Coldorak's whisky blog.
We’ve reviewed rums… only twice on More Drams. I have a few samples accumulating, but it’s too hot with the third heatwave of the year in France, so let’s just have four today. We’re trying rums from a distillery located really close to where I live, Breizh’Cool, as well as an 8-year-old Hampden and a 19-year-old Caroni bottled by Valinch & Mallet.
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Yoichi is one of those distilleries we keep coming back to, not out of duty but out of sheer affection. There is something about that coastal peat, the old‑school direct coal firing, and the quietly uncompromising house style that makes even a simple line‑up feel like a mini‑masterclass in what a Japanese single malt can be when it leans into its roots rather than chasing trends. In this session, we are looking at three expressions that map out very different phases of Yoichi’s story: the Yoichi Single Malt, the Grande, the 12‑year‑old Sherry & Sweet, and the venerable 20‑year‑old.
If you have followed our previous Yoichi coverage, you will know we have already spent time with several distillery exclusives and the NAS trio that effectively stepped into the space once occupied by the 12-year-old Sherry & Sweet and its two siblings (the woody and vanillic, and the peaty and salty). This new line‑up lets us reconnect with that lost benchmark, place it alongside a more contemporary ‘Grande’ interpretation, and then look up toward the long‑aged 20-year-old as a sort of North Star for mature Yoichi character. Taken together, these three whiskies should give us a useful snapshot of how the distillery’s profile stretches from youthful, cask‑forward charm to fully developed, time‑polished depth – and why, after all these reviews, Yoichi still feels like a distillery we haven’t finished exploring.
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We take a look at five Glenrothes today: two official bottlings and three independent releases from That Boutique-y Whisky Company, Cadenhead and Signatory. Building on last year’s enjoyable duo, I’ve dug out a few samples of older Glenrothes and opened a bottle acquired at auction some time ago. With that lineup ready, let’s get started.
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Two unusual whiskies, one very singular house: this review brings together Michel Couvreur’s Overaged and Blossoming Auld Sherried as an excuse to revisit the work of one of whisky’s most idiosyncratic ‘éleveurs.’ Both bottles are rooted in the same philosophy – that the cask, its history, and the way it is handled in the cellar account for most of a whisky’s character – yet they express that philosophy in contrasting registers: Overaged as a richly old school, multi‑vintage malt, Blossoming Auld Sherried as an almost baroque hymn to first‑fill sherry.
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