Innholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2015 i Whisky Advocate

Dr. Jim Swan has two passports, one doctorate degree in chemistry and biological sciences, an estimated 35 clients, and a calendar that’s routinely booked up three months out. Swan, who boasts over 40 years of whisky work, has had a part in creating such attention-grabbing new brands as the highly-decorated Kavalan from Taiwan; Kilchoman, the youngest distillery on Islay; Amrut in India; and Penderyn Welsh whisky. He’s part auteur and part troubleshooter. If ever a movie were to be made of his career, his character would be a cross between Harvey Keitel’s fixer character in “Pulp Fiction” and the Dos Equis “Most Interesting Man in the World.” An ability to solve production dilemmas with logical, often low-tech approaches has become Swan’s signature. He’s skilled at gaming the system; the system…

I live in the Philadelphia suburbs, and I want to warn you about a danger in Philadelphia that you may not be aware of. Despite years of negative press, it has not only survived but is making a comeback. It came out of punkedout dive bars into the trendier places, carried by hipsters and artists, and mutated as it spread. What’s the terrible human cost of this practice? It’s actually quite affordable: $5 or less in most places. I’m talking about the Citywide Special: can of Pabst, shot of Jim Beam. Or as those of you outside the City of Brotherly Love might know it more generally: the Boilermaker. It’s been on a strange renaissance here for the past fifteen years, and has blossomed recently. It looks like this could…

Some of the brewers interviewed for this story mentioned that barrels were being re-used after they’d aged beer in them, sometimes by themselves to make sour beers that depend on wood oxidation and substrate for bacterial growth, sometimes by brewers who don’t want all that much bourbon character (see second SIDEBAR), and sometimes by distillers of scotch, rum, or tequila. Sometimes it’s for craft distillers collaborating with craft brewers to make beer r barrel-aged whiskey. New Holland distilling (New Holland, Mich.), well-qualified with both brewing and distilling sides, is doing it with their aptly-named Beer Barrel Bourbon (reviewed in our Spring 2013 issue), aged for “several” years in new charred oak, then for 90 days in barrels that aged their own Dragon’s Milk stout. Alltech of Lexington, Ky. is doing…

Whiskey is made from beer, but that beer doesn’t usually have a name other than “the wash.” Now it seems more and more distillers are making their whiskey from bottle-ready (or nearly ready) beer made at local breweries rather than in-house. Often the purpose of this is to bring new flavors into the resulting whiskey, primarily from the hops. But sometimes it’s a simple matter of outsourcing. Charbay Hop Flavored whiskey was distilled from a now-defunct microbrewery’s pilsner beer in 1999, and more recently they’ve released whiskeys distilled from Bear Republic Brewery’s Racer 5 IPA and Big Bear Black stout. Distiller Marko Karakasevic says, “I’m not set up to be a brewery. Being super small we don’t have the space and money and time to put in a full brewery…

Rated 1-5 for smoke intensity Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Märzen The intensely smoky, take-no-prisoners Franconian classic. Almond ’22 Torbata Delicious Italian peated malt ale that can be likened to a chocolate cake baked with Ardbeg. Invercargill Smokin’ Bishop New Zealand ale made from malt smoked over indigenous Manuka wood. Alaskan Brewing Smoked Porter Complex, caramely, and smoky pioneering brew from Juneau. Urban Chestnut Holzrauch Well-balanced rauchbier from the St. Louis brewery’s ‘Reverence’ series. Bamberg Rauchbier A reserved homage to Bamberg from the Brazilian brewery named for the city. Jack’s Abby Smoke & Dagger An inspired, gently smoky New England take on the black lager style called schwarzbier. Nøgne Ø Tiger Tripel A highly unusual but delicious, subtly peaty and fruity tripel from Norway. Spezial Rauchbier Lager A softer, more nuanced approach…

The Lost Distillery Company is to extinct spirits from forgotten distilleries what Richard Attenborough’s John Hammond was to paleontology in Jurassic Park. The first bottlings offer recreations of whiskies from 19th century distilleries including Auchtermuchty in Fife, Gerston in Caithness, and Auchnagie in Perthshire, and one blended whisky. A colorful booklet packed with details of distillery history accompanies each bottle but conspicuously, there is barely a word printed on what these atavistic whiskies taste like. Well, we can help with that. 85 The Lost Distillery Company Gerston (batch 2/1), 46%, $65 A pale primrose of a dram. Waxed lemon, salted butter pats, white peach, honey, and the wood smoke from green stems. A sip brings Highland toffee, honey, chocolate fudge, rich tart fruits, with dried apple, raisin, mixed peel, and…

SINGLE MALT 89 Connemara 22 year old, 46%, €178 The oldest official Connemara expression from Beam Suntory delivers the peat sublimely, judiciously balanced with estery notes of half-time oranges and pineapple rings, and an inescapable note of nail polish remover. It’s bright, beautiful whiskey, rich with piquant orange and dark vanilla, smooth and packed with flavor, which softens to fresh cream and spiced toffee. Ebbs away with dignity, trailing creaminess and intense fruit in its wake.—JM 84 Glendalough Aged 7 years, 46%, $45 Glendalough’s hook is the Wicklow water used to cut this whiskey. Sweet fruits, tubby satsumas, lime, and passion fruit backed by ground ginger, star anise, and some earthy background notes from the bourbon casks. Tangy orange crystallized fruits predominate, pierced with pepper, root ginger, and soda pop.…

SCOTTISH TRAVEL Dear John, Thanks for focusing on Scotland in your Spring edition, which arrived on my desk just days before I leave the Scotch Whisky Association at Easter. The articles brought back memories of our great bus trip all those years ago. Thanks for your friendship over the years and best wishes to you for ongoing success. Still regret we have not cracked open that bottle you bought in Dufftown. With best wishes, Campbell Evans Thank you, Campbell. It’s been good to know you and work with you. Dear John, Thoroughly enjoyed “Scotland for Whisky Lovers” as I am planning a trip to Scotland. My #1 MUST for the trek is to visit the Holy Trinity of Peat. While you did visit Ardbeg, there was no mention of the…

At Lost Spirits distillery in Salinas, California, distiller Bryan Davis is making single malt whiskeys from barley malt smoked with different peat sources. The flagship whiskey, Leviathan, is made with Canadian evergreen forest peat, which has a more piney, resinous aroma to it (that transfers into the final liquid) than the woody Highland or iodine-tinged Islay peat we’re used to in Scotch whisky. According to Davis, Scottish peat is a combination of reedy sedge and sphagnum moss, both of which act like straws after they die. New plants growing on top are able to tap into those straws and suck up water that may be far away from their current location, forming expanding peat bogs. The plants also acidify the soil, inhibiting bacteria growth so that the other material absorbed…

Whisky collecting is a trend sweeping the world. Serious foreign collectors have started multimillion-dollar whisky investment funds that include thousands of bottles. Many people believe whisky is a sound investment today, just as wine was in the early 1980s. Just like collecting wine, once you open a bottle the value tanks for resale potential. So if you’re thinking about becoming a whisky investor, you’ll want to properly store the good stuff, not open it. Unlike wine, which has centuries worth of storage procedures, storing bottled whisky is a relatively new concept. Whisky storage is easy in comparison to wine or beer, but if you’re wanting to preserve whisky properly, these steps will help you keep bottles for decades. Temperature You’ll want to store whisky in a room that’s not too…

Mixography is a young discipline, having taken its first tentative steps only in the late nineteenth century. As a consequence of that fact, we mixographers, lacking the ancient traditions of accumulated wisdom and exposed error that other, older disciplines possess, are an unsophisticated lot. You ask us who invented a certain drink, and there we go, rifling through dusty, ring-stained books, sinking digital shaft after digital shaft into murky archives of badlyscanned old newspapers and whatnot, all with the idea that we must produce a name: the one true, unique, and unquestionable inventor of that drink. How the lawyers must chuckle at our frantic historical hamster-wheeling. They can laugh; they have the concept of “ultimate cause.” An example: Let’s say that my fellow Advocate columnist Terry Sullivan happened to be…

“I don’t like ordering a pint of beer and getting a glass of cold, carbonated bourbon.” Will Meyers, long-time head brewer at Cambridge Brewing Company (Cambridge, Mass.), has one of the most sophisticated and longest-running beer barrel-aging programs in the country, tucked away into a low-ceilinged cellar under the landmark brewpub. He ages in a variety of spirit and wine barrels, he even madeiraizes beer in glass jugs, and he blends with a fine hand (and palate). What he doesn’t do is use fresh bourbon barrels. “A lot of bourbon barrel beers are just too boozy for me,” he said. “I like things in balance. We do second-use bourbon barrels from another brewery we’ve had a long experience with. We’re looking at 12 to 18 months aging time. Second use…

The Lochindaal Bar occupies the ground floor of the Lochindaal Hotel, a no-frills inn located in Port Charlotte overlooking Loch Indaal, the sea loch that separates the Bowmore and Bruichladdich distilleries by eight and a half miles of road, or under three miles of gray water. You can find it by looking for an unadorned white stucco building, about a city block long and two stories high. There’s a sign hanging by the door: “Lochindaal Hotel Fresh Local Seafood Dishes.” One word is written at the top of the entrance: “Bar.” There’s a sandwich board outside that broadcasts the night’s specials. The sign also reminds passersby that a day’s notice is required if you want to order the seafood platter, a towering plate of the locally caught bounty. The mahogany…

BOURBON 91 Forged Oak 15 year old, 45.25%, $65 The fifth release in Diageo’s Orphan Barrel series (and the youngest of the releases so far). Distilled at the “new” Bernheim distillery and, once again, matured most recently in Stitzel-Weller warehouses. Complex flavors are well-integrated, with lovely spice notes (cinnamon, vanilla, mint, nutmeg), nougat, caramel, and subtle fruit. Long, satisfying finish. Not as distinctive as some previous Orphan Barrel releases, but more rounded and balanced. Nicely done!—JH 90 Colonel E.H. Taylor Cured Oak, 50%, $70 The barrel staves used to age this whiskey dried outside in the open for 13 months. The oak influence is certainly evident—both from the cured oak staves and from the fact that the whiskey is 17 years old—but never overpowers. Plentiful spice notes (especially cinnamon and…

Box distillery has been called “the most exciting new distillery on the planet.” Overlooking the Ångerman river on Sweden’s High Coast, the distillery has three stainless steel washbacks and a glorious pair of Forsyths stills. Distilling commenced in late 2010 under the supervision of Roger Melander, the distillery manager, and they produce 100,000 lpa. The whisky permutations are endless, thanks to a warehouse brimming with peated and unpeated batches in casks of all sizes and wood types, ranging from sherry butts down to small 40-liter barrels. There’s a lot to be excited about. 91 Box The Festival 2014, 53.5%, 889 SEK Disgorge bourbon quarter-casks after 3 years and fill them into sixteen virgin American oak 40-liter casks that have been made from air-seasoned wood, medium toasted then charred, and what…

Back to our beer-writing roots with our first “Focus On” beer. These barrel-aged beers are a varied lot: barleywines, stouts, bourbon and scotch barrels, Irish whiskey wood. We went looking for some of the best. Beware: they’re packing a heavy wallop, and some of them are way too easy to drink! 94 Eclipse Masterpiece, 12.5%, $30/750 ml Outstandingly beautiful pour: deep tan head of tiny bubbles over intensely brown beer. Nose of moist pipe tobacco, fresh-dumped barrel, poached pear, molasses, old iron, and, incredibly, some light notes of flowers. Brightly powerful—yang to Parabola’s yin?—briskly sweet and energetic flavors of raisin, malt syrup, fig, and the edgy top notes of Vegemite flood the mouth, corralled and hammered by firm hop bitterness, dissolving to a high-note finish. A rare thing, a dangerous…

Bacardi announced at the end of March that they’d bought Angel’s Envy. The brand, founded in 2011 by the family of the late Lincoln Henderson, has been one of the more successful bourbon start-ups, which made it a focus of acquisition rumors. Bourbon continues to surge in sales, so acquiring a stake in the market was important to the Bermuda-based rum giant. Numbers weren’t disclosed; Bacardi was already a minority investor in the company. Wes Henderson, the primary in Angel’s Envy, will remain as the global brand ambassador. We assume that this will accelerate the construction of the brand’s planned distillery, in a building being rehabilitated across from Louisville Slugger Field in downtown Louisville. As bourbon demand increases faster than supply, securing a source of whiskey has become crucial to…

Care for a touch of whisky in your Martini, Margarita, or Negroni? That’s exactly what you might encounter, thanks to the emergence of more whisky-finished spirits. Of course, the use of bourbon barrels for the maturation of scotch or rum isn’t anything new, but these spirits hone that tradition by using barrels from a specific distillery, or filling them with spirits that don’t typically receive barrel-maturation at all. The resulting reinterpretations include tequila, gin, and vodka even a whisky drinker can love. Expresiones del Corazón includes Corazón tequila aged in barrels from Buffalo Trace distillery (both owned by Sazerac), in a limitededition collection that could be called “single distillery-barrel aged.” Following between 10 ½ and 24 months of aging in barrels handselected with the help of Buffalo Trace master distiller…

How did that happen? One minute Scotch whisky seems to be becoming the world’s favorite spirit, the next it is like something out of the McCarthy era, with banks of former associates forming (dis)orderly queues to accuse it of subversion. For the past few months (and to be honest, probably for the few more it takes for these words to reach your eyes) my inbox has been pinging with the latest gloom-laden prognosis for scotch, the latest castigation of strategy, the fact that new whiskies are better, that scotch has lost its way, that things were better in the days of some Golden Age. So, what precisely went wrong? It’s not simply that there is a wider range of whiskies available, but that drinkers have realized that these whiskies have…

Just for fun, grab your phone—or computer or tablet—and run a search on the phrase “bar rules from your bartender.” Unless things have changed dramatically from when I did it a moment ago, the great god Google will return something in the area of 972,000 results, at least the first ten pages of which will focus on proper behavior at a bar. If you follow some of those links, you will find such “hints,” “rules,” and “things you should never, ever do” as: don’t cut in line; don’t snap your fingers; don’t hit on the bartender; and don’t take fruit meant for drinks from the bartop trays. You could look at list after list after list of these hints and tips, scrolling through pages of pithy remarks, not-so-humorous GIFs, and…

Whether you’re making whisky or beer, you have to brew. Brewing includes two crucial steps for either product: mashing and fermentation. It’s also where the smoky character is usually introduced. Here’s how it works, for both whisky and beer. The malt is created by the process detailed in the main story. It is then crushed in a mill, mixed with water to form a soupy grist, and heated to set temperatures, a process called mashing. Those temperatures are designed for optimum enzymatic conversion of the malt’s starches to sugars; too high and nothing happens, too low and conversion is incomplete. When the mashing is complete, one of two things happens. If you’re making beer, you’ll filter out the grains (a process called “lautering”) and boil the sweet liquid you have…

WHISKY MAKERS The hands-on guidance of the people making the whisky clearly counts for much. THE INTREPID IMMIGRANT Masataka Taketsuru (1894–1979) Some of the best whisky in the world today exists because of the determination of one man. Both Suntory and Nikka, the leading Japanese whisky producers, trace their lineage to Masataka, who ventured to Scotland in 1919. “It’s a feat that would be difficult even now. The man learned English, traveled to Scotland, and went to university, returned with his Scottish bride to meet a very hostile environment and built a remote distillery for a foreign spirit. Everything the guy did was completely adversarial,” says David King, former president of Anchor Distilling Company. FIRST LADY OF ISLAY Elizabeth “Bessie” Williamson (1910-1982) When 22 year old Williamson took a summer…

SPEYSIDE SINGLE MALT 93 Mackillop’s Choice (distilled at Mortlach) 1991, 56.6%, £198 Full gold. Weighty, but not oppressed by wood. Full, rich rancio aroma, which brings to mind an ancient cognac. It is rich and powerful, but has great finesse and perfect balance: cooked fruit, some spice, a lot of waxiness, licorice…and then the distillery’s signature meatiness. The palate starts sweetly with ripe old autumn fruits, and soft tannins. This has everything you want from a mature whisky, and from Mortlach, with added elegance. Highly recommended.—DB 91 Douglas Laing Extra Old Particular (distilled at Mortlach) 22 year old, 57.1%, £191 Deep amber. Generous sweet sherried nose; very ripe, with dried orchard fruits, chestnut puree, and indeed chestnut honey, then a little touch of meat and a pungency akin to Guyanan…

92 Canadian Club 1960s, 40%, A$164 Fifty years on, the standard Canadian Club becomes very complex and in-your-face delicious. Barley sugar sweetness blossoms into creamy caramel in a dark, heavy, full-bodied whisky with cinnamon, hot chewing tobacco, and sizzling spice. Acetone, dry wood, and peaches on the nose give way to musty perfumed sandalwood and fresh crisp oak, with glowing embers in the throat. Floral, sweet, and a bit nutty, it finishes slowly in leather and furniture polish. (Australia only)—DdeK 91 Forty Creek Double Barrel Reserve (Lot 252), 40%, $47 Finished in wet, freshly dumped bourbon barrels, Double Barrel shows strong bourbonesque vanilla and a slippery, almost syrupy lushness. This latest batch is even creamier than the early ones made by John Hall himself. After a deceptively simple start, a…

DUTCH RYE 84 Millstone 2004 Barrel Proof Rye 10 year old (cask #667), 58.6%, £85 Hard toffee, Brazil nut, milk chocolate, and noticeable rye bread aromas on the nose from this new American oak barrel. The rye spiciness is embedded with the other flavors; balanced, but not dominant. Soft and fudgey flavors display sparkling spices, deeper toffee notes, vanilla, and cinnamon bark. Try a dash of water to unlock the sweetness and citrus elements below the surface. If anything, this accentuates the tobacco and spiciness of the finish (The Whisky Exchange only)—JM INDIAN SINGLE MALT 88 Paul John Peated Select Cask, 55.5%, £68 Earthy notes, with plain chocolate nibs, malt drinks, and a little leather. There’s a subtle smoky air; nothing too astringent or over powering. It’s great to try…

94 Schlenkerla Rauchbier Märzen, 5.2%, $5/500 ml If you love bacon, why aren’t you drinking this beer right now? It smells like bacon when you open it—great bacon, Nueske’s bacon—then you realize, no, it smells like double-smoked bacon! Then you taste it: Ahha! Triple-smoked bacon, the kind that’s so smoked you can eat it uncooked. And yet… it’s never overwhelming. This is nothing less than genius: beautiful lager paired with handdone smoking. Three Schenkerla beers are in my all-time top ten: this is why. —LB 92 Abita Abbey Ale, 8%, $5/22 oz. Deeply malty nose, aromas of coffee cake, Christmas spices, and yeasty-fresh bread. Tasting this takes me back to the early 90s, when I first tasted beers with John and the Malt Advocate team; we tasted Belgian ales a…

No, there is no Whisky Advocate test lab in the hills of Emmaus, PA. I don’t even know if there are hills in Emmaus, PA, on account of I work in my home office here in Chicagoland (there are, Terry, believe it!—Editor). And this office has, right on the shelf above my desk, the Ray Kipp Memorial Hydrometer, complete with proof and Tralles scales and a correction table for temperature. It’s been sitting on that shelf ever since Ray went to the big stillhouse in the sky and his son Al bequeathed to me this tool of the trade his father plied before he went straight. Not that Ray had Al Capone worried, but he did do some light bootlegging in Chicago when an honest man couldn’t walk to the…