and The Wemyss Malts for the sample!

Boston Whisky Cruise 2013 is May 18th! Get our discount code!

2013-05-09T23:59:00.003-04:00

We attended the Whisky Guild's Boston Whisky Cruise a couple of years ago and had a complete blast. OK, that's a complete understatement. But then again, we are masters of understatement and subtlety. Well, let's just say we're very pleased to be attending this year's Boston Whisky Cruise. Check out the lineup of malts on offer here. Once you've read that, then consider: Whisky. Lots of Whisky. Whisky people. Lots of whisky people. Master classes and great food. And it's all on a boat. ON A BOAT! With awesome views of Boston Harbor! Awesome views you probably won't take the time to see, because...well...Whisky! Whisky people! Great food! ON A BOAT!

VIP tickets get you in at noon, while regular tickets get you in at 1 pm, sail time is 1:30-3:30, and the Cruise concludes at 3:30 pm. Your ticket price includes the buffet lunch and all whisky tastings. Regular tickets are $95, and VIP tickets are $115.

Use our proprietary, exclusive discount code for the Boston Whisky Cruise and receive 15% off your purchase. Use the code: "impostor" (without the quotation marks) during checkout.

Call 877-3-WHISKY x107 for further information about this and the Whisky Guild's other events, or visit their website at www.whiskyguild.com. Like them on Facebook and receive a special pour from the Whisky Guild Private Collection -- www.facebook.com/whiskyguild

More details:

May 18, 2013

Spirit of Boston Cruise Ship

200 Seaport Blvd., Boston, MA

VIP Hour - 12:00pm - 1:00pm

Main Boarding - 1:00 - 1:30pm

Sail Time - 1:30 - 3:30pm

Check out the video on YouTube! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjd2hQAZTt8

BUFFET LUNCH will include:

Fresh Salads
- Garden-Fresh Salad Station - A fresh assortment of mixed Greens, ripe Tomatoes, crisp Cucumbers, dried Cranberries, Garbanzo Beans, Sunflower Seeds, shredded Cheese, Croutons and bits of real Bacon, served with a choice of a Balsamic Vinaigrette or Ranch-style Dressing
- Classic Potato Salad Chopped Potatoes, crisp Celery, diced Onions and sweet Pimentos, blended with a Dijon Mustard Mayonnaise
- Italian Pasta Salad Imported Pasta tossed with Green and Red Bell Peppers, and Sweet Onions in an herbed Italian Dressing
- Chef’s Daily Selection Fresh Salad creation from our Chef

Entrées
- Tilapia Fillet with Lobster Cream - Fresh Tilapia Fillet baked and topped with a rich Lobster-Sherry Cream Sauce
- Herb-Marinated Rotisserie Chicken - Lightly-seasoned Chicken baked to perfection in a traditional blend of Herbs and Spices
- Apricot-Glazed Pork Loin - Jerk-seasoned Pork Loin, simmered in our Chef’s sweet Apricot Glaze with Rice Wine
- Three-Cheese Pasta Al Forno - Imported Pasta baked with Mild and Sharp Cheeses, and topped with seasoned Bread Crumbs

Accompaniments
- Garlic Smashed Potatoes - Hand-mashed Baby Red Potatoes, blended with roasted Garlic and light cream
- Local Harvest Vegetables - Seasonal medley of locally-sourced Vegetables, hand-cut and lightly steamed and seasoned

Desserts
Fresh selection of Cakes, Bars, Pastries, Cookies and Seasonal Fruit
A variety of Fresh Breads and Butter will be offered.
Menus are subject to change without notice.

ALL TICKET SALES ARE FINAL - WHISKY GUILD IS REGRETTABLY UNABLE TO REFUND OR EXCHANGE TICKETS FOR ANY REASON.

Come join us there! We look forward to seeing you there!

Slàinte!

The Arran Devil's Punch Bowl Ch. 1 (30 ml magical reagent vial)

2013-05-08T23:16:00.000-04:00

Tasting notes:
Imagine big, rich kiwi rinds, woven into a sticky, dripping chain like construction paper garland at Christmas. Now imagine that garland encircling the finest coconut meat you've ever tried, laid out in a display that is only a pig and some poi away from being a full luau feast. Well, that's just the beginning of the nose on this dram. It wafts, it waxes, it wanes, it slices, it dices, it'll find that slipper that's been at large under the chaise lounge for several weeks... The nose is so alive and...well, lively that it feels like a cartoon odor wafting with great cunning and mischievousness. It opened Bill's second sinus. All the while, the three of us couldn't help but wish that stores smelled like this, even though simultaneously, we wished they didn't, lest we be unnaturally tempted to buy everything in them as a result. There's definitely something to the name of this dram. The mouth is big and fast, but with a portentous bit of anticipation, like that moment after cramming a whole box of fine, handmade chocolates into your mouth all at once when you're waiting for the buzz to hit. The finish presents with a microclimate tornado on the palate that neither the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration nor The Weather Channel could've seen coming. The effect is superb. And just when you think it's over, a caramelized orange rolls onto the stage of your palate, positions itself center stage, and exclaims, "Excelsior!!!" Damn straight.

Rating:

--On the scale of cunning cartoon odor-waftings--
The Arran Devil's Punch Bowl (Chapter 1) is Bugs Bunny's encounter with the Tasmanian Devil in "Bill of Hare"--Nothing beats classic Bugs Bunny. Nothing. Plus, there's a devil in there!

--Stephen

Our thanks to Sam Filmus and ImpEx for the sample!

The Arran Machrie Moor 2011 LE (30 ml last dram of winter bottle)

2013-05-07T22:11:00.003-04:00

Tasting notes:
I should begin by saying I remember liking an earlier version of this whisky a lot more, back when I tried it at an Arran tasting. That said, for this dram: on the nose we get lemons fermenting in a halved durian used as a bowl, or perhaps jalapeño poppers. OK, OK, that may be too harsh: I don't think we've ever gone so far as to liken a whisky to something so bad as jalapeño poppers. What's that? Not jalapeño poppers, but just "poppers"? What are just "poppers"? Ohh... I see that. Yes, there's a distinct note of amyl nitrate citrus limon. Don't strike any matches. And thank God it was jalapeno poppers, because that would have been truly horrible. But then comes the peat notes, but this is a special peat, made from compressed heather or rose petals. These notes are accented by distinct hints of white dog. Is there such a thing as a foetal age statement? No matter. There's fruit here, too, but alongside something industrial: imagine a fruit salad that includes tires (where all of the ingredients were chopped into pieces that were roughly the same size, of course). It smells like a super funky gin, or perhaps Krusty the Clown after a bender ("I heartily endorse this event or product!"). We can't go that far, but we can praise it with faint damns. The mouth is much the same as the mouth, but here the industrial chemical and fruity develop into hints of citronella, tiki torch, and maybe even black fly repellent (Welcome to tent-free sleeping!). Somewhere before the finish, I could've sworn I detected a pair of clown shoes left by the side of the road in Tijuana. There's pepperiness on the finish, but it's far from piquant: it's an Anaheim pepper. OK, it's better than that. It's a perfectly ripe anaheim pepper. Three feet long. Without losing any flavor. (We liked the finish the best.)

Rating:

--On the scale of faint praises--
The Arran Machrie Moor 2011 Limited Edition is"Wow, you've lost a lot of weight!"--It definitely has its upsides (it's nice to hear in and of itself), but it means the person saying it thinks you used to be a fat ass.

--Stephen

Our thanks to Sam Filmus and ImpEx for the sample!

The Cody Road Bourbon, Batch 8, 2012 (750 ml decanter w/ sash)

2013-05-05T23:37:00.000-04:00

Tasting notes:
Number two pencil lead wrapped in prosciutto, Crackerjack corn kernels before popping, and a charcoal sketch of Bud Selig by Jose Canseco, where this time he is a pig-bat. Or a bat-pig. This is the nose and to say it beckons is an understatement. Despite its attractiveness, we found the nose to be a bit odd as well: we wouldn’t call it a new nose, but perhaps it's had some work done. The mouth is a scorpion sting right as you put your boots on. Spicy heat, like juniper berry oil smoking in a skillet, with all of the resin, sugar, gum, water, lignin, wax and salines beginning to evaporate from the pan. (Incidentally, the unused juniper berries are strung together on fishing line and hung on the Christmas tree of a field mouse that happens prefer Cheever to cheese.) Returning to the mouth we get the bottom of a Halloween candy bag in early December, which is to say it holds only the memory of candy and a hint of plastic residue. The finish is like a display of top-of-the-line furniture polish at a budget furniture store. Adding water yields some alluring oiliness, and then we catch peanut butter on the nose, the all natural kind you have to stir up so that the clear oil mixes in with rest. We’re curious about the mashbill on this one; Bill swears there’s some teff in there wrasslin’ with the corn and rye. Whatever the case, the result is a finish that's as comfortable as blue jeans worn to a Texas formal.

Rating:

--On the scale of remarkable facts about teff (also known as ttheff, tteff, thaff, tcheff, and thaft)--
The Cody Road Bourbon Batch 8 is the fact that its Ethio-Semitic root is “tff” or “lost,” owing to the small size of the grain--I prefer to think that “tff” is the expletive muttered after you drop it, but the bowdlerized translation is perfectly acceptable.

--John

Our thanks to the Mississippi River Distilling Co. for the sample!

The Balblair 2000-2010 (750 ml Tiffany lamp base, sans shade)

2013-05-03T22:36:00.000-04:00

Tasting notes:
     The Balblair 2000 was distilled in 2000 (a curious coincidence?) and bottled in 2010. Paper, pencil, mental exertion, abacus, pregnant pause: It's ten years old! [John: This is like writing a review with Deep Blue or Watson if they were, you know, unplugged and inert.] The nose soothes with apricot nectar before reigniting PTOMGTaCitHS (post-traumatic-oh-my-gawd-there's-a-child-in-the-house-syndrome) in Those Who've Had Children with the unmistakable waftings of just-cracked Gerber™ apple-pear-strawberry-banana baby food jar and freshly-folded nappies. It's wonderful, precious, and disorienting like visiting the Louvre and slipping wildly, arms flailing, on an installation of machined titanium Bal-blairings. Scottish Spring™ soap for turf-cutters and sailors meticulously carved into sabots worn by the Vienna Boys Choir on a visit to Kyoto. (Let's hope it doesn't rain much in June!) It's like a soccer ball after being kicked around in a 1998 World Cup match in the Parc Obscure in Bordeaux. [Stephen: Bill! That's the Parc Lescure in Bordeaux!] Such a ball, that is, if the match had been played between two All-Citrus National teams from the (respective) Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. All hail the subtropics!
     On the mouth, it's like a Vice Presidential Ball at the Blair House in Washington, D.C. If, that is, the VP was hosting a debutante ball for mermaids aspiring to a career in the Coast Guard: Drying brine, engine oil, plaits of sea goddess hair, and the near-maternal love of one's favorite aunt. (See E. O. Wilson's Sociobiology for the statistical analysis.) Fisherman's boots, and in passing, the beloved and reliable heat-molded shoes of the fisherman's wife (which are some jiveass slippers). Mango juice behind the brine—or perhaps under it, like roots growing beneath the tarmac of the A836. It's like a Zombie cocktail; a Scottish bomb diggity: A dense brown molasses spoon bread with carmelized onions dipped in rosemary-infused olive oil. Boom! Diggity. [John: Have you no self-Diggity? —John] Not when my glass is empty, John.
     The finish is a continuation of the mouth, much like Act III is a continuation of Act II in the famous opera, The Balblair of Seville. [Stephen: That one physically hurt me.] Spicy and savory, tarragon and thyme muted from being dried in the Andalusian sun. Bay leaves and parsley; Thanksgiving stuffing strewed and lemon juice drizzled on the Scarborough Fairgrounds.

Rating:

--On the scale of revolutionary humor stemming from ad-libbed Vaudeville humor remade for a new generation--
The Balblair 2000 is The 2000 Year Old Man (key bit at about the 6 min. mark)--The claim is that music began with the song "A Lion, is Eating, My Foot Off, Somebody Call the Cops!" I'd change that lyric to "A Lion, is Eating, My Foot Off, Pour Me Some Balblair!"

--Bill

Our thanks to Brian Johnson and InterBev for the sample!

The Auchroisk 30 Year 2012 Limited Edition (50 ml bad liquor antidote bottle)

2013-05-01T23:30:00.003-04:00

Tasting notes:
     The nose on this bad boy is slightly wood grainy, like waking up inside a carved sarcophagus that is thankfully unused (previously). Perhaps a sarcophagus intended for Bela Lugosi or Richard III (super quick Google contest: what do those two dudes have in common? -Ready? GO!). The wood grain quickly gives way to well preserved old book smell. Think the Cambridge library, or better, the that of the Sorbonne. Inside the sarcophagus you can only hope to be preserved so well. The smell is also slightly vegetal and almost fuzzy, like Africanized violet leaves.
     The age really comes through at this point, and it suddenly hits us: if we could naturalize this dram, it would be eligible to run for a spot in the U.S. Senate. But it'd never do that. For one thing, it isn't a greedy, awful, morally bankrupt excuse for a sack of dog feces. For another, its name's too hard to say. The rural voters would refer to it as "Aw, Christ!" It wouldn't seem like it at the time, but it'd be the best thing that could ever happen to the Auchroisk 30. It'd go back to teaching and would have a renewed appreciation for the exasperation the students express at its attempts at pedagogy, since that exasperation is so much easier to ignore than that of disaffected constituents and unrequited campaign donors. And if you think this last bit is some stealth comment on the quality of the whisky itself, it isn't: in this bit, it can't teach worth a damn simply in light of the fact that it's a Scotch and not a person.
     On the mouth, the 54.7% alcohol burns so good. But the angels are NOT happy. Water smooths it out like a wetted comb drawn across a balding scalp. On the finish, it's creamy, but the action occurs almost entirely on the back half of the tongue. Imagine fine, handmade oxfords with light cream spilt on them, but only below the second eyelet or shoelace hole. You ever work hard to set up a joke and it just flat doesn't work? Well, a couple of sentences ago, you just read the worst shoe tongue joke ever. Dear God.
     Anyway, the finish also presents with notes of a rare root vegetable paté served in a balsa wood model designed and signed by Howard Hughes. And the more of it I drink the more I feel my top lip dessicating in real time. It's the feeling, no doubt, of John's Protestant disapprobation, but "sterilized" of the moralized judgments. Thank God.

Rating:

--On the scale of occasions on which one would be tempted to exclaim "Aw, Christ!"--
The Auchroisk 30 Year 2012 Limited Edition is noticing the first cracks developing in the huge piece of plexiglass you caulked into place on the inside rim of the shower in your college dorm, after you put it into place, blocked the drain, turned on the water, and watched the water rise over five feet high within--You'll have to pay a lot for the whole experiment, but what stories you'll have to tell! And you'll always remember it fondly as one of the more amazing things you've ever tried.



                                                                    --Stephen

Our thanks to Leah Eagel, Alex Conway and Diageo for the sample!

The anCnoc Peter Arkle Limited Edition (750 bottle and tube with casks ad infinArklum)

2013-04-29T21:51:00.002-04:00

Tasting notes:
     Recent speculation about a decade-old discovery at the bottom of the English Channel has set the world of Viking Studies abuzz. We are talking about the Alderney Crystal, of course, and if you’ve seen it, you’ll agree that it bears more resemblance to a slab of cave-aged Gouda than it does to crystal; four centuries underwater have clouded the calcite slab. But in its heyday, when held up to a cloud-filled sky, it could help determine the location of the Sun, and this in turn made it useful for navigation. Is the Alderney Crystal evidence that the fabled sunstone was in use in the late 16th C.? And ought it to be celebrated if this ship was successfully navigated to the bottom of the ocean?
     These were the thoughts in our minds as we swirled the anCnoc in our transparent Glencairn glasses, firm in our belief that Viking sailors aboard a snekke or knarr would have done well to dip their hardtack into this dram. Then Bill tells us that the Vikings routinely sailed without provisions, raiding the settlements on shore when they needed to fill their bellies. I’m quite sure I would have joined them if there was a chance to enjoy this special anCnoc expression. It has all the scotchy offness of a beloved single malt, with perhaps a brief finish in a molded sherry cask. Musty, we might say, like a summer house after a winter of neglect (Malt Mission 2007 #69, Dr. Whisky blog, April 26, 2007). Still thinking of the Viking sailors, the nose is their well-worn Ugg boots like the ones Tom Brady gave to his linemen, but after they’ve walked through trays of stewed eggplants with citronella torches during a rookie hazing prank. The mouth is cayenne pepper custard, which is to say creamy and spicy but not in the way that pimento cheese is creamy and spicy. An autumn leaf pile set ablaze with a magnifying glass. The finish is the return of the Viking sailors to their home but forgetting not to raid it. Which is to say, wet logs, fired ceramic, a spring thaw, and a dried flakes of Sirah (pre-phylloxera roots) in a glass from the night before.

Rating:

--On the scale of unusual properties of calcite--
The anCnoc Peter Arkle Limited Edition is birefringence--How cool is it that a naturally occurring mineral can polarize light and help with navigation! Plus, as Woody Allen always said, it immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night.

--John

Our thanks to Brian Johnson and InterBev for the sample!

The The Glenlivet 12 (750 ml metal medallion bedazzled bottle)

2013-04-27T19:57:00.000-04:00

[We reviewed this whisky back in the old days, when our tasting notes had an even more tangential connection to reality. The bottle's also been redesigned since then. Plus, this bottle's a lot bigger than that other one.]

Tasting notes:
The The Glenlivet 12 opens with what I thought was an extraneous "The" but have since learned was appended as a qualifier and signifier, that the The dram in hand was, in fact, THE Glenlivet, not an impostor merely calling itself "Glenlivet," cashing in during an unscrupulous time on an established name. There were many Glenlivets, but only one The Glenlivet.
The The nose is honeycomb (not from African killer bees) rubbed on a Chippendale mahogany cabinet, fresh fruitcake tucked in the The crook of a ballerina's arm, bananas served in bleached-flour hot dog buns to skeptical children at a vegan birthday party, a sopping sponge soaking up spilled kiwi and kumquat juice, and a field crawling with amphibious pufferfish camouflaged as thistles.
[John: I got all that exactly, except it was the The crook of an emergency room intake nurse's arm.]
The The mouth presents pre-melted ice-cubes, rain on a sheep's saddle, caramel, toffee, caramel-toffee, and toffee-caramel that has had its "fugitive elasticity" gently lowered to that of water's (cf. James Clerk Maxwell). Was this printed on a 3-d food printer? Or is it a universal given, like space and time were for Schopenhauer? Black pepper cherries, sherpas, and cherry peppers yielding to butterscotch eaten despite your innermost conscience after brushing your teeth with a minty fresh toothpaste.
A finish after the The finish that is more of a concept of a finish than an actual finish. The The unassailability is assailed by unobjectionability: the The only flaw of this dram is that there is no flaw. But that is not always a virtue, and so constitutes a marring of the moral façade. In this case, it must be asked: Is a double-negative a positive, or merely a negation of a negation?

Rating:

--On the The scale of sedans--
The The Glenlivet 12 is the The Honda Accord--It's relatively cheap, it lasts forever with little or no maintenance, it holds an average family, it gets great gas mileage, and it comes in pleasing colors. It might not turn heads, but it will satisfy day-in and day-out, getting the The job done.

--Bill

Our thanks to Craig Bridger and The Glenlivet for the sample!

The Glenmorangie Ealanta (750 ml logging run companion bottle)

2013-04-25T07:58:00.003-04:00

Tasting notes:
     True to our Impostor method, which eschews actual research in favor of our wholly uninformed intuitions, we liked to think that the name Glenmorangie chose for this expression means “Hotlanta” in Gaelic and “Atlantis” in Doric, thus simultaneously referencing a mythical fantasy and my own personal version of hell on Earth.
     Fortunately, there is absolutely nothing about the whisky’s flavor profile that evokes the aforementioned God-forsaken Georgia city. The nose is very delicate, like tiny, freshly-baked cupcakes. Or lemon butter. Or the pistils of flowers. Or stamens. No, definitely pistils. A whole cache of pistils. But you know what they say: “Pistils don’t pollinate flowers, bees do.”
     On the mouth, there’s gorgeous wood alongside sugary fruit with an undertow of savory. Imagine a paradigmatic oak tree whose roots have penetrated the grave of John Candy, so that now a slightly fatty sweetness courses through the xylem and phloem to the point that you’d get cherry syrup if you squeezed the veins running through the leaves. There are also notes of pears baked in tawny port, of an herb seedling extending a fine network of white roots into a lush, black soil. But saying that much doesn’t even begin to do the mouth justice. It oozes refinement and elegance. It is precocity unmatched, despite the fact that it’s a 19 year-old whisky.
     The finish presents with unexpected spiciness, bringing to mind the place I imagine peppercorns come from (I’ve refused to research that as well, preferring the exotic locale I’ve dreamt up for this purpose). Actually, now that I consider it further, saying it’s spicy is like saying baseball is good. It’s also simultaneously and remarkably refreshing on the finish, like fresh-squeezed carrot juice produced by flop-eared bunnies at a café in Geneva (perfectly fair-trade, of course). This is a dram with a lot going on, and we were more than happy to let it go on and on.

Rating:

--On the scale of Mark Twain book titles repurposed as adult film titles—
The Glenmorangie Ealanta is A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Scrodpiece—In part this one had to go the way it did because of declining cod populations. But beyond that, you can judge for yourself how good of a title that would be.

--Stephen

Our thanks to David Blackmore and Glenmorangie for the sample!

The Glenlivet 21 (750 ml library stash bottle in hidden book box)

2013-04-22T23:45:00.000-04:00

Tasting notes:
     The expression is just old enough to drink itself in the US. That might explain the ouroboric purity of what I found inside, starting with the lovely wine-dark hue. But my first impression was of the impressive oak box that slides out as if it were the spine of an impressive tome, like a first edition of Stedman’s medical dictionary, or a volume from the second edition of Diderot’s Encyclopédie, or my leather-bound Frankin Books edition of Susan Powter’s Stop the Insanity! It totally taps into my childhood fantasy to have a hidden room accessible through a bookcase that opens by pulling out the right book. The bottle archived inside is something impressive, too. Tall body, broad shoulders, and a short, thick neck—it lacks the feminine grace of the Glenlivet bottles I’m used to. But I’m very glad to report that the nose is entirely continuous with my expectations. The nose is serious, simple, sophisticated: so much so that you imagine a hungover Donald Draper saying these three words in an eleventh-hour sales pitch to his clients (they liked it). Maybe, while I’ve got him conjured in my head, he could also say these three words: Cherry cough syrup. Oh, and can I get him to just read this part, too? A dream team creamsicle: raspberry, mocha, and a magician’s wand in place of a wooden stick. Yes, that’s perfect.
     The mouth finds me floating in clouds as the sinking sun sets them ablaze in a riot of orange. I’ve got the world’s best headphones [Audio companies take note; this space for lease], listening to Tangerine Dream playing a cover of Zeppelin’s “Tangerine” and I’m eating a perfectly ripe, juicy apple. The clouds are replaced by a tide going out on a beach depicted by Seurat. I’m one of the Bathers at Asnières! A finish of fine hay that even Parmenides’ stallions are not good enough to eat. A gustatory echo like savored spare ribs, a moveable feast, a porktacle. But as the poet says, nothing gold can stay. The receding finish leaves me with the sense of being in front of the night club you can never get into, the velvet rope forever at your waist, thick-armed toughs looking at me disapprovingly but with a touch of sympathy, I think as I try to look through their sunglasses.

Rating:

--On the scale of quotations from Don Draper--
The Glenlivet 21 is:

"Nostalgia - it's delicate, but potent. Teddy told me that in Greek, 'nostalgia' literally means 'the pain from an old wound.' It's a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn't a spaceship, it's a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards... it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It's not called the wheel, it's called the carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels - around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know are loved."

In my secret room, accessed by pulling a secret book and passing through a secret passageway, I pour a secret measure of Glenlivet 21 and know that I am loved.

--John

Our thanks to Craig Bridger and The Glenlivet for the sample!

The Glenmorangie Pride (50 ml parade tolerator bottle)

2013-04-21T23:40:00.000-04:00

Tasting notes:
     Before opening the sample, already deep in his cups, when learning that the Glenmorangie Pride was next up in the Malt Cave, one of the Impostors (name withheld to protect the guilty) exclaimed, "What is this, a commemoration of the 44th anniversary of Stonewall?! Is it a rainbow-colored dram?!"
     The binding and gagging of that Impostor complete, the other two opened the very, very small sample (so don't be envious) and got to work. The nose was nose-y, and by that I mean that it was the prototype for a perfect nose; that while perfection on this Earth is unobtainable, we dream and create models of our dreams. My dream, then, if you must know, was of boiled cedar-smoked bacon floating on a raft made of singed Andalusian orangewood and Thuya burl on an alpine snow-melt and unchill-filtered pear juice lake. Decorously dotting the shores, vaguely seen and lightly wafting on the breeze, the scents of bikini-bottom clad tanning bodies, oiled with Hawaiian Tropic®—or were they Speedo®s? A lemon chiffon (powdered sugar) pie is also floating by on a miraculously non-soggy piece of solar-singed Melba toast. Toffee clouds, a light mist of smoked Salvelinus namaycush, and the alpenglow of pure first-kiss bliss.
     The mouth-feel was…mouth-y and feel-y. (Platonic forms, no perfection possible, slaves in the cave—but what a grotto!—etc. etc. etc.) Koala paws stuck in The El Pozo Caramelo Toffee Pits of Australia, fossilized like petrified wood, especially if the wood was salvaged from Noah's Ark, kept inside a nectared Citrus paradisi in Barbados until it reached teak fruition.
     [Stephen: John, does that last sentence make any sense? Any sense at all?]
     [John: Mruphh! Grrrgnmphfff! Shhhvvllnngph! FRRRGGhhnmpphffmmnkk!]

David Blackmore showing his Glenmo Pride

     Gentle Readers, please ignore them and follow me on my factual flights of fancifulness. Exotic Egyptian fruit cream soup made with the richest stock imaginable, as preserved in the recently-unentombed cookbook of Cleopatra, who in it advocates rendered Minotaur and Brontosaurus bones, cooked in skull of whale with ambergris and spermaceti.
     [Stephen: John, even though it's from a sperm whale, should "spermaceti" be relegated to maltgonewild.com?]
     [John: Mruphh! Grrrgnmphfff! Shhhvvllnngph! FRRRGGhhnmpphffmmnkk!]
   [Stephen: John, you're repeating yourself.]
     The finish is finish-y, what a finish would aspire to, if it only could. Smooth, yet gently tumescent, like menthol, but without the taste. The surface texture of a stolen Vermeer lovingly caressed by a rogue billionaire. It just goes on, a sunset coyly awaiting a green flash, which may or may not ever come. Does it matter? It does not. It lasts and modulates while charming us, flattering us, and shattering our preconceptions, much like Anton Ego's amazing monologue (at the 56 second mark on the link) near the end of Ratatouille.

Rating:

--On the scale of great master/pupil-master/pupil-master triplet chains--
The Glenmorangie Pride is Socrates/Plato/Aristotle--It is hard to imagine a greater triplet chain...Oh dear Lord! Please send us another 100ml of the Pride! I literally have no Pride left!
[Stephen: Nice, Bill.]
[John: Mruphh! Grrrgnmphfff! Shhhvvllnnggph! FRRRRGGGhhnmppphffmmnnkk!]
[Stephen: John, you're still repeating yourself.]

--Bill

Our thanks to David Blackmore and Glenmorangie for the sample!

The Arran Single Sherry Cask 1996 CS for SF's The Whisky Shop (30 ml cable car line tolerator bottle)

2013-04-20T22:40:00.000-04:00

Tasting notes:
The fruit on the nose of this dram is wild, and not really what you'd expect from a sherry cask: nectary sweet on the nose, much like mango nectar passed through a Cupid fountain. But really, it's wilder and more refined than that: it's more like barium-inflected mango nectar from the Carrara marble colonoscopy fountain that the Medicis commissioned Leonardo da Vinci to create after he explained to them how he'd secretively explored the large intestines of a cadaver in order to better understand the anatomy of the human abdomen, only to have the Medicis order it destroyed moments after Leonardo had presented it to them (at least they had the good manners to wait until he'd left the villa). If that image seems disgusting, please consider the fact that it was made from the finest Italian marble (and we swear a hint of the minerals come through on the nose). Allow it to open up, and it morphs beautifully into a lemon banana hybrid, more banemon than lenana. On the mouth, the fruit comes through, but it's more concentrated than on the nose, and there's a hint of oak as well: Dutch wooden shoes undergoing a spit shine by a guy eating tropical fruit, or perhaps kiwis used to create soft-soled shoes for a dik-dik--you know, for a night out on the town. The mouth seeps into the finish, bringing lingering notes of ruby red grapefruit buttered and sautéed whole--not sliced--in an iron skillet. The grapefruit just roll and roll around and around in a most mesmerizing way. In fact, it was so mesmerizing for me, I lost myself for a while, only to wake up to find that I'd sucked my Glencairn glass dry while I was out.

Rating:

--On the scale of sculptures with something like a Cupid in it--
The Arran Single Sherry Cask 1996 CS for San Francisco's The Whisky Shop is Bernini's The Ecstasy of St. Teresa--Ok, so it's an angel and not Cupid, but the cherubic smile is pretty Cupid-rific, and the sculpture itself is breathtaking. This is the kind of religious ecstasy I could sign up for.

--Stephen

Our thanks to Sam Filmus and ImpEx for the sample!

The Russell’s Reserve Small Batch Single Barrel Kentucky Straight Bourbon (750 ml handbell emulator bottle)

2013-04-19T21:20:00.001-04:00

Tasting notes:
     On the nose it’s the Dr. Scholl’s insole for a cigar store Indian kept in the humidor for decades. Thick, syrupy, and just laden. I’d swirl it in my glass more vigorously if I didn’t think it would carve channels and grooves into the sides of the glass, or produce enough centrifugal force to dislocate my shoulder. This is a weighty whiskey for thinking serious thoughts. Which is why I’m certain the nose also includes hints of a pair of unicycle inner tubes (front and rear) packaged in a saltine tin to fool the customs officials. In total, the nose recalls the moment at the Thanksgiving table when your head is bowed, a prayer intoned, and you open your eyes to the plate full of delicious food that is just an “Amen” away from being enjoyed.
     The mouth is bourbon-brilliant bouquet. All of my umami receptors cry out in their simultaneous delight. Pickled tubers packaged for disaster relief, with cherry syrup instead of vinegar. It’s a refined cherry—a really excellent Gatorade® for alcoholic athletes. Pour it into a guava halved by a ceremonial sword, and you’ve got the perfect libation for making a very serious toast at a very unusual wedding. The finish has heat but it is modulated with mint, caramel, and a touch of celery salt. All of which is to say you’re in the Cotton Club at its heyday and the Duke Ellington Orchestra is just cooking and you cannot imagine it ever ending and when you close your eyes for a moment you sense that is hasn’t ended at all and the band is still playing and the dancers still dancing and a conductor’s baton still slicing the air, scratching this very moment permanently into spacetime.

Rating:

--On the scale of Duke Ellington songs--
The Russell's Reserve Small Batch Single Barrel Kentucky Straight Bourbon is Caravan--What other hopping jazz standard has the gravitas, intestinal fortitude, and genius structure to be played in a nearly avant-garde style by Charlie Mingus, Max Roach, and the Duke himself, but still remain easily recognizable? That's right: just this one.

--John

Our thanks to Danielle Katz and Russell's Reserve for the sample!

The Caol Ila 14 Year Old Unpeated Style 2012 Limited Edition (50 ml Energizer Bunny lubricant bottle)

2013-04-18T23:41:00.000-04:00

Tasting notes:
     The Caol Ila 14 Year, cask strength, 2012 Limited Edition, “unpeated style” raises naturally the question of why Caol Ila would make an unpeated whisky. It's like Ford selling a foot-powered vehicle, à la Fred Flintstone, or Boeing selling a jet designed to mine iron ore. In other words, we approached this leerily, the Malt Skeptics, preparing for chagrin rather than charcoal. (Or should I say, "Char-caol ila"? No? Okay.) When first nosing it, the reason why became clear: So that they could capture essence of banana soufflé with nutmeg shavings and bottle it as aftershave for actors and actresses in gritty sundry Planet of the Apes reboots. Also: a trout bucket used to hold brass player-kazoos (like player-pianos) tootling bourbon notes. Art gum eraser with the gritty sundry residue left curled up on it after a disgruntled curator used it to erase the "awkward lines" of a Michelangelo sketch that offended her aesthetic sensibilities.
     On the mouth, unignited napalm coated unicorn hooves, after prancing through the Kentucky Derby infield. A little carpet—but NOT an area rug. (The carpet in question is the nine month labor of a disaffected mid-Western performance artist who worked on it in a plexiglass cube suspended over the lobby of a Hyatt. It was made from reclaimed mango rinds, recycled llama rugs, and dromedary saddles.)
     The finish is like the Olympics without archery. It's a kickball deflated, but not from lack of air, but rather lack of meaning. "Ce n'est pas un whisky tourbé." Cherry pepper without the heat, satellites not in orbit, wah-wah pedals missing one or both "wah's," but still, a glorious anthology of unironical O. Henry short stories.

Rating:

--On the scale of additions by subtraction--
The Caol Ila 14 Year Old Unpeated Style 2012 Limited Edition is getting Ernest Hemingway to rewrite your annual report that's due in three days--The sentences are short. The sentiments are few. The ideas are clarified, and your boss appreciates the brevity. ¡Olé!

--Bill

Our thanks to Leah Eagel, Alex Conway and Diageo for the sample!

The Bunnahabhain Burns Malt 23 Year 1989 TWB* Exclusive (30ml far too mini mini)

2013-04-18T00:00:00.000-04:00

Tasting notes:
Oh man, is the nose on this bad boy ever crazy: a mango flavored lollipop from the bank, still stuck in the pneumatic tube. Don't ask how I know what that smells like: I know that smell well, and I have the scars to prove it. Continue to nose this dram and it pivots hard from the lollipop to notes of Nehi spilt on a silk dress, which is then hung on a line to dry without ever rinsing it off. That's not a very hard pivot, you say? How do you know how things smell from inside a pneumatic tube? You didn't happen to spend the latter half of 1989 in various "sleep studies" at Johns Hopkins, did you? Never mind. The fruit on the nose evolves quite improbably and nearly imperceptibly toward a funnel-shaped corn chip (Hellooo, Bugles®!) filled with chive cream cheese. Or maybe it's chav cream cheese (not to be confused with chèvre cream cheese, despite the natural and obvious connection between the two). The mouth is a set of colored pencils with leads made smoother and creamier by mixing them with Brazil nut butter and then re-inserting them into their hexagonal wooden sheaths. No, I wouldn't know anything about pulling the lead out of a while set of colored pencils over and over again--why do you ask? You weren't a participant in that baldness treatment study, too, were you? At any rate, now imagine those pencils being used to illustrate the Battle of Hastings on the inside of the back panel of a mahogany wardrobe used to store Uncle Ned's raccoon coat from his days as an Ivy League football fan. That's the middle of the mouth. Then that set of flavors bleeds inexorably into clear flavors of hominy grits right in front of you and a grapefruit being mangled in the distance. The mouth heads into the finish with unabashed caramel-ness, the kind you'd expect to find on the hooves of the bovine employees of a confectionary that promotes its chocolates as "kinda free-range". What's that? Hey, I was only in that synaesthesia study for a week, ok? The finish fans out like ripples on a pond at twilight, topped with highlights of moonlight. The finish is a strobe light on a rheostat, set to modulate the effects of the bulb in such a way as to produce a consistently rich, deep, warm light of remarkable quality.

Rating:

--On the scale of great books with unreliable narrators that are a little more annoying than they ought to be--
The Bunnahabhain Burns Malt 23 Year 1989 TWB Exclusive is W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge--This dram is so damn good, I would've gone with The Catcher in the Rye, but I couldn't manage to write a narrator who was that engaging and who didn't grate on my own nerves a bit. My apologies. Don't hold it against this whisky. You'll flat miss out if you do.

--Stephen

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

*--The Whisky Barrel (Bunnahabhain Burns Malt 23 Year 1989 TheWhiskyBarrel.com Exclusive)

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

The Chieftain's Range Linkwood 19 Year 1993 (30 ml golfing mini)

2013-04-16T08:19:00.000-04:00

Tasting notes:
Bananas. Lilies. But nothing like the Banana Lily Floating Heart (Nymphoides aquatica), which sounds more like a straight-to-video Ang Lee film than an aquatic plant. Floor wax on the cloud tops of heaven. Pineapple juice twice filtered and then given to an industrious syrupman to refine in his sugarhouse. Latex paint, but interior paint only and exclusively in warm tones. A collectible softball given by Dennis Rodman to Kim Jung-un. It is made of baby panda leather and sewn with six-fingered kitten gut thread. With a nose like this we greet the mouth with the anticipation of a steelhead trout returning from the ocean to its freshwater spawning grounds. It does not disappoint. Golf club heads incased in shiny jiggly Jello®. Spearmint gum stuck to the bark of a gum tree. A honeydew melon sprung sui generis from a basalt cliff. A sunset painted by Van Gogh. Joseph’s coat of many colors, but if it wasn’t an Andrew Lloyd Weber musical. The finish fires completely on the outer edges of the tongue, rushing along each side independently. Call it the Law of the Excluded Middle. Or consider those darn steelhead trout again; if they never leave freshwater, they’re rainbow trout. Wait, what? This has to be a joke, right? I mean, the scientific name is a giveaway that we’re not supposed to take this supposed “fact” seriously: Oncorhynchus mykiss. Well, this freaky fish can oncorhynkiss myass!

Rating:

--On the scale of innovative scoring rules for basketball--
The Chieftain's Range Linkwood 19 Year 1993 is North Korea’s : three points for a dunk, four points for a three pointer that doesn't touch the rim, and eight points for a basket scored in the final three seconds, during which time a missed free throws mean minus-one point--My god. It’s like state sponsored Calvin Ball.

--John

Our thanks to Sam Filmus and ImpEx for the sample!

The Longmorn Burns Malt 20 Year 1992 TWB* Exclusive (30 ml 1992 Club Kid Rave Popper Sample)

2013-04-14T23:04:00.003-04:00

Tasting notes:
     The Longmorn Burns Malt 20 year old opens with sherry, maple syrup, and the half-remembered dreams of the smell of the interior of your first Jaguar XKE. There is fleeting cherry, like clouds scudding high overhead contrasted with an elegant—not didactic—jet vapor trail coming screaming across the sky. It's your favorite teddy bear, found on top of your old bookcase, miraculously free of dust and must; just the distillation of your childhood comfort leavened by Shogun-era miso soup bowls and the bitterness of saying "goodbye, I'm off to middle-school."
     The mouth is…extraordinary. A marzipan kaleidoscope presenting an all lemon yellow viscous view spangled by floating, exploding sunshine rays. (It might sound as if I'm writing a book report on Ken Kesey or Haight-Ashbury, circa 1967, but I'm merely a faithful recorder of the myriad vital sensations playing themselves out on my inner stage.) Eating dandelions plucked from the Elysian fields or Valhalla. If there was a fruit grown in a sub-tropical climate whose pulp was jarred and wicked to produce citronella candles, this would be that non-existent fruit. (And it would be awesome if its rind was smelted into the chassis of a Citroën.) Tender buds at the end of sapling twigs: The early twinges of a climax forest of sequoias destined—sadly—to become hot tubs and decks.
     The finish lingers like a lush and lazy Saturday morning with a beloved: It mounts and mounts, lolls and relaxes, stirs and recurs, and comes back again and again. (This might sound like I'm writing a bodice-ripper; but again, my journalistic ethics require me to faithfully report the experience.) [John: Bill, you have no ethics, journalistic or otherwise.] A mite bit hot, a little hint of wood, a lot of Essence of Hibiscus, and the ageless arm of Satchel Paige. This is Harvey Haddix pitching 12 innings of a perfect game and losing in the 13th. History is cruel; crueller than April, and crueller than my empty glass.

Rating:

--On the scale of plays that won the Pulitzer and Tony awards, and whose film adaptation won prizes at Cannes and garnered Oscar™ nominations--
The Longmorn Burns Malt 20 Year 1992 TWB exclusive is Eugene O'Neill's harrowing and incredible A Long Day's Journey Into Night--This is more of a Longmorn's journey into stuporific soporific afternoon, or even a Longmorn's Journey into My Brain. It has led me to believe that this review deserves a Pulitzer, a Tony, the Palme d'Or, and an Oscar™. One may not reasonably request anything more from a whisky than that most happy of delusions.

--Bill

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

*--The Whisky Barrel (Longmorn Burns Malt 20 Year 1992 TheWhiskyBarrel.com Exclusive)

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

The Caperdonich Burns Malt 17 Year 1995 #95068 TWB* Exclusive (30 ml bunny nursing bottle)

2013-04-13T15:53:00.002-04:00

Tasting notes:
It's wrong to say this bunny burns: it's more like a bunny lathered up with soap scented with peony and primrose. OK, but only if it was the most gorgeous bunny you'd ever seen. And it could talk. And it told you that it wanted to be your friend. Your best friend forever. And you weren't even the least bit skeptical--about either her sincerity or her ability to talk to you. Oh, and she's chewing on gardenia flower petals.
--Oh wait! This isn't the Bunny--it's the Caperdonich! Damn! Well, screw it. I'm committed to the premise now... (Look for the Bunnahabhain Burns Malt tasting notes in the coming days).
You take a sip, and your bunny friend transforms into a butter bunny. That's right, a bunny made out of butter, similar to the chocolate bunnies you'd find around Easter, but here the eye is made of a Red Hot instead of sugar paste. Oh, and you don't mind that you just lost your BFF in the conversion, because damn, that's some creamy-ass butter. And the Red Hot kicks in late after all the creaminess, but it works together...really well. The finish explodes into cinnamon spicy utter amazingness that makes you care not a wit that your BFF turned buttery treat is no more. OK, you do care that the buttery treat is no more. In fact, the realization makes you weep.

Rating:

--On the scale of things that could be easily mistaken for bunnies--
The Caperdonich Burns Malt 17 Year Old 1995 #95068 TWB Exclusive is the jackalope--As animal hybrid mythical creatures go, does it get any better than this? The answer is no.
And yes, I'm still crying. Shut up.

--Stephen

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

*--The Whisky Barrel (Caperdonich Burns Malt 17 Year 1995 TheWhiskyBarrel.com Exclusive)

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

The Chieftain's Range Ben Nevis 13 Year (30 ml studio jam session starter bottle)

2013-04-12T11:23:00.000-04:00

Tasting notes:
Floral, sandstone, jasmine. These are the notes that form the nose of this Ben Nevis expression selected and bottled by the Chieftain's Range. Stirring the band to action is a conductor comprised of stewed plums spread on a dry cracker. The recording engineer is white asparagus tips left on the edge of an otherwise fully-eaten salad Niçoise. We found that it smells different from each nostril. Does that say something about the whisky, or about the recording engineer? A quick check of his resumé (assistant to the sound engineer for ELP’s Tarkus) confirms our sense of the remarkable olfactoral separation. What of the mouth? In a word, it was an exceptional performance captured in a single take. Delicate, brilliant, radiant; it has all the grace of a sacrament. There’s also wood from a grapefruit tree carved with a bowie knife by David Bowie in Bowie, Maryland and sold “exclusively” at Walmart’s flagship store in Flagstaff, AZ. A touch of bitterness on the back end of the mouth, like the curious mix of disappointment felt at your boss after the holiday party when your crush was revealed at the same moment of your bonus was announced. The post-production team was a series of cinnamon sticks, this being our way of saying that we found cinnamon on the finish. It is a spicy, somewhat cloying finish. Imagine flames chasing the hero, who outruns the rolling ball of inflamed spice and leaps into a thicket of yellow grass. He regrets very much the powder from an Egyptian urn that he put into instant iced tea packets as a fraternity prank.

Rating:

--On the scale of explanations of an album name that are stranger than the artwork itself--
The Chieftain's Range Ben Nevis 13 year is Keith Emerson’s discussion of the tank-betreaded armadillo after which the album is named: “It had to have a name. Something guttural. It had to begin with the letter 'T' and end with a flourish. 'Tarka the Otter' may have come into it, but this armadillo needed a science fiction kind of name that represented Charles Darwin's theory ofevolution in reverse. Some mutilation of the species caused by radiation...'Tarkus'!"

--John

Our thanks to Sam Filmus and ImpEx for the sample!