Blair Athol Archives - More drams, less drama

The Easy Sipper, Brig O’Perth & Pintail

5th February 20235th February 2023Coldorak

It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to participate to a Tweet Tasting, thanks to Brexit and the pain it is to ship whisky, even samples, from the UK to Europe, especially France. More paperwork, duties, taxes… many distilleries don’t include European tasters any more in their Tweet Tastings. Sometimes just French ones, because it’s even more of a pain here, thanks to Customs and our taxes agency. No thank you to all those responsible! But Keith Bonnington, The Whisky Cellar founder, that we now know very well here, wanted me to be able to participate anyway, so he had the same tasting pack (and tee-shirt) sent to me as the other tasters. Thanks again Keith! No Whisky Cellar release this time, but five drams, four whiskies and one rum, from his other brands: The Easy Sipper, Brig O’ Perth and Pintail.

Creations 1996 Light Fruity Syrupy Cadenhead's

Creations 1996 Cadenhead’s

17th December 202217th December 2022Coldorak

The Cadenhead’s Creations range consisted of small batch blends, blended malts, and blended grains, with a maximum of 3 casks used in each blend. Sometimes, these were single cask releases. Featuring an old style dumpy bottle, this range saw twenty releases until 2019, when it was stopped. The Creations range included a variety of ages and the strength of each bottling was determined solely by taste. The Cadenhead Creations range was known for being particularly innovative and interesting among Cadenhead’s releases. These bottlings were not chill filtered or artificially coloured. We’re reviewing today one of them, the Creations 1996 Light Fruity Syrupy.

SMWS Global Gathering 2022

3rd October 20225th October 2022Coldorak

Yesterday 30th of September was the Scotch Malt Whisky Society Global Gathering 2022 event. It’s virtual tasting with John McCheyne, SMWS’s global brand ambassador, and he was joined by five people who were part of the selection of the five drams of the night. Each dram was selected by a tasting panel from a specific country, and chose a name for it in their own language. Then, each dram’s tasting was led by the local brand ambassador, starting… in his or her native language. As it started with the whisky selected by the French panel, some people who joined a bit late were quite surprised to hear the tasting in French, before realising it would switch back in English a few minutes later. Obviously, I had ordered a tasting pack in order to join, so let’s go review those five whiskies chosen for the SMWS Global Gathering 2022.

Quick review: Blair Athol 21yo batch 5 TBWC

5th December 201921st July 2020Coldorak

Behind the fifth window of That Boutique-y Whisky Company’s 2019 Advent Calendar we will be reviewing each day until the 24th of December was hidden a Blair Athol 21 year-old batch 5, bottled at 51.5% abv by that Boutique-y Whisky Company. Blair Athol is located approximately half-way on the A9 from Edinburgh to Inverness, and is the most visited distillery owned by Diageo. It is mostly used for Bell’s blend, with only one official bottling, a 12 year-old in the Flora & Fauna collection, a brief apparition sometimes in Diageo’s Special Releases, and a NAS exclusive to the distillery. While better known than Teaninich (see yesterday’s post), it has a way smaller capacity of production at about 2.8 million litres of pure alcohol per year. I could not find any website selling the Batch 5 of this Boutique-y’s Blair Athol unfortunately.