Category Archives: LMDW

Highland Park 24, 1990 (Signatory for La Maison du Whisky)

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This week’s reviews are of whiskies from island distilleries. On Monday I tasted a Bunnahabhain 15 bottled by Old Particular for K&L in California. Today I have a Highland Park 24 bottled by Signatory for another store, the famous La Maison du Whisky in Paris. This was distilled in 1990 and bottled in 2015 after maturing in a sherry butt. The cask yielded 489 bottles at 51.4% which must seem like very little to anyone whose notion of sherry cask outturn has been conditioned by Glendronach’s cask shenanigans. I purchased this bottle some years ago and only opened it a week or so ago. I enjoyed the first couple of pours a lot and am looking forward to taking some notes on it. Let’s get right to it.

Highland Park 24, 1990 (51.4%; Signatory for La Maison du Whisky; sherry butt 15706; from my own bottle)

Nose: Orange peel, honey and light caramel with a big seam of toasted malt running through it all. The malt edges into milky cocoa pretty quickly and there’s a bit of vanilla to go with it. Brighter/more acidic with time. With a few drops of water some pastry crust emerges and melds with the orange. Continue reading →

Benrinnes “Over 20 Years”, 1995, Artist #8 (La Maison Du Whisky)

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Here is the first of two Benrinnes reviews this week. This one was bottled by the famous French store, La Maison Du Whisky in their Artist series. The label lists the vintage as 1995 but the age is given as “Over 20 Years”. Which is true as it was bottled in 2018. This is the first instance I can remember of a bottler choosing not to go with a higher number on a label—was/is this par for the course for the Artist series? This means that this is probably the same age as my next Benrinnes, which is also from 1995 and is marked as a 22 yo by bottler Signatory. Indeed, I remember reading at some point that Signatory is probably the source of La Maison Du Whisky’s casks and so this may well be from the same parcel. I haven’t yet looked up the particulars of that cask and to do so would require me to get up and walk across the room so you’ll have to wait a couple of days or hope I remembered to do so before finalizing this review. Continue reading →

Blair Athol 25, 1988 (LMDW)

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As per Whiskybase, there have been 44 casks of Blair Athols from 1988 released in the last three years. I guess someone acquired a huge parcel of those casks and sold them on. And given that most of the releases are from Signatory, I’d guess they’re that someone and are the source for many of the other indie releases as well. Given that there were a decent number released just last year, I suspect we’ll continue to see Blair Athol 1988s for a while.

I’ve previously reviewed three other 1988s in the 25-26 yo range. I very much liked this 25 yo from van Wees and this 26 yo from Signatory for K&L; this 26 yo—also from van Wees—I liked a bit less. The one I’m reviewing now was bottled by La Maison Du Whisky, the famed Paris whisky store. It’s part of their “Artist” series—all of which have very pretty labels. As to whether the prettiness of the labels says anything about the contents of the bottles, I don’t know; I do know the bottles are pretty expensive. I didn’t pay for a whole bottle of this one; this was part of a bottle split—which is really a very good way to try a lot more whiskies than would be feasible otherwise. Anyway, let’s see if this is as good as the others.  Continue reading →

Clynelish 36, 1972 (G&M for LMDW)

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Clynelish 36, 1972; G&M for LMDW
This is the oldest Clynelish I’ve yet had and the second from a sherry cask. I quite liked that SMWSA 29 yo from a refill sherry butt, but not as much as the Single Malts of Scotland 28 yo from a bourbon cask I’d reviewed last year. This is not because of the sherry influence per se. In fact, the sherry influence in the SMWSA 29 yo was quite muted—what held that one back was a lack of complexity, on the whole. This one is also from a refill cask but it is a hogshead and so there’s a good chance that the prized Clynelish characteristics of honey and wax might get drowned out by stronger notes of sherry and oak (from the smaller cask). That didn’t happen with the excellent Manager’s Dram release, but at 17 years old that was less than half the age of this one. But if it’s good, I don’t really care too much one way or the other. And given its antecedents there is a pretty good chance this will be good. It was bottled by Gordon & MacPhail for the reputed French store, La Maison du Whisky.  Continue reading →

Yoichi 23, 1987, Cask 112814

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Yoichi 1987
The run of reviews of sherried whiskies continues but with this Yoichi single cask I also begin a mini-run of Japanese whiskies.

Nikka and Suntory are the heavyweights in the Japanese whisky industry. And Yoichi is to the Nikka stable of distilleries/brands what Yamazaki is to Suntory’s: the featured player. In the last year a few of Nikka’s whiskies finally made it to the US market: the excellent Yoichi 15 and the vatted malt, Taketsuru 12. Very recently, a few more have joined that initial pair: Taketsuru 17 and 21 (a review of an earlier iteration of the latter is coming soon), a 12 yo from Miyagikyou, Nikka’s other malt distillery and a single grain. The pricing on all of these, unfortunately, has not been recession-friendly. I shudder to think of what we would be asked to pay for the more prized Yoichi single casks such as the one I am reviewing today. This was bottled in 2010 by the famous French store/importer La Maison du Whisky. Continue reading →