This follows the same theme as the last review (Hepburn’s Choice – Balvenie 26) featuring old casks sold by independent bottlers. It is another brand under Douglas Laing umbrella. We first picked this bottle up when we wandered into K&L (a bit buzzed from trying almost every champagne in the K&L champagne tent, exceptions being the ones that ran out and Cook’s – actually… we may have tried Cook’s). One of the friendly employees asked us if we needed help while we scoured the Scotch aisle and we asked him for a recommendation. He pointed to the Old Malt Cask Ben Nevis, claiming it was one of the most “unique” whiskies he has ever had.
Let’s first get onto the review before we debrief on what we think caused this “unique-ness”.
Tasting Notes
Nose: Instantly savory. Herbal, green, mushroom, cereal, underlying raisins, pleasant or more familiar notes as it sits. Turns a bit orange. Cabbage throughout.
Palate: Spice. Some light sherry and raisin sweetness before it turns to very hot and meaty qualities. There’s some weird cheesy residual taste and some green tomatoes.
Finish: Odd. It reminds me of one of the times when I was very hungry and I remembered I had tossed a pizza slice in the trash can – so I dug it out and ate it :(. There’s a weird cabbage and day-old pizza component – with some sewer tossed in.
Summary
TLDR: There’s Something Rotten in Denmark
Overall: 4/10. I can’t put my finger on what went wrong. But something went terribly wrong and the distillery sold off the cask. They can certainly label it as “unique” and “weird” – all of which is true, but is that truly something you want? “Disgustingly intriguing” is a nice way of putting it.
Bought for: $99 at K&L
Unfortunately, this was the first review that I have written where I have hours of research trying to understand what can go wrong with a cask. I still haven’t quite figured it out, but a few possibilities that I have come up with are: sulfur from sulphur candles prominently used in the 90s because sherries were supposed to only be shipped in bottles not casks and thus sulphur candles were burned to keep casks from spoiling, sulphides from a bad cask, or simply a spoiled barrel that can lend a mushroom-like taste. We determined it was not “cork taint” which is when mold comes through the porous cork.
One thing I believe (tipped off a bit to the coloration) is the sherry butt that this sat in was either used several times or only seasoned with sherry briefly. The lovely familiar raisin sweetness is muted in this – but it also could have been because it was so overwhelmed with the other flavors.
The above are my own independent tasting notes, but I can also understand the official tasting notes printed on the bottle of:
I find I do not necessarily disagree with any of the flavors they note, but would contend that the tasting notes tend to gloss over some of the downright disgustingly pungent (note that this is coming from a fervent Islay lover!) notes. There’s just something wrong with this that is entirely unintentional, and this is why it was not officially released by Ben Nevis.
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