It’s Laphroaig Cairdeas season in the United States of America and accordingly I have for you a review of the Laphroaig Cairdeas. In my helpful way, it’s not a review of the 2024 Laphroaig Cairdeas but of the 2011 release. It’s not my fault: the 2024 Cairdeas is not in Minnesota yet. Or at least it wasn’t in the closest Total Wine when I checked a couple of weeks ago. But I had two unopened bottles of the 2011 Cairdeas on my shelves and was somewhat surprised to discover that I’d not previously reviewed it on the blog, despite having gone through at least one bottle, if not more after launching the blog in early 2013. Anyway, no time like the present. The 2011 Cairdeas, the so-called Ileach Edition—a reference to then-distillery manager and native son of Islay, John Campbell—was the first edition of the Laphroaig Cairdeas to come to the US. It was also the first one I ever tasted and purchased a bottle of. It was right in my wheelhouse: young, bourbon cask Laphroaig. In 2013 the distillery began to go down a path of wine finishes and double maturations for the Cairdeas releases, pausing only in 2015 when they put out the outstanding bourbon cask 200th anniversary release. I’ve liked some of those later releases but I’m looking forward to renewing my acquaintance with this more straightforward expression of the distillery’s classic profile. Continue reading
Category Archives: 85-89 points
Caol Ila 22, 1990 (Archives)
Okay, after a week off, let’s get back to the booze reviews. My most recently bottle is this Caol Ila 22, 1990 bottled by the Whiskybase shop to mark the first anniversary of their Archives label. (There were a few other anniversary releases as well but I can’t recall off the top of my head what they all were.) This was from a single bourbon hogshead and Whiskybase only got 130 bottles from it—I don’t know where the rest went. Well, the Whiskybase database lists four other Caol Ila 22, 1990s, three of which were released in 2012 along with this one. None are at the strength of this release but two were diluted to 48% and 46% respectively. So it’s conceivable that one of those might have been the destination of the rest of this hogshead. As it happens, I reviewed one of those two just over a year ago (this Mackillop’s Choice release at 46%) but it has a different cask number. So too does the Ian Macleod Dun Bheagan release at 48%. So there are either more Caol Ila 22, 1990s out there than are listed on Whiskybase or the rest may have gone into a vatting or a blend or aged further for a later release. If you know more about this, please write in below. Anyway, I opened the bottle last week and here now are my notes from the fourth pour. Continue reading
Glenlivet 16 “Nadurra”, Batch 0606A
I was going to say that it’s been a long time since I reviewed a Glenlivet but it turns out I reviewed two of them just last year: a 15 yo Binny’s exclusive from Signatory and a 30 yo from Mackillop’s Choice. It has been a while since I reviewed an official Glenlivet, however. The last one was an oloroso edition of the Glenlivet Nadurra. I found very little to like about that one. I hope to set things in balance today with this review of a bourbon cask Nadurra, which was, of course, the original incarnation of the series, well before the distillery decided to fuck up a very good thing. 16 years old, first-fill bourbon cask, pretty good value: that’s what the name Nadurra used to stand for when I got interested in single malt whisky. This one isn’t just from that era, it might be the first of the cask strength bourbon cask Nadurras. It was bottled in 2006, which means it is comprised of whisky distilled in 1990 or earlier. My spreadsheet is for some reason missing information on when I acquired this bottle or from where or at what price. What I can tell you though is that I opened it a few days ago and found it to be right in line with Nadurra as I prefer to remember it. Here now are my very timely notes on this whisky released 18 years ago. Continue reading
Nikka Pure Malt Black, “Smoky & Mellow”
Let’s keep the mini-streak of bottles I purchased around the turn of the previous decade going. My spreadsheet tells me that I acquired this bottle of Nikka’s Pure Malt Black, courtesy a friend transiting through the Reykjavik airport in August 2012. My spreadsheet also tells me that the 500 ml bottle cost all of $22 in 2012. This makes me want to both laugh and cry. There is very little good Japanese whisky on the market in the US anymore and none of it is as cheap as this was in 2012 (and it was cheap then too). That much is clear. What is less clear is the makeup of the whisky. Nikka put out a number of these Pure Malt releases (do they still?). In addition to the Black, there was also a White and a Red (apologies to any other colours I may be forgetting). No one was ever sure how they were made. The official line was that these were blends of malts from Nikka’s Miyagikyo and Yoichi distilleries but unofficially they were said to also contain whisky from, at least, the group’s Ben Nevis distillery in Scotland. Anyway, I don’t know why I never opened this bottle (or the bottle of the Pure Malt White my friend got me alongside it) for so many years but it’s now open, and here now are my notes. Continue reading
Longrow 11, 2001, Rundlets & Kilderkins
Next up in my restarted “Open Them and Drink Them” campaign is a Longrow released before I’d started this blog. This is an 11 yo distilled in November 2001 and released in January 2013. It was part of Springbank’s Rundlets & Kilderkins line that saw releases from all three of their single malt variants: Springbank, Hazelburn and Longrow. I reviewed the Springbank Rundlets & Kilderkins very early in the blog’s life. As I already made a hilarious joke in that review about the name “Rundlets & Kilderkins”, I’ll spare you this time and inform you—in case you don’t know—that rundlets and kilderkins were two type of old-timey small casks. Where a sherry butt approaches 500 liters in volume and a bourbon hogshead contains 250 liters (200 in a bourbon barrel), a kilderkin holds 80 liters and a rundlet only 60. This means far greater oak contact over the course of the spirit’s stay in the cask. And I believe the Longrow Rundlets & Kilderkins matured entirely in the small casks, just as the Springbank version had. Well, the Springbank Rundlets & Kilderkins was not overwhelmed by the oak contact and I am happy to tell you that the same is true of this whisky. I opened my bottle a few days ago and have been quite enjoying it. Here now are my notes. Continue reading
Littlemill 24, 1990 (Alambic Classique)
Alright, after two Armagnacs in a row (here and here), let’s get back to single malt Scotch whisky. And after four reviews of whisky samples let’s get back to the business of opening and finishing bottles I’ve been hanging on to for a very long time. Today I have for you a Littlemill that has been on my shelves for almost a decade. This is a 24 year old bottled by the German outfit, Alambic Classique in 2015 from an oloroso sherry cask. There were 295 bottles released, which is too small a number for a regulation sherry butt and just a bit too high for a hogshead after 24 hours. Maybe a butt split with someone else? Or was some of it held back for a later release? I’m not sure—if you know more, please write in below. Anyway, this was another of the many casks of late 1980s, early 1990s Littlemill that were released in the early-mid 2010s and which were key to the rehabilitation of the reputation of the distillery. The distillery, of course, had long been closed by then; indeed, what was left of the distillery was destroyed by a fire in 2004. So this improvement to its reputation has not been damaged again by official releases the owners might have continued to put out. Anyway, let’s see what this one is like. Continue reading
Chateau de Pellehaut 40, 1983 (for Serious Brandy)
Last week’s booze review was of an Armagnac. That was a 31 yo from a mystery producer that was bottled in 2019 for K&L in California. This week I have another Armagnac. This adds 9 years of age and was bottled in 2024, not for a liquor store but the prominent Facebook brandy group, Serious Brandy. And it’s not from a mystery producer but the very well-known Chateau de Pellehaut located in the Tenareze production region. I very much enjoyed the only other Pellehaut I’ve reviewed—this excellent 17 yo—and am hopeful that this much older cask will be at least as good. This cask, along with a much younger Armagnac from Domaine du Cardinat, was selected by Steve Ury, the Artist Formerly Known As Sku, the evil mastermind who runs Serious Brandy with an iron hand. Well, Steve may be corrupt and capricious but he does have a good nose for brandy and he’s told me that if I don’t say so he’ll throw me out of the group and have me deported. What a great guy he is! Let’s taste the great brandy he picked! Continue reading
Domaine le Chaou a Perquie 31, 1987 (Fitte et Laterrade)
In 2019 K&L (the California store) released a couple of casks of Armagnac from a small producer named Domaine le Chaou, bottled by an outfit named Fitte et Laterrade (now defunct). The casks were 30 and 31 years old. Not very much was known about them—I’d learned long ago not to trust too much to K&L’s stories. However, Sku went on about them rather a lot and so I talked myself into buying a bottle of each. Five years later I’m finally opening one of them: the slightly older one. Looking about now for information about these casks, I came upon this wonderful bit of detective work, complete with aerial reconnaissance via Google Maps. You can go read the story there of how these casks came to be. One other bit of interesting information is that these two casks were not matured in the usual way for Armagnac. That usual way sees the spirit filled into new oak casks to start but then transferred a few years later into refill casks for the remainder of the maturation. These, however, were apparently left in the original casks for the entire maturation period. This may explain how it is that these casks ended up in the US. By which I mean that their greater oak contact would probably have rendered them more attractive to the American enthusiast market for Armagnac than to the French market. This because the American enthusiast market for Armagnac is largely comprised of bourbon drinkers who have a high tolerance for oak. Continue reading
White Horse, 1970s Release
It’s been a while since I’ve reviewed an old Scotch blend, by which I mean, a blend released a long time ago. The last one I reviewed was a White Horse released in the 1950s. Today I have for you another White Horse, albeit one released in the 1970s. Unlike the 1950s release, this review is not of a pour from my own bottle but of a sample I’ve had sitting in my stash for a few years now. I have an unexpected feeling of nostalgia about this whisky, however. This because in the late 1970s, when my family lived in Iraq, White Horse was one of a few Scotch whiskies that my father had in his bar. A bottle of White Horse or Black and White from this era was probably my first encounter with the aroma of Scotch whisky—and, of course, we repurposed the empty bottles to store drinking water in the fridge! I certainly didn’t taste any of it then but it feels a bit like a time machine trip to be drinking it now. Let’s hope the actual whisky doesn’t now disappoint! On that note, let’s get right to it. Continue reading
Old Taylor 6, 1985 Release
Here is something I have not reviewed in a while: a bourbon. My last bourbon review was posted all the way back in November 2022. That was a single barrel of 1792 bottled for Total Wine. Today I have for you something older, something in the genre that bourbon people refer to as “dusties”: bottles of older bourbon that sat around in stores for decades, gathering dust. This particular dusty is the 1985 release of Old Taylor. Rather than pretending that I know very much about the brand I am going to send you to the source of my sample to find out more about what may be in this bourbon. That source is Michael K. of the excellent Diving for Pearls blog (on the short list of the very best full-time whisky blogs still on the go). He has a head-to-head-to-head review of Old Taylor releases from 1985, 1987 and 1996 that goes into some detail into the history of the brand and the likely provenance of this whiskey and if you’re interested you should check it out. All I can tell you is what I think of it. Speaking of which… Continue reading
Glenallachie 10 CS, Batch 5
You may have noticed that I failed to post the promised Seoul restaurant report this past weekend (I’d actually said I might post two) and that I also failed to post my usual Monday booze review yesterday. What can I say, it was a hectic week, capped by travel on Sunday—we are currently in Southern California—and I just did not have time to either resize photos for a restaurant report or take tasting notes for a whisky review. Accordingly, this week’s booze review is being posted on a Tuesday and the usual Tuesday Twin Cities restaurant report will be posted tomorrow. And even though my track record with actually following through is so poor at this point, I am going to once again say that I will try to post one or maybe even two food reports from our time in Korea by the end of the week—I have a total of five of those left to do, I think. I also still have two reports yet to come from my trip to New Jersey/New York in mid-May; and by the time Thursday rolls around I will have already begun to add to the waiting list with meals from this current Southern California sojourn. I will at least refrain from making promises of reports to come from those fronts this week. Continue reading
Longmorn 30 (Gordon & MacPhail)
After last week’s rum—a Foursquare 12 bottled for Total Wine—let’s get back to whisky and back to opening long-held bottles in my stash. This week’s newly opened bottle is an older Longmorn bottled by Gordon & MacPhail. As you may know/remember, in 2011, G&M bottled a quintet of old Longmorns for van Wees. I’ve reviewed all of them (the 1964, the 1966, the 1968, the 1969 and the1972). Those were all very good, most were excellent, one was probably the best whisky I’ve ever had. In addition to being vintage releases, those were also all single sherry casks and all bottled at cask strength. Today’s Longmorn is also sherry-matured but a little younger than all of those, being “only” 30 years old. More importantly, it’s not a vintage release or a single cask or at a very high strength. Indeed, it was bottled at the bare minimum legal strength of 40% abv and was doubtless a vatting of several casks. It was released sometime in the late 2000s, maybe in 2009. I have a feeling that G&M had a lot of outstanding casks of 1970s Longmorn in their warehouse and that while some made it out as single casks, many others may have been vatted and diluted—or perhaps vatted with casks that had slipped below 40% to rescue them for bottling—and released with very little fanfare. I certainly purchased it with very little fanfare in 2013 (for all of $136 from Binny’s). It’s hard to imagine either a 40% vatted release of a 30 yo sherry cask malt today or one that would not cost several times as much. Anyway, I opened this bottle a couple of days ago. The first pour felt a little underpowered at first but then it came along really nicely. Let’s see what it’s like now. Continue reading
Foursquare 12, Master Series 2 (for Total Wine)
Here’s another saved sample from a bottle split. This is not a whisky but a rum. And it’s a partner to the last rum I reviewed. That one was the third of three store bottlings of Foursquare I reviewed in February, the first of the so-called Master Series releases for Total Wine, the major American booze chain (the other two were bottled for the LCBO in Canada and the Whisky Exchange in the UK). The first Master Series release was a blend of three 12yo rums aged in bourbon and sherry casks. So was the second, but the Total Wine pre-arrival page listed a little more information for this one: it was put together from one rum matured full-term in ex-bourbon barrels, one double matured rum that spent three years in ex-bourbon barrels and nine in ex-oloroso casks, and one that spent 10 years in ex-bourbon barrels and two in ex-oloroso casks. How many total casks there were or what the ratio of cask types was, I do not know. I do know that I liked the first one a lot. My notes below may make it seem like I tasted them alongside, but in fact, they were recorded many months apart—I merely referred to the first set for comparison while writing the second. Anyway, let’s get to it. Continue reading
Lagavulin 11, Offerman Edition, Rum Finish
This whisky is obviously not from the stash of long-accumulated bottles that I am supposed to be opening, drinking and reviewing these days on the blog. It’s just that I wasn’t able to keep myself from picking up a bottle when I saw it at our local Costco last week. I’ve quite enjoyed the preceding Offerman Editions of Lagavulin 11 and so it seemed to be a good bet. As you may recall, the very first Offerman Edition—which was released in 2019, I think—did not have any cask complications associated with it. The second edition—which came out in 2021, I think—received a Guinness cask finish. Meanwhile, the third edition featured maturation in casks that had been shaved down and re-charred. I didn’t like the third one quite as much as the first two but all have been interesting variations on the Lagavulin profile and not gratuitous celebrity cash-ins. The fourth edition—only just released in the US—sees the whisky get a rum finish for eight months. Let’s see how it compares to the others. Continue reading
Bowmore 15, 1992 (Douglas Laing)
No, I haven’t already rolled back my commitment to slow the pace of my whisky reviewing and to restrict it only to bottles that have lain unopened for years in my stash. It’s only that I still have a few samples left over from before I left for Bombay in early January and I may as well get through all of them as well. And so here’s a Bowmore 15. This was distilled in 1992 and bottled in 2007 from a refill hogshead by Douglas Laing in their Old Malt Cask series. Back when this came out a lot of whisky geeks were still very wary about Bowmores distilled in the early 1990s. This was on account of the proximity to the long problematic preceding decade at the distillery. As I’ve noted before on the blog, my random sampling suggests that by the early 1990s most of those problems had been worked out. Indeed, I’ve had quite a few rather nice indie Bowmores distilled in the early 1990s. That’s not to say, of course, that there aren’t casks from that period that still bore/bear traces of the major problems of the distillate in the 1980s, particularly a strong soapy note. Let’s hope this cask is not one of those. When teenaged bourbon cask Bowmore is good it’s very good indeed, with that unique mix of smoke, fruit, florals and coastal notes. Let’s see where this one falls on the spectrum. Continue reading
Littlemill 23, 1990 (Archives)
This week’s review is of a Littlemill. As I’ve noted before, Littlemill didn’t have the best reputation when it was a going concern. Indeed, when I first started getting interested in malt whisky as something other than an occasional indulgence, the official 12 yo—pretty much all that was easily available then—was one you learned to stay away from (though I didn’t think it was that bad when I finally tried it). As with so many other distilleries though, the distillery’s reputation improved after it closed, when older single casks began to become available from independent bottlers. In the early-mid 2010s, in particular, a number of 20+ yo casks filled in the late 1980s to the early 1990s showed up on the market that put the distillate in a very different, very fruity light. A number of these casks were bottled by Whiskybase under their Archives label. This bourbon cask 23 yo, distilled in 1990 was one of the first (though not, I think, the very first—there was one in the inaugural Archives release as well). As with so many bottles I purchased in those years, I’ve had it sitting on my shelves for a long time now. I’m glad to finally open it and am looking forward to drinking it down over the next few weeks. Continue reading
Indri, Trini — The Three Wood
Hey look, it’s a whisky review. As I said on April 1, I’m going to be posting far fewer whisky (and other booze) reviews going forward. The goal is to focus on drinking down my own collection of bottles and not on reviewing as many whiskies as I can. These two goals are not compatible, in case you’re wondering. Anyway, my review today is not of a whisky that was in my collection but of one I drank quite a bit of in my recent travels. I first purchased a bottle of this Indri after arrival in Bombay. I liked it so much as I drank it down over those five weeks that I purchased another bottle from duty free that I drank down over five weeks in Seoul. And then I purchased a third bottle that I drank part of in Delhi and left behind in my father’s bar. Yes, I thought it was a very good whisky, especially for the price. I was shocked, however, to learn in Delhi of the company’s controversial ownership. Frankly, it’s put me off the whisky more than a little. You may be wondering what I’m on about. Here’s the story. Continue reading