MrWizard's Ramblings

The title refers to me almost catching up with reviews of pending open bottles and samples I have. Don’t be alarmed, there are more reviews planned ahead as well as a return of local gift exchange. With 22 samples this year this will be its own post, similar to the one I’ve covered just about a year ago… But, I digress. Here’s the usual mish-mash malt reviews from the shelf:

Dailuaine 9, Firkin Rare, K&L SP, 57.0
A Firkin Rare bottling in a ‘zebra’ custom cask of oloroso and amontillado sherry staves. Aged 9 years. The nose is both sweet and funky, with the overall impression tends towards a modern syrupy-sweetness mixed with somewhat sulfuric note instead. The palate is rather a wild ride of sweet graham cookies, toasted almonds, dark salted chocolate. Cinnamon starts mid-palate and continues into a reasonably long aftertaste. Water helps a lot here to tone down the alcohol somewhat and bring the flavor intensity down. Overall: Very complex and multi-layered though most of the flavors are surface-level primary ones. It lacks delicate secondaries, but more than makes up for that in cornucopia of bold flavors here. It’s fun, it’s young and it could be too weird for most with the age and cask combination. It’s a very loud and not-quite-in-tune band that plays songs that I do enjoy. I’ve reviewed Dailuaine before several times and have noted that it does take to sherry well as well as the fact that there doesn’t seem a shortage of their product on the market in all sorts of iterations of casks. This one seems to be an utter overkill on cask craft applied, bordering on some sort of madness, different woods, different sherries, different everything and it does seem like a very unique product… but ‘unique’ doesn’t always substitute for ‘good’. While this mostly worked out for the producer… this should be looked as an exception rather than the rule. Value: Priced at $79 for a 9 year single cask IB product… seems creeping into ‘yellow/warning’ part of the value spectrum.
https://www.klwines.com/p/i?i=1673693
Score: B (B+ w/ Water)

Tamdhu Batch Strength, Batch 2, 58.5%
“Exclusively matured in sherry casks”. This is clearly Tamdhu’s take on all-sherry matured cask proof NAS expression. Similar types of releases are also bottled by other distilleries in Speyside. The nose is lightly sulfuric, dry, sherry and alcohol. The palate, on the other hand, is quite sweet, frutty, slightly nutty and well spiced. Though it never quite reaches syrupy consistency it certainly got some viscosity in the glass. Well-oaked sweetness, vanilla, and peppery cinnamon close off respectfully long aftertaste. Overall: Warming, enjoyable and flavorful, this hits that ‘good but not memorable’ niche for me. It’s exactly the comfort drink that’s needed on a chilly evening when one wants that sweet, spiced, sherried pour. And it’s the type of pour that will be fondly remembered in generic brushstrokes as there doesn’t seem to be anything that truly stands in the glass. I personally have 3 or 4 other bottles right behind this one that will be just as good. All that said… Is it as good as the others that i’m trying real hard to not name in this niche? Yes, yes it is! Value: $130 at Total Wine solidly puts this into the the orange/high-warning area for value with comparables. This compares well with the review above… and that bottle is half the price.
Score: B+ (A- w/ water)

Glen Scotia 8, K&L SP, Rum Cask, 58.4%
An original, yet exclusive, bottling (is EB a thing, along with OB and IB?) Glen Scotia’s exclusive cask for K&L Wines # 20/329-3, aged in ex-bourbon and finished in demerara rum cask. Aside: Glen Scotia is the somewhat under-appreciated distillery in Campbeltown, the home of Springbank and Glengyle/Kilkerran. I also happen to have some mixed feelings on Glen Scotia’s bottles… I feel that their quality is inconsistent with some bottlings being amazing and some being mediocre. Anyways, back to this! It really benefits from sitting in a glass for about 10 mins to open up. The nose got salt and iodine, a very light whiff of smoke, and lots of vanilla notes between punchy alcohol and prominently fresh oak. It’s lively and pungent. Sweet vanilla, tropical fruits and minerality on the palate slide into sichuan peppers almost immediately. It’s also impressively viscous for the age. Essentially zero peat or smoke that I can detect on the palate or aftertaste. The secondaries got grassiness and funk from rum and more lovely peppers. Medium-length aftertaste follows with more of the same from the palate. Overall: A treat for the senses; this is lively, fun, enjoyable and sweet, while being punchy and spicy. Think ginger-forward tropical fruit salad. I expected it to be peated, yet it’s not. Very solid offering here. The age is a little young, but when it tastes this good… I don’t care. I will note that it mostly falls apart with water. Value: I don’t regret paying $89 for this at the retailer.
https://www.klwines.com/p/i?i=1642388
Score: B+

Glen Keith 24, The Munros, K&L SP, 55.6%
The munros line has an interesting story. The stocks were brought into NYC by a defunct importer, the gentleman owner had unfortunately passed away, and then languished in the warehouse for years. K&L was able to grab a large chunk of the stock on clearance and then offer it to the consumers are very affordable price. I don’t see a lot of Glen Keith out there under its own name as majority goes into Chivas/Ballantine’s blends. Also this is a Speyside distillery! This particular cask was distilled in 1993 and bottled in 2017. Aged in a dump hogshead which is a slightly smaller sized cask than a typical hogshead. Let’s dig in! Characteristic red apples and ripe pineapple, with some zesty freshness on the nose. Sweet and highly tropical palate, retains some of the citrus to balance out the sugar. Buttery vanilla with some hebatiousness follows. The aftertaste is a bit of a standout here that lasts for a very long time. It starts with that sweet butter, then slowly come in the spices, with peppers and gingers leading the way then slowly it fades away into a touch of sweet lime. Overall: I’m not sure here. On one hand… it’s old, it’s good tasting and it’s a fruit bomb. On the other hand… it’s not very exciting. Perhaps my palate is too pedestrian to recognize greatness? Or perhaps the flavors are wound so tightly as to lose any meaningful separation? I’m not sure. It’s an honest malt that doesn’t have anything particularly wrong with it. After having a bit of chocolate, the answer may have come to me. There’s a great deal of cask influence that hides in here. If you take away the sweetness balance, it’s basically bitter which may explain why i feel weird about this one. A grapefruit of malt I suppose. Value: A 24 year old single cask priced at $109!? Oh hell yes. A screaming good deal.
https://www.klwines.com/p/i?i=1485014 Unfortunately, the description is a copy from Glen Grant bottling and is consequently wrong :(
Score: C
Edit: I’ve adjusted the above grade down to a solid C in retrospect and ended up using the rest of the bottle in a “Canyon Blend” with some young sherry bomb leftovers… Which made the Glen Keith taste infinitely more interesting than the original version. Yay for home blends…

Hazelburn 12, Distillery Exclusive, 58.5%
Distilled on 11/6/2010. Hazelburn isn’t actually a real distillery but part of Springbank that uses historical name of a real distillery to bottle their product. I’m also led to believe that Hazelburn is typically unpeated. So basically springbank experimentation with different things. Thank you, friend Charu for the sample. Dusty and funky sweet wood on the nose. Like a dry wood pile or a whiskey aging wearhouse on low humidity, or a woodshop. The palate is super creamy and buttery, with drying vanilla notes yet again backed by somewhat bitter baking spice mix… just when you think it’s over… something magical happens and the malt absolutely explodes into tropical flavors. Coconut, pineapple, mango, it’s a literal fruit punch of sweet flavors. All the spice and the wood are gone, just like a curtain being flung aside. Which leads to sweet and lingering aftertaste with all those fruits, just like drinking light tropical punch that’s also punching you in the face with alcohol. With water the flavors are more integrated together and no longer offer that bonkers shift from dry wood to tropical sugars. Overall: It’s somewhat above average for the first half of the experience and then absolutely sublime in the second half. Which makes me a little torn on how to grade it. Still, it’s bloody good! Value: N/A. Distillery exclusive bottle for export.
It’s this guy: https://www.whiskyba … 16213/hazelburn-2010
Score: A-
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Scoring Breakdown: https://www.aerin.or … age=scores_breakdown