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?

Laphroaig Quarter Cask 48%

It's been a while between posts.

A ridiculously relentless and stubborn cold (my espresso tasted like soil and my malts like metal - something ferrous, bizarrely enough), a (seemingly) increasingly energetic and demanding son (and another on the way very soon - what was I thinking? I blame the booze), together with an ailing relative have conspired to make time both at once scarce and seem to fly past at a blistering rate.

Anyway, at one of my visits to said relative's house I saw a bottle of this turn up one day, a Duty Free  gift from a recently returned traveller. I haven't had it for a long time so I promptly poured a measure or two into a clean empty jar (I was driving) and took it home.

Like many people, I cut my single malt teeth on peated Islay whisky and that meant - particularly in this part of the world - that I drank a lot of Laphroaig and Lagavulin (this was in the period prior to the re-birth of Ardbeg and Bruichladdich, kids, and the subsequent arms race (both in peat and marketing) that ensued). I say "a lot" in relative terms of course, as whisky at the time was still more of an 'occasion drink' for my friends and I - teenagers and young men/women that we were - as opposed to a regular session one. Regardless, the profile of Laphroaig remained the one that I associated with quality single malts, and the yardstick by which others would be measured.

Subsequent years would, of course, see an expansion in both the range of malts available here as well as in those that I myself tried and enjoyed (travel would also help broaden some of these new horizons too, of course). And thus taste, palate and expectations change and whisky exploration proper begins, meaning more whiskies from further afield (and more whisky in general, if truth be told). So much so, in fact, that I note with some bemusement that this is the first Islay whisky I've reviewed here.

It's not that I don't drink them anymore - I always have at least one open - I probably just don't drink that much of them proportionate to other malts. I'm not sure why this is. Certainly marketing bullshit - an epidemic taking on Ebola-like proportions on Islay, but prevalent on the mainland and elsewhere too of course - plays a part in this. There's only so much of this soul-destroying, brain-shrinking stuff one can take.

And then, that most Quixotic of whisky quests, the search for the perfect dram, also plays a part in this, I suspect. Whether it be the Perfect Dram Ever, or simply the perfect dram right at this moment, this tilting at whisky windmills has sent many a whisky drinker down often dead-end detours in a search for both the Ideal and, I guess, for Difference.

But then there is also simply the aforementioned taste and palate. These change, indeed are constantly changing, so that any definitive answers to questions such as "What do I like?" are necessarily shifting, elusive and, most likely, unanswerable.

In any case, I found myself contemplating this Laphroaig Quarter Cask with some interest and expectation, not having tried it since its initial release (which I think is about four or five years ago, but I may be wrong here). Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that.

Laphroaig Quarter Cask 48% (circa 2014 release)

Nose: First up it smells immediately, irresistibly, like a recently used bong. Moist ash, smoke, and plant matter. Brings back some vague memories. Rubber and TCP lie underneath. After a while some sweet malt wheezes its way in too. The rubber emerges further after a while.

Palate: Soot, peat, sweet honeyed malt, and earth. A touch of spice develops too, keeping the palate - not huge by any measure, and almost, perhaps, a little dilute - nice and lively.

Finish: Sweet, spiced honey continues from the mid-palate before smoke and ash develop and continue, keeping the finish essentially dry. It remains largely on the forepalate and tongue, and is not massively long, but it is still tasty and moreish.

A well crafted young malt that delivers everything you'd expect. I just feel that it's a little thin and lacking in depth.

Glenlivet 16 Year Old Nadurra, 53% (Batch 0911P)

The Glenlivet Nadurra, particularly the early batches, gets a lot love from whisky geeks. While I've not had too many different examples, those I have tried I have enjoyed. It's about 100 bucks here in Australia, so while that doesn't make it quite the bargain it seems to be in the US and Europe, if you get a good batch it would still seem to be money well spent.

I picked this 2011 iteration up relatively recently - late last year - from a major booze chain store where it was collecting dust on the shelf along with some other, more recent, bottlings. Serge has since quite enjoyed this particular batch, so I thought it might be time to have a look myself.

This review is from the very first pour of the bottle.

Glenlivet 16 Year Old Nadurra, 53% (Batch #0911P)

Nose: Something green and pickled gherkin-like (reminiscent, to me, of notes I found distractingly all through the Redbreast 12 CS) leaps out at you at first. Pretty boozy and sweet too. The greenness fades a little given some time, and some nutty malt comes to the fore.
Water draws out some stonefruit and tempers the greenness and booze a touch. It also tones down some of the overt sweetness a little, morphing into something like sweet soy sauce.

Palate: Hot, textural, with thick honey sweetness first up. After a little time in the glass, some fruit emerges - ripe stonefruit and maybe even some mango - layered over some nice clean malt.
Water makes it less fiery, while releasing more of that tropical fruit that time in the glass gave us .

Finish: Quite long. Warm and luscious, with some spiciness - and a little astringency - developing and lingering on the tail, once the fruit fades.
Water thins out the texture somewhat but, for me, increases the drinking pleasure. The numbing spice on the tail remains, and perhaps even lingers a touch longer.

A really nice Glenlivet that I think was vastly improved with the addition of water, which sees some lovely fruity notes finally taming that initial overt greenness. It will be interesting to see what happens to those green notes as the bottle empties.