Coldorak's whisky blog.
Reviews from official whisky bottlings from distilleries
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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Third whiskey of the range, Bushmills Black Bush contains more than 80% of 7 to 9-year-old Bushmills single malt, and is matured mostly in ex-Oloroso Spanish oak casks. As the two previous ones, it’s bottled at 40% ABV and probably chill-filtered and coloured.
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Second whiskey of the range, Bushmills Red Bush is a non-aged statement blend of single malt and grain whiskey aged exclusively in first fill, medium-charred ex-bourbon casks. As with the original, no mention regarding chill-filtering and colouring, so expect both, and it’s bottled at 40% ABV. You can find it around 23€ in France and £20 in the UK.
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After the tour I did of the Warenghem Distillery, we went to the tasting room upstairs in the visitor centre, to taste two drams: the Armorik Sherry Cask first, then the Armorik Double Maturation reviewed here.
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After the tour I did of the Warenghem Distillery, we went to the tasting room upstairs in the visitor centre, to taste two drams: the Armorik Sherry Cask reviewed here, and the Armorik Double Maturation.
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Bimber Distillery is a quite recent distillery operating from London, England. Founded in 2015, they buy their two-row malted barley (Concerto and Laureate) from a single farm near Hampshire and have it malted by Warminster Maltings. Then, they distill their spirit with two direct-fire small copper pot-stills made by a Spanish company, Hoga: a 1000 litre wash still, called Doris, and a 600 litre spirit still called Astraeus. Distillation of whisky began in May 2016, and the first casks filled on the 26th of May, 2015 have now reached 3 years of age. Quite a journey since the distilling of moonshine in Poland by the grandfather of the master-distiller of Bimber Distillery, Darius Plazewski. And by the way, the translation for “moonshine” in Polish is… “Bimber”.
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When I really got into Whisky, I had the opportunity to go on a trip to Scotland for the Spirit of Speyside festival.
We were celebrating Coldorak’s birthday and at the same time planning to enjoy Scotland and its distilleries. And boy we did.
One of the event we attended was Glen Moray’s May 4th 2019. May the fourth anyone? It was cohosted by Glen Moray and the SMWS that I didn’t know before then.
The SMWS is an independent bottler somehow atypical: it’s a club and you need to be a member if you want to partake in the goodies. It releases almost only single casks, cask strength, non chill-filtered whiskies at a very affordable price.
I was intrigued with the SMWS and it didn’t take long for me to commit myself to become a member. Fast forward to August 2019 and I finally did my first tasting session with the Parisian members at Mersea.
Balblair distillery has been having a special feeling for me for a long long time. I discovered this distillery with this very same vintage, at a time when they still released whiskies based on vintage and not a count of age. A long time ago, I was running a few video-game servers for a French geek community so that we could easily play together. When I turned 30, regular players from this community gifted me this bottle, from my vintage, and that’s how Balblair arrived on my radar. Ten years later, I’ve turned 40 several months ago, and I wanted to have that same bottle again. After some search in several auctions, I finally bought it on an auction website for quite an expensive price, but it didn’t matter. I had to have it once more, to celebrate my new decade.
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