Here’s another review of a widely available official release. This time it’s an Irish whiskey. My track record with Irish whiskey has not been very good. I’ve not had very many and very few of the ones I have had have made me want to have more. I’m sure this is just an accident of random, limited selection. In recent years, a number of older Irish whiskies from independent bottlers have received high ratings from a number of sources. And what is more, they’ve been lauded for their fruity quality—a quality I like very much in Scotch whisky. Unfortunately, I’ve not had any of those whiskies—they don’t come cheap and I don’t really spend large amounts of money on individual bottles any more. Not to mention, these are all European releases and it’s harder and harder to get those sent to the US these days.

Anyway, the Redbreast 15 is certainly easily available here. Though it’s been a while since I’ve last tried it—and I haven’t reviewed it—I quite liked the Redbreast 12; I was less impressed by the cask strength version, which I’ve reviewed twice (here and here). Let’s see what this one is like.  Continue reading →

Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day…oh, forget it.

This is my second review of the Redbreast 12 CS. I’d forgotten about that first review when I put this more recently acquired sample on my “Coming Soon…” list at the end of last year. When I discovered the first review I figured I’d go ahead anyway as this was a later batch. But now that I’ve sat down to actually take my notes, I see that this came from the same batch as the previously reviewed sample! Oh well, let’s go ahead anyway and see if I come to any different conclusions this time. And as I say that I remember that when I set up the blog I’d thought that I would re-review whiskies quite frequently, and I really haven’t done so. So, as it turns out, this was my master-plan all along and I’m really not an addled idiot who has no idea what he is doing.   Continue reading →