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
Tag Archives: Rum Cask
Port Charlotte 16, 2001, The Heretic, Feis Ile 2018
Okay, let’s close out peated Islay week with one from Bruichladdich. This 16 yo Port Charlotte was bottled for the 2018 edition of Feis Ile, the Islay whisky festival. It is a vatting of the last five casks that were filled during the 2001, which was the first year that the peated Port Charlotte distillate was produced at Bruichladdich. It was given the name “The Heretic”, which I think refers to the fact Bruichladdich had not historically made peated whisky. The cask types that went into the vatting include ex-bourbon, ex-rum and ex-French wine. At only 1300 bottles, this was a true limited release. Let’s see what it was like.
Port Charlotte 16, 2001, The Heretic (55.9%; for Feis Ile 2018; from a bottle split)
Nose: The familiar Bruichladdich/Port Charlotte sour milk but it’s mixed here with sweet cereals and carbolic peat and lemon and the whole is rather nice. On the second sniff there’s some bacon fat in there too. On the third sniff the bacon fat turns to a freshly open can of smoked sardines. Some butterscotch in there as well. Water amplifies the butyric notes at first but it burns of leaving a mix of cereals and ash. Continue reading
Oban 11, Special Release 2023
I’m almost to the end of my series of reviews of Diageo’s 2023 Special Release slate. For the most part, it has been a somewhat mundane experience. However, Monday’s Clynelish 10 was a true highlight. We’ll remain in the highlands for this penultimate review. Will this Oban, just a year older, be in that general ballpark of quality? Like many of the others in this year’s Special Release, this one received a finish. The Talisker, you will recall, was finished in port casks, the Lagavulin in tequila, the Glendullan in chardonnay and the Mortlach in a mix of Japanese whisky and pinot noir casks. This Oban was finished in casks that had previously held Caribbean pot-still rum. I’m not sure if they said which distillery or even island the relevant pot-still rum was from—at any rate, I don’t have that information. I also rather doubt that this brief finish has been enough to impart “The Soul of Calypso” to this Oban but that is what Diageo has chosen to call it. Anyway, let’s see what it’s like. Continue reading
Jack Ryan 11, “Haddington”
One last whiskey review for the month, and one last Irish whiskey review for the month (and probably for a good while). This is yet another Irish whiskey that I had not heard of before I purchased a miniature. And this is yet another case of my lack of knowledge not being due to the whiskey being obscure. Like Monday’s Lambay, Jack Ryan whiskeys, it turns out, are available in the US as well. So you probably don’t need me to tell you that there is no Tom Clancy connection to the label. Jack Ryan’s are a concern that bill themselves as “whiskey finishers”. By which they mean that they purchase spirit and age and mature it in their own casks. Many (most?) of their releases do appear to be finishes in a conventional sense: i.e they involve a final step of maturation in a cask type other than the one in which the rest of the maturation took place. And sometimes there’s more than two types of casks involved. They currently have a 5 yo released named Raglan’s Road that starts out in bourbon casks, continues in madeira casks and finishes up in imperial stout casks. You might say that’s a very busy life for a 5 yo but then you’d be a boring stick-in-the-mud like me. The release I am reviewing today is positively old-fashioned by comparison, being both 11 years old and only having passed through two types of casks: bourbon and then Guyana rum. It’s the second release in a series called the “Generations Trilogy”, all single malt whiskeys. The first was a 10 yo; this is 11 years old; and the one that came after was 12 years old. The 11 yo bears the additional appellation, “Haddington”. This is a reference to Haddington Road in Dublin, home to the Ryan’s Beggars Bush pub. So it’s a whiskey with a lot of information attached to it. But is it any good? Let’s see. Continue reading
Highland Park 17, 2002 (SMWS 4.255)
Having set the whisky world afire last week with my reviews of three single bourbon barrels of Glen Scotia released by the SMWS (here, here and here), I now turn to a week of Highland Park for a reprise. Yes, we’re going all the way from Campbeltown to Orkney.
First up is another SMWS release and, like Friday’s Glen Scotia, this is another 17 yo distilled in 2002. However, it’s not from a bourbon barrel. Well, it started out in a bourbon cask with but ended up in one that had most recently contained Jamaican rum. Did Highland Park have barrels of Jamaican rum lying around or did the SMWS have one filled? I’d guess the latter. At any rate, the label on the bottle says that the Jamaican rum barrel was the “final cask”. How much time did it spend in this “final cask”? Who can say and who would be bold enough to try? The wild profile of Jamaican rum seems an odd match for Highland Park but I guess someone’s got to try these experiments. (Or do they?) The SMWS named this one “When pineapple met pigeon”, which is certainly a name. Let’s see what it’s like. Continue reading
Glenfiddich “Fire & Cane”
Early in the beginning of the previous decade Glenfiddich seemingly decided to become a more interesting single malt producer. Not content with being the most recognizable bottle and most recognizable name in all of single malt whisky-dom in the world they decided they too needed the attention of the obsessive idiots cool kids who make up a tiny fraction of the world whisky market—and indeed also of the world single malt market. The Snow Phoenix and its ludicrous tin may have been their entry into this phase, confirming as it did that obsessive idiots discerning malt drinkers will hoover up anything with a good story attached. Releases like the Age of Discovery and Cask of Dreams and Ark of the Covenant followed (okay, I made one of those up). Then things went quiet for a while (by which I mean I stopped paying attention: for all I know they kept putting out special releases). Then a few years ago they launched their so-called Experimental series. The IPA cask was the first in 2016 (I was intrigued but never got around to trying it). Then came the XX which was sexy but not did not involve penetration (or so I assume). Then something called the Winter Storm which was banned in Minnesota for being too close to life. Then came the Fire & Cane (in 2018?). This is made from a mix of peated and unpeated spirit that is finished in rum casks. How old is it? How dare you ask such personal questions! I was intrigued by this one as well and when a chance recently came to taste it via a bottle split I jumped at it. Let’s see what it’s like. Continue reading
Ardbeg Drum
This was Ardbeg’s 2019 Feis Ile release. I have to admit I stopped paying attention to Ardbeg some years ago. The 10 year old is still an Islay classic and my last bottles of the Uigeadail and Corryvreckan were very good too (albeit neither were anywhere close to being recent releases), but most of the noise emanating from the distillery—or rather from its owners—has seemed for a while to be in the service of high-concept silliness. I thought 2018’s Feis Ile release, the Grooves, was fairly ordinary. Why then am I reviewing the 2019 release? Well, largely because in theory at least bourbon cask Ardbeg finished in rum casks does not seem like a bad idea. (Of course, they say they’ve “rested” their spirit in rum casks; unlike all those other distilleries who make their spirit ride treadmills and run marathons in finishing casks.) Will the reality of this whisky in fact match up with that theoretical promise? Only one way to find out. Continue reading
Laphroaig 16, 1999, Rum Cask (Kingsbury)
Here is a rather atypical Laphroaig. This is the first rum cask Laphroaig I’ve ever come across and I cannot remember reading reviews of any others. This is not to say that there have not been any others: Douglas Laing have released at least a couple of rum finished Laphroaigs and Whiskybase lists a Malts of Scotland release as well—I’m not sure if that one’s explicitly stated to be a finish or now. This one was released by a bottler named Kingsbury who, as far as I know, operate in the Japanese market. It is said to have been matured full-term in the rum cask. However, it doesn’t say so explicitly on the bottle and as we all know—courtesy Glendronach—the rules allow bottlers to describe a whisky in terms of the last cask it was in. If it was indeed a full-term maturation in a rum cask then this means that Laphroaig must have a lot more in their warehouses. If so, what might they be planning to do with them? Continue reading
Springbank 15, 2000, Fresh Rum Cask for the Nectar
Another 15 yo whisky, and another that may still be available: I’m in severe danger of losing my “untimely reviews” edge. This was bottled by the distillery for the Nectar, a store in Belgium. It’s a single cask release (though the cask number is not mentioned) of a total of 198 bottles. And that single cask was a fresh rum cask. Now, of course, this doesn’t tell us anything about how many years the rum that had previously been in there had spent in that cask or what kind of rum it was (which, of course, is the same with bourbon cask maturation as well). I assume it would have been an American oak cask. I’m not sure what the story is with the low abv (relatively speaking). As it happens, the last rum cask Springbank I reviewed (this 1998-2014 release from Malts of Scotland) also had an abv below 50% (just a coincidence, I’m sure). I wasn’t hugely taken with that one. Let’s see what this one is like. Continue reading
Glenrothes 27, 1989 (Cadenhead’s)
Let’s take a break from the Glenfarclas reviews but let’s stay on the Speyside. Here is a somewhat unusual Glenrothes bottled by Cadenhead’s earlier this year. I don’t believe I’ve ever come across rum cask Glenrothes before and for that matter there’s not that much bourbon cask Glenrothes around. This is from Cadenhead’s “Small Batch” series and is apparently a vatting of a single bourbon barrel and a rum cask of some sort. Wild to think that there was a 27 yo rum cask just laying around. Also intriguing that they wouldn’t just have released it as such—has anyone come across a single rum cask malt of that age? Of course, this might imply that the contents of the cask might not have been that great on their own but it might have been worth it for novelty alone. It’s also possible, of course, that the rum barrel was a finish/double maturation of a cask put away in 1989—though again you have to wonder why that wouldn’t have been worth releasing by itself. Anyway, I haven’t reviewed much Glenrothes on the blog so I’m hoping this will represent the distillery well. And I suppose if I like it there’s a decent chance that it might still be available from the Cadenhead’s shop in London. Let’s see. Continue reading
Springbank 1998-2014, Rum Cask (Malts of Scotland)
After Monday’s rum cask finished bourbon (a Heaven Hill 14, 2001), which was more than a little reminiscent of a single malt, it was hard not to reach immediately for the one rum cask single malt I had easily at hand. Springbank has released a few official rum casks before but I haven’t seen too many around of late. This one is also from the German indie, Malts of Scotland but, unlike their Heaven Hill, appears to be matured full-term in a rum cask. Or at least, so I think. Let’s get right to it.
Springbank 1998-2014, Rum Cask (49.8%; Malts of Scotland cask 14037; from a purchased sample)
Nose: A slightly sweeter version of the regulation ex-bourbon Springbank profile. Which is to say that the usual machine oil, sackcloth, leather and salt/brine are all there but there’s an extra layer of simple syrup over it all. Gets pretty salty pretty fast; some preserved lemon as well. With water it’s less sweet and also less salty. Continue reading
Heaven Hill 14, 2001, Caribbean Cask Finish (Malts of Scotland)
I can’t say I’d ever wondered what bourbon finished in a rum cask would be like; but when a store I was purchasing samples from substituted this for something else I’d wanted that they were out of, I discovered that I quite wanted to find out. Rum finishes in the single malt world have never quite convinced me—the Balvenie 14 Caribbean Cask is the only one I can remember liking a fair bit. But Balvenie’s malt is a mild one and it’s not hard to see an overlap with a sweet and caramelly rum profile. Bourbon, on the other hand, is altogether more robust and I’m curious to see what impression, if any, the rum finish has been able to make on this one.
The bourbon in question was distilled by Heaven Hill and it was bottled by Malts of Scotland—this was bottled this year, so not in the same lot of releases that included the port finish I reviewed earlier this year as well as a sherry finish. I still have no idea whether these were all Heaven Hill experiments that Malts of Scotland ended up with and released as is, or if the finishing was done not at the distillery but in Germany. If you know more about this please write in below. Continue reading