Coldorak's whisky blog.
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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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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Early september, I discovered there was events where you could taste SMWS whiskies as well as cigars – and boy what that an excellent discovery.
This time around, the French ambassadors reached out to me and asked me whether I would be interested in an “exclusive” session where we would taste a whisky selected just for France – SMWS 7.217 – Joie de vivre. This session would again be at Gentleman 1919, which I’m starting to love more and more.
Obviously, I accepted – and I can only thank them for that as I missed the Whisky Live due to friends having the bad idea of having their wedding that week-end. This was then the occasion for me to forget about the sheer pain it caused and soothe my broken heart by downing some drams.
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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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