Six Isles Blended Malt

An inexpensive blended malt this time.
I think this is a relatively recent addition to the Australian market (I could be wrong though), but is, I believe, fairly ubiquitous elsewhere. I picked it up on a whim at my local booze supermarket as I hadn't seen the label before and the idea appealed to me - they sure saw me coming.
The shtick here is that there is a malt from each whisky-producing Scottish island included in the blend.

The Six Isles 43%

Nose: Peat (of the Islay variety) dominates first up, wrapped up in light wafts of vanilla. This is soon followed by musty cupboards, old socks and sneaker rubber. Smells kinda dirty.


Palate: A fairly light mouthfeel, with a bit of a void mid-palate. There's plenty of that Islay peat, along with toasted grains and that sneaker rubber again. Sweetness builds in the background through sweet peat and some heather-y honey, but by and large it fails to displace that sense of dirtiness that pervaded the nose and has now re-emerged on the back palate.


Finish: Soot is at the forefront, becoming ashy as it fades, while the simple honeyed sweetness lingers long.

This is a pretty simple and largely inoffensive whisky which, I guess, delivers a quick and dirty peat hit for those in need at a relatively cheap price. The Islay malt (Caol Ila at a guess but I'm not certain) certainly dominates proceedings.

Mortlach 2003, 11 Year Old, Van Wees The Ultimate (Cask 800209)

There are some benefits to having children - these late nights (or rather conjoined days) of the last few days since the birth of my second son have tossed up some quality drinking time. And with no work to go to in the morning for the next couple of weeks - aside, obviously, from that work arising out of the needs and wanton destruction of my own flesh and blood - a rather carefree and cavalier approach to my usual (self-imposed) strict weekday drinking quota has taken hold. Long may it prosper.

Mortlach 2003, 11 Year Old, Van Wees The Ultimate 46% (Cask 800209)

Nose: Spiced fruits. Light malt. It's all fairly restrained though. After being open for a while, the fruit develops a very white wine-like quality. Water further releases some lovely bourbon fruits along with a hint of vanilla.

Palate: There's this strange, but not unpleasant, white wine (chardonnay to be exact) fruitiness and nuttiness going on. Time brings out some nice ripe stonefruit, vanilla and spice. Smoke. Water frees up the fruit again, and resolves some of those those white wine notes just a little.

Finish: Relatively long and smoky. A spiciness rises in the tail, and wraps around the smoke along with some wood bitterness. Water keeps it a touch sweeter perhaps as the peach notes linger, while broadening the finish somewhat as well.

A lovely whisky. Not complex or massive, just delicious to drink and really enjoyable to spend some time with. I guess the white wine-like notes are technically faults, but I'm willing and happy to consider them as providing additional character.

This was about 35 Euro from whiskybase - crazy cheap and fantastic value, particularly in an Australian context where, under the current regime of spirit duty and taxes, any sense of original value simply evaporates.

Good on van Wees for providing such a great value malt, amongst, it seems and must be said, a plethora of other such releases. 

Balvenie 15 Single Barrel (Bourbon Wood) No.10787

The Balvenie 15 Single Barrel Bourbon Wood has apparently been discontinued and replaced by a sherry cask version. Should it be lamented? Much like everyone else, I've drunk a bit of this over the years but I've not re-visited for quite some time, so I figured I'd give it one last spin to see how a (relatively) recent iteration from 2013 was looking.

Balvenie 15 Year Old Single Barrel (Bourbon Wood) No.10787

Nose: Honey, Manuka honey, lots of honey. With water there's honey, peaches and nectarines. Vanilla. It's become increasingly maltier as the bottle has emptied.

Palate: Honey - again and of course - but this time against a backdrop of thyme and maybe lavender. A strange oxidised white wine note follows, but largely fades after a short time. With more time and water there's also pineapple, vanilla and apricots.

Finish: Quite long. Nearly cloying in its sweetness at first. With water the finish loses some of this sweetness and seems to gain some tannin. There's still honey on top of stonefruits, but the wood is more prominent and there is something green and herbal - much like menthol - emerging halfway through the tail as well, leading to quite a bitter finish. This too has become much more pronounced as the bottle has emptied.

To be honest, I've had better versions of Balvenie 15, but based on this bottle I wont much miss this.
Simple, sweet, and increasingly not particularly enjoyable to drink.

Longmorn 12 Year Old Gordon & Macphail

This is a bottling from a few years ago - around 2008/9 I think - when it was bottled at 40%, as opposed to the current bottling's 43%. There's a few of these bottles still kicking around Dan Murphys' shelves, and as they're still at '08 prices, worth a look. Let's see...


Longmorn 12 Year Old Gordon & Macphail, 40% (circa 2008)

[This review comes from near the end of the bottle, which is now disposed of. Thought I had a photo but can't seem to find it, so here's a nice shiny pic instead.]

Nose: At first a small burst of tropical fruit, but this is quickly followed by, and washed over with, malt vinegar and wet cardboard (a very similar oak profile to the G&M Mortlach 15 actually). With a fair bit of time in the glass (and indeed the bottle, for the end of the bottle is a bit better in this regard than the beginning) some stewed fruit does also eventually emerge, and it's quite nice.

Palate: Some decent sherried fruit and lots of spices initially - cloves, cinnamon, pepper - before that wet cardboard takes over again, the latter keeping it on the dry side. Some struck match appears after a while as well.

Finish: The spices continue, and some fruit - dried apricots, orange rind - hangs about for a bit. It finishes a little dry and dusty, along with - you guessed it - wet cardboard and malt vinegar too. These last two linger longest, and remain with you as the abiding impression.

There are some nice Longmorn-y notes lurking in this malt, but unfortunately it's impossible to get past the crappy cardboardy casks that dominate the spirit. At $60 AUD, this is pretty cheap (in Australian terms), but still probably not worth the dosh.

Bladnoch 1992, 21 Year Old, Cadenhead Small Batch 54.9%

A Lowland malt this time, a region that I recently realised was embarrassingly lacking on my shelves.

I'm not entirely sure what the story is with Bladnoch at the moment - is it definitely closed, or will someone snap it up and revive production? It certainly seemed to be a startling - and frankly almost bizarre - outlier that a distillery would actually be closing amidst all the backslapping optimism of the current whisky boom, so conditioned have we become to the nearly weekly tidings of a new distillery opening or an existing one expanding.

Bladnoch 1992, 21 Year Old, Cadenhead Small Batch 54.9%

Nose: Citrus at first, along with some apples, followed by a light, nutty maltiness. Water releases some sweetness, followed by some increasingly lifted floral notes.

Palate: Piercing, narrow, grapefruit at first. A little water knocks back some of the intensity and booze. That's more like it. Papaya followed by chocolate and then a whole lotta floral and herbal notes - thyme and lavender. Herbs de Provence maybe?
It becomes oppressively chocolatey for a while actually, but after more time, and a wee bit more water, the fruit reveals itself again, with that extra dilution also serving to make the texture nice and creamy.

Finish: Neat, the finish is all citrus and booze. Let's go straight to the water. Now, the chocolate continues into the long, creamy finish, joined by some salt and spice, becoming slightly drier and drying as it fades.


A wonderfully complex Lowlander, full of character, that bursts from the glass and continues to evolve and interest as it progresses. Water is essential, to my taste.

Glenmorangie 18 Year Old

I've written before about my aversion to, and unwillingness to get caught up in, the marketing bullshit that surrounds and supports whiskies/brands like Ardbeg. Not that I don't drink nor enjoy them at all, of course, just that I try to remain resolutely impassive in the face of the (rarely convincing or interesting) PR bombardment that accompanies/presages new releases in these heady times.

Glenmorangie, Ardbeg's slutty sister, should, then, be just about anathema to me. This is the whisky, you'll all remember, that not only bears the brunt of Bill Lumsden's exotic wood obsession, but is also simultaneously subjected to the best soft-focus, glammed up marketing make-overs that LVMH's money can buy. 

Yet despite all this, I've always enjoyed the spirit profile itself. The 10 year old remains a firm favourite in the summer months, where its gentle, fruity profile - surrounded by that (increasingly virgin, I believe, but I could be wrong) American oak vanilla - works a treat, especially with an ice cube to keep the heat at bay. And I've even enjoyed some of the special releases with the stupid names. Heck, I was that bloke who bought a bottle of the Artein and kinda liked it.

It just goes to show, I guess, that we can put our innate and/or hard-won resistance and opposition to one side occasionally and enjoy something simply for what it is.

Or, it shows that I've been brainwashed (or long-range lobotomised) and soul-stripped by a corporate behemoth who is clearly better at this than I am and a worthy winner.

Glenmorangie 18 Year Old Extremely Rare 43%
This review is based on three pours from the very top of the bottle.

[Don't ask me what is so extremely rare about this bottle. They seemed in plentiful supply at the store I bought it in (sometimes I like to actually go in to a booze shop and look at actual bottles and talk to actual people. I do it so rarely it seems almost special when I make the trip - in this case to the other side of town - and it's almost always pretty satisfying, even if a little tough on the wallet), and were going at such a good price that I picked it up almost as an afterthought on the way out.]


Nose: Tropical! The first pour is full of mango, apricots - a whole bowl of tropical fruits. Some citrus notes too. Coconut and vanilla soon follow. After even more time the malt comes further to the fore, along with something a little less sweet, like a very light soy sauce.

Palate: Lots of sweet malt at first. Milk chocolate and apricots cover the palate. Orange, vanilla and sweet spices. Mouth filling, luscious Glenmo goodness. Tongue coating and rich. There is, though, perhaps the ever so slightest trace of a hole in the mid-palate.

Finish: The apricots and chocolate from the palate return as a gentle spiciness rises at the back of the palate and remains, leaving a refreshing tingling sensation on the lips. A touch of smoke swirls around too, as some wood bitterness emerges at the death and lingers.

Look, I think you need to be a fan of the house style and profile to really get maximum pleasure from this whisky as it's not a super-complex one. What it lacks in interest, though, it more than makes up for in sheer enjoyment and drinkability.

Highland Park 21 Year Old

I picked up this Highland Park 21 for around $100 AUD - about a third of the original asking price for it here in Oz - after an extremely welcome tip-off on Twitter. I'm assuming this is the later, non-Duty Free, release of this particular HP OB.

I was extremely curious as to the provenance of such a bottle - a long time in a well heated shipping container perhaps? - so I cracked it almost immediately. Cracked - or crumbled - proved to be a fairly apt description as this is exactly what the cork (damn you cork!) did upon (almost) opening. The plot thickens...

Highland Park 21 Year Old 47.5%

Nose: Wood, varnish, sherry, smoke and spices. Over ripe oranges. Much later, fresh stone fruit arrives as well. Water brings out this fresh fruit a little too.

Palate: Varnish, smoke, dried fruit and sherry spices - cloves, oranges. After a while some sweeter, lighter fruit emerges underneath too.
Water freshens things up, as the fruit brightens and the spicy texture fans out and grips. Be careful though, it can't take too much before losing both texture and intensity of flavour.

Finish: A nice transition. It becomes increasingly spicy and tingly on the back palate as the smoke builds. Long. Some wood bitterness develops right at the end and lingers, entwined with that classic HP smoke.

Time and air were/are very kind to this HP. When I first opened the bottle it was extremely woody and almost acrid. I had genuine fears for its health, particularly given the concerns born of the extraction operation I had to undertake with the aforementioned cork. Halfway down (and well before, to be fair) and the bottle has evolved into an absolute pleasure.

Is there anything more comforting than a good OB Highland Park?