The Balvenie 17 year DoubleWood

Posted on by Scotch N Sniff

17yr DoubleWood

A great thing to remember when diving into your whisky journey is that everyone’s palate is different and unique. I might like something and give it magnificent praise, while you might think that it’s the worst whisky you’ve ever had in a cup. We here at scotchNsniff give you notes and reviews in hopes of shedding light about the whisky you buy, rather than the marketing campaigns built to sell the stuff to you. With that having been said, this next bottle for review is brilliant!!

A lot of people assume that the older a whisky is, the better it is and of course that means that it can and must command a higher price tag. [Sniff] and I definitely don’t mind paying for the good stuff but we love finding a deal even more. I [Scotch] have found that I really enjoy the 17 year mark. Hibiki 17 year, delicious. The Macallan 17 year fine oak, superb. And now this, the Balvenie 17 yr DoubleWood.

Color: Having spent the majority of the time maturing in traditional oak casks then the last couple months to a year in European Sherry casks, the color is A golden matte bronze with just the edge showing copper.

Nose: I’m initially greeted with the classic Balvenie oak, soft vanilla and honeyed richness. That leads into bing cherries macerated in a liquer, almost like a kirschwasser. There are layers of green apple and turbinado sugar (less molasses-ey). A slight waft of toasted cereal and malted barley are in there after swirling. The nose is inviting and all of the aromas are well married and yet still distinct but showing no edges.

Palate: The first sip of the whisky swirling around my mouth reveals a mexican cinnamon spice, not as harsh as McCormicks cassia cinnamon, along with green almond. Dried apple skins, red and green, coated in rich vanilla toffee. Throughout the entire taste, a very mellow but very pronounced Sherry surfboard carries all of these flavors down a great wave of fruit and spices. Awesome.

Finish: The finish, although awfully short, just keeps you wanting more. There is a light spice and vanilla sherry sweetness that remains but it is short.

This is a fantastic whisky that really shows how deliciously, both the Sherry and the Oak casks, can work together to form a great whisky. The price range seems to fluctuate between $99 to around $130, and for any price within that range, would be a great deal. For a price comparison to an equally great whisky, the Macallan 17 year Fine Oak is $190, but definitely not $70 better.

Scotch, Out.

Scotch VS Scotch : Glenfiddich 26 Excellence vs Glenfarclas 25

Posted on by Scotch N Sniff
Hello there fellow scotch addict!

One of our primary goals here at ScotchNSniff is to bring you suggestions that are focused on value. We like the idea of bringing a suggestion to you that we can stand behind (and almost more importantly, one we can enjoy ourselves!).

Most people try to place scotch into two piles; one, for the rich and one for the rest of us… but in reality, value exists across the spectrum of scotches in spite of price and regardless of your budget. It’s the biggest reason we do a Christmas suggestion list each year, knowing that not everyone can afford to spend a grand on a bottle but almost anyone can come up with fifty bucks for a special occasion.

Today though, we’re going to pit a $500 bottle of Glenfiddich Excellence 26 year against the 25 year offering from Glenfarclas that carries a price tag of $225. At literally less than half of the price of the Glenfiddich, this might seem like a strange comparison but considering the whisky in the barrels took almost the same amount of time to age, it may be difficult to justify the difference in price.

Glenfiddich 26 Excellence VS Glenfarclas 25

 

In typical SnS fashion, it’s time to get on with the CNPF reviews!

COLOR: The Glenfarclas has a gorgeous wheat color where the Glenfiddich is a surprisingly light color, resembling white grape juice.

NOSE: The Glenfarclas smells strongly of spices commonly found in Sherry. Do yourself a favor, if you’ve never smelled Sherry and want to recognize it every time you smell it, grab a bottle of Pedro Ximenez (PX) Sherry and enjoy! It pours like motor oil, looks like used motor oil, and tastes like heaven! (I’m a big port fan, so fortified wines are some of my closest friends!). Nosing the Glenfiddich, after the Glenfarclas sherry monster, you’ll notice a bit of smoke that ties the fruity and floral notes together. It’s definitely a sweeter nose versus the spicy Glenfarclas.

PALATE: Imagine a candy cane that’s had almost all of its mint removed but still retains that sugary candy cane sweet flavor. Now melt that flavor into a velvety butter and place it on your tongue. Now roll it around finding some smoke and some vanilla mixed into softly charred oak along the way. Now breathe in deep the spices and oak. If you read that with your imagination, you just tasted the Glenfiddich 26.

Now imagine a tannic sherry (really) with its slew of spices setting up base camp on your tongue. Christmas spices have found a place near the middle of your tongue. Pepper parked itself near the back of your tongue. Cinnamon, nutmeg, and Christmas have found their way to the tip of your tongue. Now imagine all of these camps suffered from a massive landslide into your gullet as you sip them down. I hope you love sherry because it’s your new best friend!

FINISH: The Glenfarclas 25 finishes with hints of fresh chocolate, like you’d smell at the Hershey factory… and that chocolate just melted into a bowl of sherry. This is wonderful. The Glenfiddich 26 has a wonderful finish that starts with spice and oak, but slowly and linearly gives way to fruit sugar. Quite tasty.

So who wins out? Who wins this installment of SvsS? As I’ve said with other SvsSs, you can’t actually go wrong with either of these bottles. It’s a matter of personal choice when you’re looking for a specific flavor to enjoy when you sit down with a dram. If you’re looking for value though, it’s difficult to say the extra year in oak bourbon barrels is worth the $275 price difference. If you love sherry and Christmas spices, you can pick up two bottles of the Glenfarclas AND a bottle of Glenfiddich’s fruit-bomb-that-is-its 12 year for the same price as the 26 excellence. Again though, we’re talking a very different set of flavors. The Glenfiddich 12 isn’t in the same league when it comes to complexity of flavors though it is very good. It’s just different and in a different world of value.

So which would you choose? What do you think about this comparison?

-[Sniff]

Filibuster a bust? Not exactly…

Posted on by Scotch N Sniff

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As I sit and sip this delicious bourbon, I’m reminded that the magic of tasting whisk(e)y is for everyone and that it’s not magic. I’m also reminded, as I sip this Filibuster Dual Cask Straight Bourbon Whiskey, sometimes the taste of a whisk(e)y IS magical. Below, you can see exactly which batch and bottle I happened to pick from the shelf at my local liquor spot. Batch nine and bottle number 251. Or 637. Or 7051. Either way, I liked this bottle so much I raved about it to some friends and picked up two more bottles. At under $40 a bottle, I couldn’t resist!

 

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My big, fat, bourbon-y mistake.

I grabbed a bottle from batch ten, took it to a friend’s house, and ended up eating my own suggestion. How did a magical bottle full of toasted, honey-glazed bananas drizzled in spices and served over fresh-fired oak turn into a set of flavors that I can’t even bring myself to type in good conscience! What happened? I ran to another liquor store and grabbed a bottle, this time from batch eleven… Skunked! WHAT?! How did batch nine get so much right and everything following it get so much so wrong?

I can’t express how much this causes us to appreciate consistency across batches and the noses and palates of some of the great malt masters. Here at ScotchNSniff, we would love to be able to give great recommendations for bottles, especially at this price range, but we’ve learned a valuable lesson thanks to our Filibuster experience. If we ever give a recommendation and you find yourself wildly at odds with out review, please let us know. We’d love to grab another bottle and keep folks updated on the real flavors found in real bottles.

(I originally started this blog post to talk about the origins of this “local” distillery but got carried away by the tasting, as you can see.)

That said, we tried the rye (Bat.6 Bot.2980) and love it…
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And we tried the Sherry Finished triple cask (Bat.1 Bot. 2789) and absolutely can’t stand it…
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We’ll have full reviews up soon for these bottles and hope we can save you a few bucks and better spend a few other bucks. I know [Scotch] picked up a couple of differently batched bottles and I’ll probably do the same so we can get to the bottom of this variation of flavors… To be continued!
-[Sniff]

Scotch VS Scotch: Oban 14 VS Oban Little Bay

Posted on by Scotch N Sniff

Oban SVS0

Welcome back all you whisky fans to another exciting installment of #scotchvsscotch

In today’s battle royale, we pit a solid, smokey, 14 yr Oban (pronounced Oh-Bun) with its relatively new little brother, Oban (remember Oh-Bun) Little Bay. Which one will end up on top, which will we be running to the stores to grab another bottle of, or will we want to drink them at all after this review?

Color: Both of the contenders in this arena are very similar in color. A light toasted wheat or straw, with the Little Bay having a slightly deeper toasty color, probably from the time spent in smaller casks (a large or rather smaller, depending upon how you look at it, differentiating factor between the two).

Nose: Starting off with the Oban 14yr, I’m instantly transported to a sea coast with a little salinity in the air. A low fog of wood smoke rolls over the water, dissipating as it reaches land. I hear seagulls off in the distance. Orange blossom flowers, a rich honeyed stone fruit and white pepper are in the background behind the even layer of smoke. Sweet gentle smoke. Next up is the Little Bay. This nose is completely different from the standard 14yr. Incredibly sweet nose, like stuffing an un-toasted marshmallow in your nose and then inhaling through it. A golden syrup and sultana raisin is nestled in the nose along with mint and a fresh tobacco leaf, not dried and smoked, but a vegetal herbal hint. Going back and forth between the two I find that I enjoy nosing the 14yr a lot more after nosing the Little Bay. A certain kerosene/Sauternes component comes out in the Little Bay that I do enjoy, but find a little harsh.

Palate: First up is the Little Bay. Thank goodness the incredible sweetness was only in the nose and not on the palate. Herbal, minty and lemon peel, like you’d have with your morning espresso. A light whiff of smoke just in the tail end while breathing out. The flavor and mouth feel is rich and full and a little bit of wood sourness comes out with it swirling in my mouth. No need for water but a little does increase the floral qualities and lemon. Interesting. Now for the Oban 14! A sweet smokey arrival as it dances around my tongue. Bran biscuits with smoke, honey with smoke and a great creaminess….with smoke. The rolling fog of smoke I spoke about in the nose is ever present but always arriving with another sweet component. Don’t add water to either, just enjoy them neat. The smoke seems to be a delivery service bringing sweets door to door, like a 75 year old smoking-veteran-girl-scout delivering Somoas, Do-si-do’s and Rah-Rah raisins.

Finish: The finish on both of them seem to be relatively mid-length. The smoke on the 14 yr stays around for a while even when you brush your teeth before bed, but the spices and sweets leave relatively soon. Where as the Little Bay’s sweetness lingers with the whiffs of smoke near the tail end of the finish. I enjoy the whiffs with sweetness over London Fog.

You may be asking yourself, well who wins in the end [Scotch]? And my answer to you would be…. They’re both winners, because they individually cover different spectrums of the scotch rainbow. The 14yr is mellow and full bodied, and the smoke is gentle and welcoming. The Little Bay is sweet and bright with very very light smoke, just near the tail end of the finish. In my opinion the Little Bay is a perfect introduction into the smoke, that the Oban 14yr has to offer. Sometimes it’s not a competition and you should just enjoy both! Slainte!

Scotch Out!