NAS Archives - More drams, less drama

Glenmorangie Signet

3rd December 20232nd December 2023Coldorak

Glenmorangie is a whisky distillery located near Tain, in the Ross-shire region of Scotland (Northern Highlands). It was founded in 1843 by William Matheson, who bought a license to produce whisky and installed two second-hand gin stills at the Morangie farm. The distillery was named after the farm and the name Glenmorangie was registered as a trademark. It is famous for its tall neck stills, the tallest in Scotland. The distillery loves to experiment with their whisky and by the past they’ve played around with yeast, malt and wood, and even built an experimental distillery last year to experiment even more. The Glenmorangie Distillery has become one of the top five most popular Scotch whisky distilleries in the world. Glenmorangie Signet, even though being part of the core range, is still linked to those experiments as we are going to see.

Yamazaki Distiller’s Reserve, 12yo and 18yo

29th March 202229th March 2022Coldorak

Yamazaki Distillery is where it all began for whisky in Japan. I’ve written before about Masataka Taketsuru, who went to Scotland to study how whisky was made, then would help Shinjiro Torii create in 1923 the first whisky distillery in Japan: Yamazaki. Located near Kyoto, the distillery sits in a quiet place, surrounded by nature and greenery, and with excellent quality water, required to make whisky. Whilst it was founded in 1923, Yamazaki was released as a single malt only in 1984. Though I couldn’t book a tour (already full) when I went there, back in 2018, I could, however, visit the museum, which is free, and features more than 7.000 bottles in its whisky library. I’ll show you around, and then we’ll review the Yamazaki Distiller’s Reserve, the 12-year-old and the 18-year-old.

Bimber Underground Tweet Tasting

28th June 20212nd August 2021Coldorak

Bimber distillery released a new series to celebrate the London Underground, a great engineering project of the 19th Century, and together with Steve Rush they offered to try them during a new Tweet Tasting. Bimber was one of my first ever Tweet Tastings almost two years ago (already!) and since then I’ve been really following what they do and bought a few bottles they released. So you can imagine I was quite excited at the prospect of trying these four whiskies, especially since thanks to Brexit and wouldn’t try my luck grabbing one by fear of having hide and seek with customs and annoying shipping companies.

Old and new Nikka Taketsuru

14th September 202014th September 2020Coldorak

The Nikka Taketsuru range is a good example of the problem Japanese whisky is facing. And I mean the true Japanese whisky, the one distilled in Japan, not the “bottle whatever and slap some Japanese kanji” fake Japanese whisky crap. As you’ve read a thousand times, there is a shortage of old Japanese whisky stocks, that is here for a long time (you can’t accelerate years, even though, and especially with 2020, you’d sometimes want to). And the demand for Japanese whisky is so high that the current production is not even enough to cover the needs. Thus, Nikka announced last year expansions for its Miyagikyo and Yoichi distilleries to fight shortage. But since whisky takes time to mature, the shortage will probably stay at least until 2030… And earlier this year, they sadly announced the total discontinuation of the 17, 21 and 25-year-old Nikka Taketsuru, their pure malt blend of Yoichi and Miyagikyo juices, named after the founder of the Nikka group. I won’t go into the history of Nikka and Masataka Taketsuru as I’ve briefly covered that previously on the Yoichi blind tasting I organized with friends. They also announced they would renew their NAS edition of Taketsuru, and thus today we’re going to review the old and new Nikka Taketsuru NAS, as well as the discontinued Taketsuru 21-year-old.

Mackmyra Jaktlycka review

7th September 20207th September 2020Coldorak

It’s that time of the year already: the new seasonal release from Mackmyra. This “autumn” (yes, we’re still in summer right now but not for long), the famous Swedish single malt celebrates, and I quote: ‘autumn, berry foraging and the treasures to be found in the ancient Swedish woods’. So, what is really behind the pretty story? Something original again as we can always expect from Mackmyra. This time, part of the casks they used for the maturation held Swedish berry wine from the craft producer Grythyttan. To be more precise, Mackmyra used a berry wine called Jakt, a dry red wine made from wild blueberries and lingonberries. I have to admit I have absolutely no idea what taste it may have. As a French bloke, I’m quite more used to wine made from grapes, especially since we Frenchies are the best in the world at it (and if you disagree, it’s okay, you have the right to be wrong 😂). But enough with that, let’s go review this Mackmyra Jaktlycka.