Coldorak's whisky blog.
All reviews of whisky, whiskey, bourbon or new make!
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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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.