This series of SnapShot posts derives from whisky exchanges with various folks who are part of what is colloquially known as the Whiskyfabric, a term encompassing the online community of whisky writers, creators, reviewers and enthusiasts on social media. Over the past couple of years, we here at Scotchology have exchanged whiskies via mail with a number of fascinating people around the world and collected the tastings in a series of posts based on some loose collective logic. This post contains various whiskies from around the world, predominantly Canada, France and Italy. Scotches get their own post here. Ever wonder what it’d be like to sit down to taste with us in the moment, with all our bias and palate preferences at the ready? Read on to get a close approximation!
Forty Creek Barrel Select |Link|- Big fruit nose. Ripe yellow plum, Japanese plum wine. Maybe a little stale pineapple. And then things change once it hits your tongue. Like The Crying Game from nose to palate, with a surprise on the tongue! The pineapple from the nose returns, along with a waxy licorice. Mid-palate of BPA and packing tape, with no finish. Like a piña colada crawled into a car tire to die. Starts with promise and goes from let down to horror.
Maison Benjamin Kuentz (D’un Verre Printanier) |Link| – Translates roughly to “Out of a Glass of Springtime”. The box (in French) is all poetry and nothing concrete. Very vegetal. Strong apple on the palate and pear with a spicey finish. None of the elements are super strong but yet not light enough to miss enjoying them. Very springtime. Daffodils and bluebells and buttercups, the first sundress of the year. So fresh.
Nikka Taketsuru Pure Malt |Link|- Complexity without heavyness, light bodied yet complex. Definitely felt like the odd duck out during these tastings but happily we have a full review from last spring’s World Whisky Day tasting.
Old Pulteney 13 Year British Columbia Liquor Stores Single Cask #229 |Link| – Wintergreen and Meyer lemon on the nose, very strongly. Light and fruity on the palate, and the wintergreen persists throughout into the finish. With a little time in the glass, the lemon comes forward and the wintergreen retreats, eventually becoming tangerine. Springtime florals abound. When you add enough sugar to the lemonade that the sourness goes away. The lemonade without the acid. This smells like teen spirit.
Puni Nova |Link|- Love the unique bottle design. Apple, wood polish, late honey, too much oak, too much like a hefeweizen spice. It feels out of control right out of the bottle. Letting it sit in the glass and oxidize a bit really helps on the nose, settling down into a pleasant honeyed apple on the outset, only getting to some oaky notes if you really breathe it in. Reminds us of The Compass Box Aisla in some ways. The palate is hot right away. The honey on the nose comes right after but dissipates almost immediately, followed by some light vanilla coupled with oak that do not complement one another. There’s a light spice running throughout that is hard to pin down, unrelated to the whisky’s youth, but still feels underdeveloped. Everything feels light. Might do well mixed with a sparkling wine. Perhaps it is tuned to an Italian palate? What is this whisky trying to say?
Puni Alba |Link| – Aged for three years in Sicilian Marsala casks and finished in ex-Islay casks. A little muted fresh out of the bottle, like listening to a conversation where you can’t really make out the details. Oxidization and time do help a tad. Still, some fuzzy peat and whispers of smoke, like smelling your coat a few days after getting home from the bar. Deeper in the nose some peat comes to the fore and the smoke disappears. The palate is full Listerine underlay, with hardly any relation between the nose and palate in the first few sips. Chewing it a bit lets the peat filter back in but it is still extremely butyric. If there was a way to tone the acidic elements enough to let the other flavors besides fuzzy peat come and play, we might be on to something here. The ex-Marsala influence seems totally absent, and the ex-Islay finish does not do enough to compensate for the rawness of the base spirit. Stylistically related at the core to the Nova.
Rozelieures Fumé Peated |Link| – French peated single malt, aged in ex-Fino sherry casks. Light smoke on the nose with a definite undertone of peat and a touch of honey. An earthy, raw honey. But not peat like Scottish peat. There’s some evergreen, almost fern. Smells like the forests of the Pacific Northwest. It doesn’t have the sweetness of Scottish peat. It’s greener somehow. The transition between smoke and honey is tobacco, the sweet side of smoke. The peated cask influence disappears once it hits your tongue. The palate blossoms with integrated floral elements and damp wood. The floral and boreal play together. It’s woodsy, delightful. So unique. Transitions gracefully back into a peat finish with a kiss of smoke before dissipating into dreams. The aftertaste is a lingering of smoke, the “I love camping” whisky. All the shifts are seamless. There are no rough edges. This is a sexy whisky.
Shelter Point Artisinal Single Malt |Link| – Fascinating nose, fruit dancing with floral. Almost a sweet Japanese plum mixed with an orange blossom. More toward an aromatic plum. Just gorgeous. The more it sits out, the more plum-y it gets. Reminds us a little of the high floral of a Pityvaich on the palate, even if it finishes abruptly with toast. A little too sudden for our preference, the missing finish makes us wonder what is missing that can’t carry the nose and frontal palate through. What a beautiful nose and a great start to the palate. We hope the distillery can fill in the missing pieces in the future. We’re really happy to try this.
Shelter Point French Oak Double Barrel, Batch #4 |Link| – Collaboration with Quail’s Gate Winery. Finished in ex-wine casks from Quail’s Gate Foch Reserve. Two-row barley. A great nose, some of the Aristinal floral notes balanced with oak tones. On the palate it is very rough. It’s chewy, like oak chips chewy. It’s very warm, like something you would drink to warm yourself up if outdoors too long in January in Canada. There’s a bit of a finish here, though not strong, influenced from the European oak wine cask with some sweet winter grape notes, causing salivation on the sides of the tongue. The sweetness of Foch varietal minus the wobbly legs. A little fiery, but you can acclimate. The building blocks are clearly there but it really needs more time. Bet if it were aged a little longer, the rough edges would smooth out nicely.
Shelter Point Smoke Point |Link| – Limited Edition, single grain, aged in American ex-bourbon casks for 5 years and finished in ex-Islay casks for 8 months. Malted and un-malted barley. The same delightful plummy nose gives way to light smoke underneath before descending into peat and brine elements on the tongue before again sliding into oblivion suddenly. We wonder if this needs more time in the cask, again the finish not feeling integrated with the base spirit. The Shelter Point nose is so recognizable but it is couched in the brine and smoke of the Islay cask, acting more like a chimera. Everything is present rather than blended into one, like breezes going in opposite directions. Here argues the benefit of what additional aging might do, as it makes us wish for a little more integration of the elements together. A fascinating experiment. Please continue!
Spicebox Chocolate Spiced Whisky Blended Rye |Link|- Our first flavored whisky. What in the actual fuck? Over-manufactured chocolate on the nose, strongly. If you can wade past all the Hershey, there’s a weak rye scent that does not play well with the ketones. Really hesitant to taste but we’re doing this for you, folks. Chocolate cordial melts into medium-spiced grain mash, leaving quite an oily coating on the mouth with that chocolate aftertaste that fades to vanilla syrup. And paraffin at the tail end. There is horror here, like Cthulhu getting lost on his way to a Christmas party. None of these flavors is inherently bad in and of themselves but is something we do not look to have in any shape or form encased in a whisky at all. Please give this back to Yog-Sothoth.
Two Brewers Peated Batch 3 Bottle 198/1750 |Link|- Very subtle nose, a pleasant fruity nose that’s hard to pin down. Echoes of muted fruit, with the barest curl of exhaled smoke on the periphery. Letting it sit in the glass brings out a light wood note, the smell of fresh sawdust in the air. Abstract on the tongue. A flavor lab produced something with peat in the background along with stale smoke. There’s a hint of grain on the palate, like a beer that turns sour at the end. The grain taste turns bitter rather quickly if you let it sit on the tongue long. A slightly dish soapy taste and a stale finish. It’s all over so quickly, like a flash of garbled flavors and then it’s gone.
Conclusion: Many thanks to everyone who contributed these portions to us. It was fun to run through a dizzying array of whiskies from so many different countries, a testament to the great flexibility of the spirit. A special shout out to the Whisky Belles in Edmonton, Geordie Moski out of Vancouver, and Mark from the Black Country Whisky Society in the UK, who’ve all been generous with their friendship and samples. May you be similarly gifted. Keep an eye on this space for another round of tasting soon, wherein we journey back to Scotland!
