Coldorak and Ainulindalë's blog about whisky.
As I did last year when I was even newbier in whisky than I am now, I bought a Whisky advent calendar. Last year I bought the Premium Whisky Advent Calendar from Drinks by the Dram, and this year, I chose to buy That Boutique-y Whisky Company’s 2019 Advent Calendar 2019. And this time, I brought Ainulindalë aboard, as I had him buy one too, so that we can do our “double notes” reviews. Hmm I should trademark this.
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On Friday 22 of November, I organized a small blind tasting with friends I had sent samples to months ago. After a few last minutes cancellations, we were finally able to have that tasting, and the theme was 4 Nikka Yoichi non-age-statement single malts: the classic Single Malt one available in your usual liquor shop, and three distillery exclusives named Woody & Vanillic, Sherry & Sweet and Peaty & Salty. I’ll come back to it later, but tl;dr: it was a great evening, and the drams were really good. Oh, and I said blind tasting: well, kind of. We knew what drams we were going to taste, but had no idea of the order. Myself included. But let’s talk about Yoichi first.
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As I would reveal at the end of the tasting when everyone would have made their final guesses, the fourth and last dram we tasted was the Yoichi Single Malt Peaty & Salty. It is a distillery exclusive bottled at 55% abv, without age statement, in a 50 cl bottle. I paid 130€ on auction for this bottle including 60€ in shipping cost as the seller was from Hong-Kong.
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As I would reveal at the end of the tasting when everyone would have made their final guesses, the third dram we tasted was the Yoichi Single Malt Sherry & Sweet. It is a distillery exclusive bottled at 55% abv, without age statement, in a 50 cl bottle. I paid 110€ on aution for this bottle, including 60€ of shipping cost as the seller was from Hong-Kong.
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As I would reveal at the end of the tasting when everyone would have made their final guesses, the second dram we tasted was the Yoichi Single Malt NAS. It is widely available, bottled at 45% abv in a 70cl bottle. You can find it at Master of Malt and The Whisky Exchange for about £75, and in France 75€ on Amazon.fr or LMDW.
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During a blind tasting with friends, and as I would reveal at the end of the tasting when everyone would have made their final guesses, the first dram we tasted was the Yoichi Single Malt Woody & Vanillic. It is a distillery exclusive bottled at 55% abv, without age statement, in a 50cl bottle. I bought it for 120€ on auction, half the price being shipping as it came from a Hong-Kong seller.
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Two years ago, I was still completely “alone” in my then simple appreciation of whisky. I had only a dozen of bottles (yes, only one dozen), I was sharing a glass with friends that would come at my home but didn’t know about exchanging samples, I was a complete newbie, by myself in this big whisky world.
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This evening, I tasted for the first time an Arran 14 year-old, or any whisky from this distillery for that matter. That is the thing when you’re still quite a newbie in the whisky amateur world: you still have the joy of discovering something new for you, though you may have prejudice, but sometimes you’ll regret starting this late, especially with today’s prices and secondary market. Not that it’s a problem for this dram though, fortunately.
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A few days ago, the #MiniTasting gang had a minitasting of 3 Bushmills, and since I had two out of three, I decided to crash the party. Bushmills is an Irish distillery that does triple distillation to create its whiskey with an e. They’re not the only one to triple distil, but what does triple distillation mean, and what’s the difference with the classic double distillation that is used by most distilleries? Then we’ll review three Bushmills from the lower end of their range.
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This whiskey is the entry level of the core range. It’s a blend of triple distilled malt whiskey and grain whiskey aged in a combination of ex-bourbon and ex-sherry casks, with the malt part being above 50% of the blend. It’s bottled at a cheap 40% ABV and is probably chill-filtered and coloured. It’s sold for around 17-20€ in France, and £16-20 in the UK.
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