Well, as live as it’s going to get without using the YouTube live function 😛
We have a written review of this that is much more in depth but we wanted to do a short video review of it for folks who don’t enjoy reading or just want to see our ridiculous personalities at work! Slainté!
I’m pretty sure beer is gross. 🙂
Yes, it’s [Sniff] here and though [Scotch] is a big fan of hearty beers, I personally have enjoyed less than half a dozen in my lifetime. I was born for whisky! So before I jumped into a review of the Glenfiddich IPA experimental cask, I tried one. I tried the “Goose Island IPA” and you know what? I actually liked it! [Scotch] says the bitter units in it are low for an IPA but I can’t tell the difference lol.
Lacking any bitterness at all, it’s odd that Glenfiddich would decide to age some of its distillate in IPA barrels. Well, whisky barrels that they threw the locally sourced IPA into before they poured out the IPA and filled more properly with whisky! (What happened to that IPA?) It seems Brian Kinsman’s goal was to add some citrusy-hopsy flavors to the mix of Glenfiddich’s typical tree fruit house of flavor.
On to the review!
The Color
Can we just call this beer brown tainted gold?
The Nose
A mash up of tart apple and a few twists of citrus zest, it’s a nose that any whisky lover could love.
The Palate
On the palate the whisky is light and quite spicy to start, like the sherry spice of Glenfarclas without the sherry flavors. Instead the flavors are replaced by, get this… zesty citrus and enjoyable hops! It’s almost like Glenfiddich wrote the story of this whisky AFTER the experiment was done! 🙂 On a less snarky sounding note, the apple and pear notes you may be accustomed to enjoying from the triangle shaped bottle maker are a bit more subdued to make way for this new meld of flavors. A few of the flavors are a bit doughy, also. This is definitely unique and an instantly recognizable whisky.
The Finish
Not being a regular beer drinker, I know that holding beer in your mouth for half a minute causes it to fizz up like a mouthful of bubble-bath bubbles. The finish on this IPA concoction reminds me a lot of that fizz without any actual fizz which is very interesting. Almost like the flavors of that fizz (hops, is that you?!) are very present here too. But not in a typical off-putting beer type of way.
Final Thoughts
Admittedly not being a beer drinker, this bottle of whisky got me to drink three bottles of Goose Island IPA. Now THAT is saying something. I guess I just needed a familiar format to deliver the taste of beer. So if you’re not a beer drinker and you’re looking for your “in” into beer, you may have found your bridge. And if you’re a beer drinker and you’re looking for a whisky to love, you’re welcome. 🙂
It takes a village to make some whiskey!
There’s a new local distillery in Maryland that’s now open to the public! Introducing Lost Ark Distillery in Montgomery county! Who’s not excited about a new source for local hooch??
Lost Ark was started by and is run by Brad and Andy. They’re two local guys who work in IT that got the crazy idea in their head to start a distillery. To get started they took a class offered by a small distillery in Idaho that walks you through the process of creating whiskey from grain to bottle. Thank goodness Brad’s mother-in-law works for a major airline and was able to get them tickets to fly out there for free! One business plan and loan later and voila, here we are.
I showed up at their release party for the Lady Anne white rum that they’ve created and had fun with their mini-tour and Q&A. They also had bottles for sale and samples of the rum on site but no cocktails as a different type of alcohol related license is required for that, they said. I asked them about their future offerings plan and they hope to have some spiced rum out before Christmas, a one year bourbon, and a two year straight bourbon.
Another interesting tidbit is their drive to source their ingredients locally. From the corn and wheat they’ve purchased from local farms to the sugar that they purchased from Domino sugar up the road, they’re trying their best to keep it craft. They’re running all of these ingredients through their single four plate column still making batches one thousand gallons at a time. Thanks to the small size of these batches, it should be interesting to see what they churn out.
All of that said, I still haven’t written up a formal review on the bottle of Lady Ann white rum that I purchased. I’m not sure if it was aged in plain oak casks or their stainless tanks but it had those “young” distillate notes along with a bit of that molasses they sourced from Domino sugar. I think it’d be fine for mixing but I imagine it’ll be better with age in a charred barrel. I guess we’ll soon see.
We’ll try to keep on top of the local distilleries and their offerings!
Happy Hump Day fellow scotch lovers!!
We’ve got a new youtube video about age and a few examples of why it really doesn’t matter. It might be as contentious a topic as No Age Statement bottles!
Cheers and enjoy!
Has it been two weeks!? Then it’s time for a video!! Welcome to our latest youtube video and our first “Unicorn” review. We’ve written a review about the PVW23 before but this time, we live taste test it and talk about some of the other details that make the bottle tasty!
[Sniff] : (hands dad a pour without telling him what it is)
Dad : …
Dad : It’s like biting into the bottom of a mushroom. Freshly picked.
[Sniff] : Ew.
Dad : Exactly!
It smells like shame. Sweat, bad decisions, and shame. It tastes like more of the same with just a splash of sugar, almost as if a “thank you very much” is all that needs to be said to the builders of the Great Wall of china. Something tells me that even if I poured a cup of sugar into this glass, nothing would help this medicine to go down.
The nose will instantly take you to Ardbeg-land when you crack the cork. For the peat lovers, this is what heaven smells like. To the rest of us with working palates, this is what deli meat on the verge of turning and “stanky peat” smell like.
On the palate, the first thing you taste is peat. It’s impossible to miss. Like that monster standing behind you as you read this review. The brine salt is the next wave to splash the tongue and for just a microsecond, something sweet tries to peek above the peaty waves. But it’s a hopeless act of desperation. A valiant effort wasted in vain as the tsunami of peat winds up to destroy all tastebuds in its path.
The finish is not unlike the ending of The Notebook. If you’re a peat lover, you’re probably the typical woman weeping in joy over the love she’s just witnessed. If you’re an anti-aficionado of the peat, you’re probably feeling more like a guy who hates rom-coms. You’re also crying but those are real tears of shame and sadness.
So how can I bring a positive light to this dram?
Well, honesty it doesn’t hold a candle to the few peated offerings that I do enjoy. Laphroaig Triple Wood and Ardbeg Dark Cove have less peat and are 673,284 times more enjoyable. They actually suffer from a wonderful issue called “balance”. lol. If you fancy the typical Speysider, you’ll enjoy those two offerings. Even the Lagavulin 16 lacks what destructive force this bottle contains.
Which makes sense.
They didn’t name it “The Peat Monster” for nothing.
Enjoy it at your own risk.
Hey there fellow scotch and whiskey lovers! [Scotch] and I just published a little video to help you with your Christmas shopping for the whisk(e)y lovers in your life!! Watch the video and let us know what you’re looking to get for your loved ones this year!
Sweet!!
ScotchNSniff found themselves on a last minute adventure last week to the Hill Center at the Old Naval Hospital just down the street from the Capitol building in DC. This Balvenie master class was a fun tasting as always but the more interesting things that happened had little to do with whisky and everything to do with people. 🙂
As we do at most whisky events in DC, we ran into Jennifer Holm and her crew from Momentum Worldwide. Momentum is the branding agency that Balvenie uses in the DC area and they do a great job hosting events like this. The last event we enjoyed with them had Monkey Shoulder spiked hot apple cider and this time we were greeted through the doors with a small Balvenie 12 cocktail. [I don’t remember the specific cocktail but it was TASTY! -Sniff]
The hors d’oeuvres were also delicious. A specific standout was the miniature BLTs! Bacon and small pieces of greens inside of a cherry tomato! What genius!
We enjoyed these cocktails and finger foods with some local friends also! Peat from Whisky + Architecture was there and so was DCWhiskey!
(Scotch, DCWhiskey, and Peat)
The giant reason this class even existed (and the whole reason we went) was the new east coast brand ambassador for Balvenie! Gemma Paterson! Her and her husband have moved to the big apple all the way from their home in Scotland! She’s as geeky about whisky as David Laird was so though we’ll certainly miss David, we know he’ll be having even more fun on the west coast.
Gemma’s never met a scotch she doesn’t like and her favorite happens to be the Balvenie 12 thanks to some awesome childhood memories. Her backstory is as fun and interesting as David’s and should you get the chance, do ask her about it.
She came to teach a class knowing that everyone had already been to whisky tasting classes before so she didn’t waste any time talking about the basics. Instead we dove into the science of whisky creation and nosing and nose blindness and water! It was really refreshing to get such detail both about whisky and the ghost at Balvanie’s malting floor (lol!).
There were a few gifts on the table besides whisky.
As always, a good time was had by all 🙂
Go sign up for a class from a distiller you love and go enjoy life!!
Slainte!!
(Peat, Gemma, Scotch)
noun
Happy Friday fellow scotch lovers!!
( A combination of checking dead links on our review page and perusing through my personal emails yielded a free post! Granted this post is three months delayed but it’s still relevant and fun to read, I promise. 😉 )
Hello there fellow scotch lovers!
Sniff here giving his own report on the Macallan tasting and how it compares to other tastings that SnS has attended. I think it’s pretty impossible to write about these tastings without comparing them to each other because of obvious differences and similarities. Let’s start with the good, shall we?
Solid location. Carnegie Library is a gorgeous little spot but these well known brands seem to really pick gorgeous spots (Balvenie @ the Carnegie Institute for Science, Glenlivet @ the Longview Gallery). The layout had three main spaces, a waiting space downstairs for those who arrive early, a pre-tasting space, and the actual tasting room space.
The early-arrival space was just a pipe and draped room downstairs with no accouterments shy of some bathrooms. Once you got checked in via the QR code on your phone, you headed up to the “pre-tasting” space. After walking through an archway made to mimic the macallan estate building, there was an open area with lighted glass floor that was translucent with a mapped layout of the District. Pretty schnazzy but I’m sure that floor came with the library. lol. Going around the room there was a copper still (full size? probably not), a date chart for recording important dates from Macallan or via your phone for personal dates, a photo booth with Macallan backdrop, a colored light display that included a case containing five bottles of Macallan, a nosing station, a bar, and a giant bottle (able to be customized) between two bragging display cases containing some very rare bottles.
So there are the parts of the tasting you could observe from pictures but let’s take a look at was good, bad, and ugly, shall we?
The good. The choice of bottles was great: 10 Fine Oak (meh), 12 Sherry (great daily), 15 Fine Oak (nice), Rare Cask (pretty tasty). Not great because they’re the greatest bottles but because they’re a great selection to someone who doesn’t want to spend a bit over $500 to try something they might not even like. The greatest bottle is always the one you love enough to make your daily dram, quote me on it! The pre-tasting area was a little crowded but most of the displays were interactive so that made it a lot of fun. The actual tasting area was well laid out and had a fun presentation by Mr. Craig Bridger, Macallan brand ambassador. Overall the night, like the bottles, flowed pretty smoothly.
The bad. The pre-tasting area was a bit cramped for the number of people they hosted. Maneuvering some of the displays was difficult with the number of people but that’s generally preferable to an empty room, isn’t it? There was some serious misdirection when someone announced that everyone needed to head to the hallway to finally move to the tasting room. I feel like myself and the photographer who immediately started moving that way, were the only one’s who heard the announcement. The presentation initially started with the sales=pitch feel that Glenlivet owned so heartily but quickly evolved into a good time.
The ugly. There was no ugly. This was a free tasting event held directly by the Macallan!
Overall it was fun and well worth the cost of free. If you’re not signed up to receive invitations to Macallan’s events, I must encourage you to do so at Macallan’s website.
Slainte!
-Sniff
scotchnsniff.com 