Whisky Reviews: Glenmorangie Vertical Tasting

About a month ago I was lucky enough to stumble upon a Glenmorangie gift pack containing a full bottle of the Original expression and minis of the three current wine barrel extra-aged bottlings, all for the same price as the Original by itself. This lets me do a tasting where I can directly compare how each type of barrel affects the flavor of the underlying whisky.

Glenmorangie has been distilling since 1843 in Tain, Ross-shire, Scotland. While the distillery was family owned for most of its history, it has since been sold to the French conglomerate LVMH. The new owners have brought new design ideas to the company. I've got to say that their presentation is top-notch and the corporate website does an excellent job of conveying their story and providing some rather nice videos for tasting their original and extra-aged expression. The distillery's claim to fame comes from having the tallest stills in Scotland, which produce lighter bodied whiskies that are the most popular in Scotland. Staffed by the so-called "Sixteen Men of Tain", the distillery seems to manage a good balance between tradition and experimentation. Almost all of their whiskies are first aged in used bourbon barrels and their extra-aged expressions are then transferred to used wine casks to add another layer of flavor.

Now that's what I call a good spread

Glenmorangie Original 10 Year - 43%


Color: pale honey

Nose: malty, citrus - lemon and orange, vanilla, a hint of wine

Taste: creamy vanilla, malt, chocolate oranges, honey

Finish: medium, pleasant but trending towards bitterness

Overall this is a seriously solid dram. It's extremely well priced for a single malt, going for as little as $30. There's absolutely nothing bad that I can say about it, other than wishing that the flavors were just a bit more bold. Especially when my palate isn't quite as clear, the flavors tend to seem less robust and the cacao notes are replaced by green apples. I'd stick to drinking this before rather than after a meal.

Glenmorangie Lasanta - 46%


Color: amber

Nose: sherried wood, vanilla, nougat, almond, slight wood char or burnt sugar smell evolving with time and water

Taste: sherry, creamy sweetness

Finish: short with just a bit of burn

This whisky makes me think of 3 Musketeers bars. I've tried a few other sherried whiskies that really didn't do much for me. This was a much more enjoyable expression. There is clear sherry flavors in both the nose and taste, but it doesn't dominate the underlying characteristics of the whisky. This is a very delicious and more-ish dram.

Glenmorangie Quinta Ruban - 46%


Color: rose gold

Nose: toasted almonds, nougat, brown sugar, falernum(?), chocolate, hints of wine and peaches, developing blackberries and raisins with a bit of water

Taste: port wine, chocolate

Finish: lingering port wine and vanilla

There are a lot of similarities between the Quinta Ruban and Lasanta expressions, though I felt like the port wine influence was just a tad less strong than the sherry. While the nose of the Lasanta is a bit more robust, the finish on the Quinta Ruban helps its overall experience. Ultimately I'd have a very hard time deciding between these two.

Glenmorangie Nectar d'Or - 46%


Color: honey

Nose: burnt sugar, wood, wine-y sweetness, hints of citrus, fruit preserves that shifts towards wood char and nougat with water

Taste: light, chocolate, honey, orange

Finish: slightly bitter, cacao?

I felt like the wine influence was less directly apparent with this expression, instead beefing up the intrinsic qualities of the Original and layering on more barrel flavor. I didn't find this to be as explosively sweet as other reviewers have, but it is smoother than the Original which might let that aspect shine a little bit more clearly.



Overall, I don't think you can go wrong with any one of these whiskies. As I noted above, the Original is an incredible value and a great whisky for the scotch novice or those who prefer lighter Speyside malts. The Lasanta and Quinta Ruban expressions are usually less than $10 over the basic 10-Year, so it's easy to upgrade. At least for me, the Nectar d'Or is a little harder to justify as it's usually up in the $60-70 range. I'll probably add it to my collection one of these days when I have some extra cash, but the port and sherry cask expressions are in the must-buy category.

Tiki Classics: The Mai-Tai as Foundation

It seems to be a requirement of cocktail blogging that at some point, you will write a post about the mai tai. Perhaps several. I've even mentioned it once before. But really, there's a good reason that it comes up so often.

From a fairly simple set of ingredients, the mai tai is much greater than the sum of its parts. A combination of rum, lime, orange liqueur and orgeat comes together with almost unmatched depth and complexity. And that's without too many of the usual tiki drink tricks, like multiple juices and highly spiced syrups and liqueurs.

All of that can be attributed to the genius of Victor 'Trader Vic' Bergeron who invented the mai tai (yes, I come down on that side of the great Mai Tai Debate).

Proto-Mai Tai
1 oz Spirit #1
1 oz Spirit #2
0.75 oz lime juice
0.5 oz orange liqueur
0.5 oz orgeat
0.25 oz simple syrup

Combine all ingredients, shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass, either up or over crushed ice. Garnishing with a mint sprig is traditional and does add a little something to the drink.

Rum

The basis of this drink is obviously rum. Originally developed with Wray & Nephew 17 Year Dagger rum, a bottle of that will set you back as much as a new luxury car, so adaptations have to be made. The general consensus seems to be that a combination of an aged Jamaican rum and an aged Martinique rhum agricole best approximate the original flavor. However, there are quite a number of other variations that will work as well.

If you're aiming for something along the classic lines, your options are a significantly more limited on the Jamaican rum side. My go-to rums in this category are Appleton V/X and Estate Extra plus Smith & Cross. The Appleton 12 Year is best on its own, but I usually go for some split between Appleton V/X and S&C as they both bring some nice funk to the table. Both because of proof and the fact that it's made from pure pot still rums, the S&C will make itself strongly present, even at 0.25 oz, so go easy with the pour. There's also Coruba, but its strong burnt sugar flavor will also tend to dominate the drink, so it's not something I tend to reach for when I'm making mai tais. And while there is still a Wray & Nephew rum on the market, it's an unaged firebreather that really isn't what you're looking for in a mai tai rum.

On the sugar cane rum side of the equation, there's quite a bit more to choose from. First up, the official Martinique rhum agricoles. While I and others have sung its praises before, Clément VSOP isn't my favorite here. For whatever reason, it seems to be hiding its light under a bushel in this drink, so I don't want to waste its deliciousness. Rhum J.M. and Neisson Elévé Sous Bois are both solid and won't set your wallet back too far, but they are also pretty stiff and may be a bit much depending on your opinion of rhum agricole. Next on the list are non-AOC sugar cane rhums from other islands. Barbancourt is an obvious choice, especially as its price point is far below that of the Martinique rhums. Another good choice is Westerhall Plantation rum, which is made with both cane juice and molasses rums. It's fairly light, but will provide a nice backup to whatever Jamaican-style rum you want to use. Lastly, Mt. Gay Sugar Cane Rum, which is oddly nothing of the sort. As I mentioned before, this is a molasses-based rum that magically manages to express many of the characteristics of a sugar cane juice rhum. Sadly it's not being made any more, but if you can find a bottle it does work wonders in a mai tai.

If you want something a bit lighter, I also like a variation with Banks 5 Island (has some Jaimaican rum in the blend and the Batavia Arrack brings some really nice funk to the table) and Clément Première Canne (a nice but fairly mellow rhum agricole blanc). Makes for a good summer mai tai.

Whiskey


What's amazing about the mai tai is how adaptable it is to other spirits. However, one does have to keep in mind that the drink was built with rum in mind, so some subtle tweaks may be necessary. The whiskey version of the mai tai was known as the Honi Honi in Trader Vic's restaurants, though this was a simple substitution with 2 oz of one kind of bourbon. While this drink works quite well, even with something as simple as Jim Beam white label (I had an excellent one the last time the Teardrop Lounge hosted a tiki night), it feels like there's room to play with this formula. The first thought in my mind was, "what whiskies will approximate the flavors of Jamaican and agricole rums?". This is kind of a tricky thing. There aren't too many whiskies that have the same kind of pot still funk that are the hallmark of Jamaican rums. By the same token, Martinique rhums have a rather unique flavor that is often (in my mind) reminiscent of brandy. So there are two different routes available: pick what seem like their analogs within the whiskey world (funky and fresh) or most faithfully recapitulate those flavors. For the first, I would suggest the most robust whiskey you can get your hands on and a rye whiskey. If you can't get funky, at least get bold. Bulleit, Elijah Craig 12 Year or Ezra B Single Barrel would all be good choices for the first that won't break the bank or make you cringe to mix them. As a Martinique replacement, I lean towards rye whiskey because it seems to possess both the semi-obscure peculiarity of Martinique rum and flavors that remind you that it's an agricultural product. For the second route I would stick with a bold bourbon, but add a sherry-cask aged Scotch whisky (I've tried this with Aberlour 12 Year to reasonably good effect), which will have the wine-like flavors that one can find in rhum agricoles. Both are good, but which you like better will depend on your personal tastes.

Tequila


This is another mai tai variation that has an established history as the Pinky Gonzoles. But again, this is a fairly simple sub of 2 oz of a single kind of tequila. While all well and good, I prefer to use 1 oz of an añejo tequila like Sauza Hornitos and a reasonably funky reposado like Cazadores. That way you get both the aged barrel flavors of caramel and vanilla of the añejo and the funky agricultural flavors from the younger tequila.

Gin


Here's where we diverge from the beaten path. Gin is somewhat more divorced from its agricultural roots, with the exception of maltier gins like Dutch genevere. But you can still make an excellent gin-based mai-tai. For depth, you're probably going to want some kind of a barrel-aged gin. I went with Ransom Old Tom, though it at least the bottle I have needs to be used sparingly (~3/8 oz) as its somewhat overwhelming cardamom flavor can swamp a drink. For the balance of the spirit, I went with Aviation and Hendrick's, both solid, not too juniper-y gins that will still give the drink a nice snap.

So there you have it. The mai tai is a true classic, both in its original form and in the derivatives that were spawned from it. While falling on hard times for much of the late 20th century, many are new recognizing how good this drink can be when hewing to Trader Vic's formulation. A few simple ingredients turn into something downright magical.

Lemon Hart 151 Rum Returns

Old bottle on the left, new bottle on the right.

While Lemon Hart 151 is a somewhat obscure spirit outside of tiki circles, within it is one of the best loved ingredients out there. A potent rum distilled by Demerara Distillers Ltd. in Guyana and bottled by the Lemon Hart Company, this rum has a surprisingly long history. The eponymous Mr. Lemon Hart began supplying the British Navy with rum at the beginning of the 19th century. While the Lemon Hart brand remained quite popular for nearly two centuries, it slipped into relative obscurity outside of Canada after the first wave of tiki wound down in the late 70s and early 80s. The resurgence of tiki drinks and culture began to bring it back into the light, though the brand retained a very simple and unassuming packaging that belied the prominent "premium" statement on the label. To make matters worse, a change in ownership last year meant that it looked like the brand would disappear completely as the new owners had not made arrangements with DDL to continuing using the trademarked "Demerara rum" name. There was great wailing and gnashing of teeth among the tiki community. Thankfully everything was eventually settled, but there was a 6-12 month period when LH151 was nearly impossible to find for love or money. Now it has returned to shelves with much more upmarket packaging. It's clear that the new owners are trying to reposition this rum, both in terms of the presentations and a slight (~$5) increase in the price.

Brought down to a more tractable 100 proof, this rum is still has quite potent flavors. On the nose, there's quite a bit of caramelized, almost burnt sugar, molasses, tropical fruits, butter, toasted oak and a fair bit of alcohol. A couple more drops of water bring out savory notes that remind me of an Indian restaurant. The taste is primarily the caramelized to burnt sugar and smoky toasted oak, which becomes more subdued and sweeter if you add a bit more water. I'll have more to say on the subject when I review some of the other rums distilled by DDL, but Guyanese rums seem to bear some relation to Islay Scotch whisky.

Where LH151 really shines is in tiki drinks. It's an integral and irreplaceable ingredient in a number of cocktails such as the Zombie, Jet Pilot, Aku Aku Lapu, and of course, the 151 Swizzle:

151 Swizzle
1.5 oz Lemon Hart 151
0.5 oz lime juice
0.5 oz simple syrup
1 dash Angostura bitters
6 drops Herbsaint

Combine all ingredients and blend with a handful of crushed ice for 5 seconds. Pour into a chilled glass over more crushed ice and dust with freshly ground nutmeg.

This is a dangerous drink. If you use a little bit too much crushed ice, the LH151 will get too dilute and you can all too easily forget just how much alcohol is in this cocktail. However, if you get it just right, the ice lengthens the drink as time goes on and lets the experience mellow over time.

Compared to a lot of tiki drinks, this is almost blissfully easy to put together as it is little more than an extremely potent daiquiri. There's only one kind of fresh juice needed and apart from the rum, all of the ingredients are pretty easy to find.

The rum is obviously prominent as it forms the bulk of the drink. The lime juice adds its usual snap and is balanced by the simple syrup. The extra touches are what make it really special. The standard Don the Beachcomber one-two punch of Angostura bitters and Herbsaint do their dance around the main flavors and are accented by the nutmeg. The rich, bold, smokey flavor of the LH151 is wonderfully complimented by these additions and everything comes together as a simple but very tasty drink.

Bénédictine: Subtle Magic

I fortuitously decided to take a trip across the state border to take a look at a couple of the liquor shops in Vancouver, WA over the Labor Day weekend. While the rather high liquor taxes did dissuade me from a number of purchases that I had considered, I did see some bottles of Bénédictine herbal liqueur on sale.

While not high on my list of things to buy, it is an ingredient in a number of rather intriguing recipes. A search through the Cocktail Database returns quite a long list of results.

Originally developed by Alexandre Le Grand and purportedly based off of a recipe made by a local order of monks, many have tried to imitate this liqueur but none have succeeded. As with many other herbal liqueurs, the ingredients that go into it are a closely held secret.

It's clear that this is a very complex mixture of ingredients. Neat, the nose I get includes grass, lavender, mint, violets, almond, lemongrass and a whole host of other smells that I can't quite put my finger on. The flavor is obviously sweet, leaning towards simple sugar. There is a burst of herbal, somewhat mentholic flavor and little to no finish.

High on the list of recipes I've been meaning to try is the Singapore Sling. There's quite a bit of debate over the "real" recipe, but Beachbum Berry has published what seems like the tastiest one.

Singapore Sling
2 oz gin
0.5 oz brandy
1 oz Cherry Heering
0.5 oz Bénédictine
1 oz lime juice
1.5 oz soda water

Combine all ingredients except for soda water and shake with ice. Strain into a chilled chimney glass filled with ice and top with soda water.

So far I've tried this one with either Hendricks alone, Aviation alone or a 3:1 Hendricks/Plymouth split.  I like the Hendrick's by itself best, but any gin that's not too juniper heavy will likely do well in this drink. Crisp and plays well with fruit is the key here.

Additionally, you can play around with the fruit liqueur a bit. A full ounce of Cherry Heering can overwhelm the drink, at least initially. I've also tried it with a 0.5 oz each of homemade raspberry and orange liqueurs, which let the gin shine a bit more while keep the fruity roundness of the drink.

Ultimately this drink is clearly made for long tropical days. While there's a lot of fruity sweetness going on here, it's balanced out by the crispness of the gin and soda water along with the sour snap of the lime juice. A quintessential long drink, it mellows nicely over time with the gin holding up even as the drink is diluted. The Bénédictine gets along well with the gin and adds a little somethin' somethin' to the drink. Do watch out though. While it doesn't hit you in the face, there's quite a lot of alcohol in the glass.

Montils Tiki

It's been warming up a bit here in Portland, even if I have to be thankful that most of the summer has been blessedly cool. So once again I turn towards tiki. Just to mix things up a bit, I also decided to play with one of the lesser-used spirits on my shelf, cognac.

Colombard Cooler
1 oz Hardy VS cognac
0.5 oz Batavia Arrack
0.5 oz lemon juice
0.5 oz grapefruit juice
0.25 oz cinnamon syrup
0.25 oz simple syrup

Combine all ingredients, shake with ice and strain into a chilled glass.

A fairly simple drink, but the flavors all play well together. The brandy base provides wine and oak flavors that the funk of the arrack and the cinnamon spice dance around. The lemon and grapefruit juices give the drink a bit of snap so everything balances out nicely. A fine drink for a summer evening.

Rumsky: Experiments in Blending Spirits

While I kind of trashed Russell's Reserve Rye not too long ago, it did make me think about how the whiskey could be salvaged. Especially in cocktails, it just felt too thin. I mentioned at the time that bitters could help, but they didn't provide compete satisfaction. So what could beef it up?

The solution is rum.

A good aged rum should have depth in spades. The rich molasses and chocolate flavors of Demerara rums are especially good in that respect. So what happens when we put the two together...

Russell's Reserve Rye X El Dorado 12 Year Rum

Now this is what I was looking for. With a 3:1 ratio of rye to rum, everything I like about rye is still present, but instead of being unidimensional, the rum buttresses those flavors with caramel, molasses and chocolate. Dark fruit flavors creep out of the glass and the swallow delivers on the promises of the nose. It's fairly safe to say that this is more than the sum of its parts.

Weller Antique 107 Bourbon X Smith & Cross Rum

In this case I decided to take the opposite tack. A rum with almost insufferably potent flavors mixed with an extremely smooth wheated bourbon. With that said, they both pack a punch in their own rights as the Weller is 107 proof and the Smith & Cross is navy proof at 114. Using the same 3:1 ratio of whiskey to bourbon, it was initially still too much. Between the high proof and intense esters of the rum, there was a solid burn going down. However, after a few drops of water and a couple more minutes in the glass, the blend settled down into something much more enjoyable. While still dominated by the rum, sweet brown sugar began to emerge and a hint of grain from the whiskey. The high ester rum still hits you full in the face with funk, but it's a much more pleasant experience. This is something I will definitely be drinking again.

Ezra B. Single Barrel X La Favorite Rhum Vieux X Rhum J.M. Élevé Suis Bois

This blend centered around tempering and enhancing the characteristics of the La Favorite Rhum. While retaining some of the characteristics of rhum agricole, it smells and tastes like it was dosed with charred barrel extract. A little goes a long way. The Rhum J.M. has spent much less time in the barrel and retains more of the almost brandy-like agricole flavors that have been obliterated in the La Favorite offering. The Ezra B has a savory spiciness that compliments the two agricoles. In a 1:1:1 ratio, this blend turns out to be fairly pleasant. There are a lot of strong flavors here, but they manage to mesh reasonably well. The burnt wood, brandy and grain all dance around each other, no one ever quite dominating. It gets sweeter and almost creamy with a bit of water. Unsurprisingly, there's a bit of heat as two of the three spirits are right around 100 proof. All in all, I'm not sure that this was the best blend, but it was an interesting and worthwhile experience.

In some respects I feel like this is an extension of the tiki drink methodology. You take flavors from one spirit that aren't found in another and put them together to make flavors that can't be found in a single spirit. There's a lot more experimentation to do and I look forward to trying this again.

Rye on the Brain: Kicking it up a notch with the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection

So, yeah. Rye. Seems to be most of what I've been drinking lately, in no small part because it's a lot easier to pour a dram at the end of the day than to put a proper cocktail together.

As I've been promised a bottle of something that I wouldn't normally try myself, I decided to try the best ryes that I could find. And as far as I can tell, it's pretty hard to beat what the Buffalo Trace Distillery puts out as part of their annual Antique Collection. A new set of bottlings is put out each year in the fall and includes three bourbons and two ryes. They all cost a pretty penny, but represent some of the oldest and best liquor to come out of the distillery.

Thomas H. Handy Sazerac Rye Whiskey - 2009

This is a very hefty barrel-proof bottling at roughly 129-proof that was aged for about six years. These are fairly distinct features from most of the other collection, which tend to be much older and lower proof (the George T. Stagg being an exception). With that said, this is a magnificent whiskey.

Neat, the nose has a fairly standard set of rye grain, vanilla and spice flavors. The spice is somewhat augmented by the strength of this whiskey, as they both run fairly hot. The taste delivers on the promise of the smell with an almost brutally long finish that lasts even after a sip of water to cool down. I won't say my mouth was actually getting burned, but it wasn't too far off. But all in a rather enjoyable fashion.

After a few drops of water, the whiskey opened up a bit to reveal some chocolate. The grain flavors receded slightly, more of a reminder of where the whiskey came from rather than being up in your face like more pedestrian bottlings. Time and a little more water brought our molasses and greater sweetness.

After I was done, the glass retained an amazingly amount of odor, which was redolent of grain, milk chocolate and fruit.

I really would have liked to be able to measure this properly to bring it down to a more recognizable 100- or 90-proof, but my wallet only allow for a small-ish pour and I didn't want to drown it. I'm pretty tempted to buy a bottle, so I may be able to report back with more info at a later date.

Sazerac 18-Year Rye Whiskey - 2010

This whiskey has won any number of accolades, twice winning "World Whiskey of the Year" from Jim Murry's Whiskey Bible. Though some other reviews had made me a little bit wary that it would live up to the hype, it more than delivered in my opinion.

Neat, the nose was explosive with honeyed sweetness, mint, orange and a hint of spice underneath. To give you a sense of just how rich this smell was, after lifting my notebook off of the top of the glass, I could instantly smell it without even leaning forward. The taste mostly recapitulated the smell, with surprisingly little bite or heat for a rye whiskey. The finish was rather short, but very smooth.

Adding a bit of water transformed the nose into berry jam with rye grain underneath. The taste contained very subdued grains behind huge honey sweetness. The taste did seem just a bit thinner and the peppery spice actually kicked up a notch. The finish was ultimately still fairly short.

The residual whiskey left in the glass after I was done still contained smells of orange, grain, chocolate and fruit that lingered for more than an hour. This was still such a potent smell that the uncovered glass sitting on the table could be detected from several feet away.

In summary, if you get a chance to drink either of these whiskies, go for it. They're not cheap pours, but the the experience is more than worth the price of entry. After finishing the Sazerac, I posted "This is going to ruin me for all other whiskey for all time". While a bit of hyperbole, it really was that good. I'm currently trying to hunt down a bottle of the Sazerac 18-Year and considering a bottle of the Thomas Handy, which is a little bit easier to find. Either way, you can bet that I'm going to be nearly the first in line when this year's bottlings come out.