Monthly Archives: July 2015

Mortlach 19, 1991 (Signatory)

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Mortlach 19, 1991
Now that my number of open bottles is down below 40 I’ve begun to finally open a bunch of not particularly exciting bottles that I purchased some years ago in my great hoarding period and put away for no good reason. This Mortlach from Signatory’s UCF line was one of those. I opened it a few months ago for one of my local group’s tastings and while it did not set anyone’s hair on fire, almost everyone liked it. I’ve been drinking it regularly since then and here now are some formal notes.

Mortlach 19, 1991 (46%; Signatory Unchilfiltered Collection; sherry butt 7710; from my own bottle)

Nose: A little metallic; raisins, a bit of orange peel and a bit of dusty wood. Not a whole lot of interest. A little more expressive with a few drops of water but still not particularly interesting.

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Isaan Station Again (Los Angeles, July 2015)

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Isaan Station: Tom Super
I ate at Isaan Station twice on our last trip to Los Angeles. On neither occasion was I accompanied by the missus and kids and I was thus resolved that we would go back together on this trip (it also helps that Isaan Station is in Koreatown and not Thai Town). While they do not have the dish that the boys are guaranteed to eat (chicken/pork satays) I knew they (and the missus) would love their wondrous grilled chicken and/or any of the other grilled meats; and that the missus would, at a minimum, also love whichever earthy, spicy soup we got. So it proved to be.
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Highland Park 19, 1990 (Signatory)

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HIghland Park 19, 1990, Signatory
I purchased this cask strength Highland Park 19, 1990 from Signatory a long while ago with the express purpose of comparing it with this marvelous OB 19 distilled four years previous. I finally opened it last year but I still haven’t gotten around to the head to head comparison. This is because I only just remembered that that was why I’d purchased it. Isn’t getting older so much fun?

That’s all I have by way of introduction, I’m afraid.

Highland Park 19, 1990 (56.5%; Signatory; sherry butt 15696; from my own bottle)

Nose: It’s a bit tight but with my nose deep in the glass there are dark sherry notes to be found: raisins, orange peel, toffee edging into fudge territory. Some leathery oak as well. Something farmy/leafy too (and is that a whiff of peat?). Water should open it up nicely. With more time the sweeter notes mix with savoury and there’s a mild inkiness too. The apricot that emerges late on the palate shows up on the nose too along with some maple syrup. With a few drops of water the sweeter fruit are emphasized and there’s a light dusting of cocoa powder. Continue reading →

Dim Sum at China Red (Los Angeles, July 2015)

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China Red: Congee
China Red is a relatively recent addition to the top-end of the dim sum scene in the San Gabriel Valley—which is, of course, the best, from top to bottom, in the United States. It opened less than two years ago and gained a strong reputation very strongly. And, unlike another recent opening, Shi Hai, it has managed to hold on to that reputation. We didn’t eat there on our last few trips because a) I am always a little leery about new, hyped places; b) it’s in Arcadia, which is on the far end of the San Gabriel Valley from our home base in Koreatown; and c) relatedly, it’s hard to justify driving out that far when Sea Harbour, Elite, Lunasia and King Hua are all so much closer. It’s for this reason that we didn’t end up eating dim sum on this trip with Sku and his family as originally planned (we ended up at a different place with them, on which more later)—he was loth to drive the extra 10-15 minutes to Arcadia. We, however, were already going to be in the SGV in the middle of the week, last week, and so decided to cut across to Arcadia and finally check China Red out. Continue reading →

Russell’s Reserve 10

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Russells Reserve
For the benefit of those who know even less about bourbon than I do: Russell’s Reserve is a Wild Turkey product, named for their master distiller, Jimmy Russell. The series was first launched in 1999, I believe. I call it a series because there have been and are a number of different releases from Wild Turkey with the Russell’s Reserve name on them. In addition to this 10 yo bourbon, there’s a 6 yo rye available now, for instance; and there has also been a single barrel release of the bourbon (plus store exclusive versions). And, I believe there have been other bottle and label designs as well (and possibly other strengths as well). Those who know more about the ins and outs of the series/name should kindly write in below.

Anyway, as always, please take this bourbon review with an extra pinch of salt. Bourbon is a side-interest for me; while I do enjoy it, I very much approach it with the biases and filters of a single malt drinker.

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Requesting Feedback

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A request for my regular readers: if you would take a moment of your time to select the option below that best describes your feelings about the split whisky/food focus of the blog, I’d highly appreciate it. To be clear, I’m not looking to change what I do on the blog on the basis of this feedback. I’m just curious about whether, and/or to what extent, I have separate readerships for the whisky and food posts; and to what extent, if at all, either readership also enjoys, is indifferent to, or wishes there was less of the other content.

Thanks very much!

And do feel free to leave comments below if you like.

Teaninich 39, 1973 (Malts of Scotland)

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Teaninich 39, 1973, Malts of Scotland
I began the week with a very old Tomintoul. Let’s close it out as well with a very old whisky, albeit not quite as old. Like Tomintoul, Teaninich is not a storied distillery, which explains why this one was also quite reasonably priced on release. Of course, since this was bottled by the boutique Malts of Scotland it cost almost as much at 39 years old as that 45 year old from the far less-heralded Chester Whisky. It’s not just the marketers at the corporations that own distilleries that indulge in premiumization, you see.

Teaninich is a Diageo distillery. It’s not seen much official output: a few releases in the Rare Malts series, one Manager’s Choice and Manager’s Dram outing each and one Flora & Fauna and that’s it (as per Whiskybase anyway). Most of its output apparently goes into Johnnie Walker, and given how thirsty that blend monster is, not a whole lot of it even appears from the indies. Well, let’s see what this one is like. Continue reading →

Mei Long Village (Los Angeles, July 2015)

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Mei Long Village: Shanghai Spareribs
One of my very first Los Angeles meal reports on the blog was of a dinner at Shanghai #1 Seafood Village, a then relatively recently opened and somewhat snazzy restaurant. I noted there that the strong reviews it had received particularly made me want to eat there as there are no Shanghai restaurants in Minnesota. This is still true (as far as I know); but, of course, it is not true that Shanghai #1 was in any way a Shanghai cuisine innovator in the San Gabriel Valley. My report today is of a meal at one of the mainstays of the Shanghai scene in the area, the very far from snazzy Mei Long Village. Continue reading →

Port Ellen, 1982-2011, “Royal Wedding Reserve” (The Whisky Exchange)

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Port Ellen, Royal Wedding Reserve
I’ve had this sample of Port Ellen from a single sherry cask sitting around for a couple of years now—I’ve no idea why I haven’t reviewed it yet. The Whisky Exchange bottled it in 2011 to commemorate the marriage of Beyonce and Jay-Z. It’s a little odd that they did this three years after the fact but maybe they were waiting to see if the marriage would stick. It is an odd choice of distillery to commemorate a wedding though—you’d think they’d pick one that’s still a going concern, not one that had to be shut down. Maybe Sukhinder Singh is more of a Nas fan?

Port Ellens from the last couple of years of the distillery’s life don’t have quite as high a reputation as those distilled in the 1970s but I quite liked the one I previously reviewed (this one from Old Bothwell). Let’s see if this one is as good and if it does the royal couple proud; and if it makes me regret not purchasing a bottle when it was released—I’m not sure how much they asked for it back in 2011 but doubtless it was a fraction of the current going prices for Port Ellens of any quality.

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Sushi Tsujita (Los Angeles, July 2015)

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Sushi Tsujita: Tamagoyaki
Tsujita, the famous Los Angeles ramen and noodle specialists, opened four years or so ago, taking the city by storm just as the ramen craze was beginning to crest in the US. A branch of an apparently well-respected Tokyo restaurant, it has set the standard for ramen in Los Angeles (and its own branch, Tsujita Annex, opened down the street on Sawtelle not too long after). And it’s not just American ramen enthusiasts who raved about it: a few years ago when we asked Satoshi Kiyokawa (of the eponymous Kiyokawa) where he likes to eat Japanese food when he’s not in his own restaurant, he said unhesitatingly that Tsujita was the place for him. Continue reading →

Tomintoul 45, 1968 (Chester Whisky)

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Tomintoul 45, Chester Whisky Company
This is the oldest single malt whisky I’ve ever had, or am about to have (I’ve had an older grain whisky). Of course, this does not mean that this will be the best whisky I’ve ever had. Still, it’s hard to resist the experience—especially when European retailers sell 60 ml samples for such reasonable prices. By the way, there has been a fair amount of Tomintoul of this general age/vintage around in the last few years. I guess some broker found or came into an old parcel of casks that were surplus to blending requirements. As Tomintoul is not one of the most storied distilleries in Scotland, prices for these casks have been relatively reasonable. (In fact, the last two Tomintouls I reviewed were also very ancient ones, though one was overpriced.)

And as Tomintoul makes a light, fruity spirit its malt also seems theoretically well-suited for overlong maturation—though as alluded to above, the odds of whisky being good tend to reduce once they get past the 40 yo mark; after a point, unless a cask goes dead, odds are high that the oak will overpower the whisky or that it will just go “flat”. Well, let’s see how this cask fared. It certainly hasn’t dropped as close to the minimum allowed 40% abv as you might imagine it would have by this point. Continue reading →

On Preparing to Re-Read To Kill a Mockingbird

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tkam
The first and last time I read To Kill a Mockingbird was in 1983 in Darjeeling. Well, I read it many times that year but I haven’t read it since. I was in class 8 at St. Paul’s, a once-great boys’ boarding school set up in the 19th century by the English as “the Eton of India”—a claim that must have rung hollow long before I got there (these days the school remains in firm decline and no one bothers to recycle the claim). Our English teacher, the formidable Mr. Bhatnagar, had single-handedly decided to make us read books that probably very few Indian thirteen year olds were reading in school. Tragical, Comical Historical, Pastoral, a compilation of extracts from Shakespeare was one; To Sir, With Love was another, and very thrilling in its account of unruly student behaviour of a type we couldn’t even dream of perpetrating (I remember we were all very confused by the scene featuring a burnt sanitary napkin). But the one that made the greatest impression on most of us on whom books made any kind of impression was To Kill a Mockingbird.  Continue reading →

Pineapple Chutney

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Pineapple Chutney
I bought a pineapple for a fruit salad for the younger brat’s birthday party. In the chaos of preparing for the party—which included an extended wrestling session with an inflated and partially filled kiddie pool that could have been the showstopper in a Buster Keaton film—I forgot to cut up said pineapple for the fruit salad. I then forgot about the pineapple until the day before we were to leave for Los Angeles. Admittedly, this is a hard thing to do; not forgetting in general: any fool can forget all kinds of things and I often do. But it is difficult to forget a pineapple because, unless you actively hide it, a pineapple is a very visible thing, almost flagrantly so; tends to catch the eye—there’s a reason Carmen Miranda didn’t put a pineapple on her head (didn’t want the competition, you see); and if she did, it also proves my point. So unless you hid a pineapple—and who could forget hiding a pineapple?—it would be hard to forget a pineapple. But I did. And then I saw it and I had to do something with it that didn’t include eating it as we had lots of other fruit to finish before leaving and when it comes to the frantic overeating of fruit it is mangoes and not pineapples I am partial to. The effort of making jam from one pineapple—not to mention the uncertainty about canning said jam given that pineapple is a high pH fruit—did not appeal. Chutney then. Continue reading →

Amrut 4, 2009 (Port Pipe 2712)

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Amrut 4, 2009, Cask 2712
This is the last of the four Amruts I opened for a special Amrut tasting for some members of my local tasting group back in May. I’ve already reviewed the two other single casks we drank that night (one from a bourbon cask and one from a PX sherry cask). Those were both distilled from unpeated Indian barley. This one, from a port pipe, was distilled from peated barley (the provenance of the barley is not mentioned on the label; I assume it was Scottish). We drank this one alongside the Portonova, which was our consensus favourite on the night (and I liked it the most then too). However, in the last couple of weeks I’ve really been enjoying this peated version a lot more than I did that night and am looking forward to taking some formal notes.

This was bottled exclusively for the European market, by the way, and the cask saw a whopping 43% evaporation loss during maturation. Continue reading →

Szechuan (Roseville, MN)

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Szechuan: Steamed Flounder
At the end of my review of Tea House in Minneapolis I noted that I was considering finally trying Szechuan in Roseville. It opened at about the same time as Grand Szechuan but early reports had made me wary and somehow we never went. A friend who shares my view of Tea House, recommended it as worth a try after reading that review and so off we went. Once again, my visiting parents (who are always willing to eat Chinese food, and Sichuan food in particular) rounded out our party, which meant we could once again try a bunch of things without the risk of being stranded with lots of leftovers of food we didn’t care for. Continue reading →

Maker’s Mark, Cask Strength

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Maker's Mark, Cask Strength
I reviewed the regular Maker’s Mark a while ago and didn’t particularly care for it. In the wake of that review, a number of people noted that the new’ish cask strength Maker’s Mark was far superior; and Eric Burke, of the excellent Bourbon Guy blog, offered me a sample from his bottle. I’m always willing to drink free whisky and a bonus, of course, is that if I liked it the batch it came from would be locally available—Eric is a fellow resident of the satellite regions of the Twin Cities (though his address is not quite as rural as mine). I offered him a single malt as a token of appreciation—he agreed gingerly (he’s apparently really not a Scotch guy) and eventually we met up drug dealer/customer-style in a Costco parking lot to exchange what anyone who saw us closely probably thought were urine samples. That was almost three weeks ago and here I am now with a review. I did not look at Eric’s own notes till I’d gotten mine down but here is the link to his own (far less verbose) review (at the bottom after an account of a distillery visit). Continue reading →

Karuizawa 13, 1999 (Cask 869 for K&L)

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Karuizawa, K&L
The Karuizawa I reviewed on Tuesday didn’t impress me overmuch; will this one, a single cask bottled for K&L in 2013, be better? This came with one of the striking “Noh” labels usually associated with much older single cask Karuizawas—it doubtless helped justify the cost: about $150 at the time (which would, of course, be a steal now, just two years later, for a 13 yo Karuizawa). Let’s get right to it.

Karuizawa 13, 1999 (57.7%; cask #869 for K&L; from a sample received in a swap)

Nose: Oh, this is much better to begin. Rich, nutty sherry with hints of chocolate, leather and earth (I was gardening today) with some orange peel and gunpowder behind it. The gunpowder starts getting stronger and then transitions to rubber and then, alas, to the sharper kind of sulphur. But most of it burns off soon enough, leaving behind tobacco and a growing fruitiness (marmalade, apricot). With more time there’s some cola concentrate and some beef stock. Water brings out some toffee and some caramel and cream and knocks the sulphur back even further. Continue reading →