Glenmorangie 18 Year "Extremely Rare"

GLENMORANGIE 18 YEAR

Glenmorangie make some of the most elegant, feminine whiskies out there, from their paradigmatic Extra Matured series to experimental throwbacks like Finealta.  The 18 Year, called Extremely Rare, is a decadent, rich single malt that shows great finesse and balance, managing to be both buxom and lithe.  Aged fifteen years in bourbon barrels, it spends its final three in Sherry butts; it’s something like the apotheosis of the twelve-year-old Lasanta,  showing a hint of its struck-match note at the finish.  After only a few hours of air, this older iteration begins fairly to glow with a Speyside-like sweetness and roasted-nut charm, possessed of breathtaking breadth of complexity and flavor, and a finish that goes on for minutes.

nose: Has that wonderful old-book sweetness, glossy leaves with ink you can feel under your fingertips like braille; spicy orange confit and clove; cinnamon toast and vanilla orchid; spearmint and honey; a certain limeflower roundness like old Riesling.  Finely-wrought, accessible, and mightily sophisticated.

palate: An initial salvo of vanilla-almond meringue swirls and expands and then seems to plunge over a cliff, or maybe burst like a dam.  It's an eye-rollingly pleasurable sensation, something like the palate being pulled into a vast, open organoleptic space where wave after wave of supple, spine-tingling flavors bear it along and safely to rest.  It manages somehow to be utterly nostalgic and yet unexpected, reassuring and at the same time thrilling.   There are hops and honeycomb and lime and slate and grass and saltwater taffy and sweet minty candy, with a midpalate that tastes eerily of Kentucky chess pie: flavors that burst onto the palate like cream into a cup of tea, to swirl and integrate into a wondrous, swooningly delicious whole, that shimmer and echo and fade away with the tiny, tiniest wee hint of smoke (here the match-head echo of Lasanta).  So, so long and pretty.

This is whisky to write poetry on, and to, if you’ll forgive the grammar.  Wistful and compelling and leaning mightily in the direction of the shattering vinous elegance of a Macallan 18.  Glenmorangie make a damn fine whisky in general, so, as you might expect, this Extremely Rare 18 Year is absofuckinlutely worth the benjamin, if you’ve got it to drop.

Laphroaig 18 Year

LAPHROAIG 18 YEAR

There’s a real expression of terroir in Laphroaig’s fantastic 18-year iteration.  It’s said that Laphy get much of their distinctive maritime tang from the relatively higher amounts of moss in the peat they use, and, after all, what purer expression of terroir could you imagine than malting your barley over smouldering terroir?  Baby coal rears its naughty head in petroleate aromas in Laphroaig’s quarter cask offerings, but here the peat is coastal and airy; the wonderful balance and elegant texture of the 10-year are ratcheted up several notches, which, perhaps counter-intuitively, results in a more subtle, feminine whisky.

nose:  Alive with mossy stones-after-rain, pineapples and slate.  There’s a gentle, warm tropicality here, like banana pudding and sweet roasted walnuts, overarched by gorgeous, feminine smoke.   A note of fleshy saddle leather adds a compelling, earthy aspect to the outro. 

palate:  Beautiful, plush coils of smoke; candied lemons and country ham, salty and bright; a flirtatious core of berries- kirsch and something darker, more sylvan; incense ash and chai spices, particularly cardamom and black pepper, towards the end.  The finish is a riotous bloom of sweet citrus and clean seawater; tastes like love and piney campfire.    All this is dressed up in an unbelievably supple, sensuous mouthfeel that gets the blood racing with its length and concupiscent, unctuous texture.   It rings in the mouth for minutes afterwards, glorying in this marvelous texture and Islay provenance. 

Kentucky at last: Knob Creek Hollywood Barrel

It’s a grotesque oversight that I have not gotten to my fair home state’s glorious produce until now.  I apologize, and expiate:

Intending to avail myself of the positively silly current post-off on Eagle Rare 10 year, I stopped in at one of my regular haunts, Hollywood Liquor Store, to survey their new digs.  They’ve moved a few blocks west of their erstwhile location, into a gigantic old carpet warehouse that, so far, gives the unfortunate impression of shopping for one’s sippin’ corn in an airport terminal.  Snarkiness aside, they remain among the best two or three locations for whisk(e)y on the east side of Portland.

It was either testament to this or clever marketing (both?) that they offered a “private selection” made by Knob Creek to their specifications; apparently they were given the choice between several different blends, and chose the one they preferred, which they offered in an attractive flip-top tin.  Unlike the regular bottling, this selection is finished in a plastic screw-cap.

It’s good!  Brash, bright, and unabashedly Kentuckian, accurately described by the staff at Hollywood as a bit smoother than the standard Knob 9-year, this is an excellent value at under $35.  It’s got that trademark Knob heat- you know you’re drinking whiskey here- with all the big flavors that that entails, but wrapped round with a compelling complexity and multilayered sweetness, without ever straying into the realm of the cloying.  

Further, Knob occupies a special place in my heart: before I fully embraced spirits, I would usually have a bottle of Hendrick's Gin and Knob Creek on top of my fridge.  Though I rarely partake, gin is still my white spirit of choice, and Hendrick's, with their lovely rosepetaled iteration, have a winner.  But I fell hard for the amber elixir, and it's nice to see that the whiskey that I considered top-notch before I knew a damn thing is still pleasing to me now.  Knob is big, and hot, and not for everyone- I might call it the Laphroaig of bourbon, for that reason.  That's almost certainly also why I like it so well.

Knob Creek 9-Year (Hollywood Barrel)

nose:  Tropical and green, like the freshly-torn outer flesh of a ripe coconut; 1980s-era elementary school textbook;  potpourri of dried rose and lavender, salty red-hots

palate:  Hits the tongue like a molten yellow gummi bear and immediately gives the lie to the notion that whiskey need ever be flavored.  The midpalate is lush with crushed peppermint leaves, caramel apple, and sweet, sophisticated maraschino cherries, with a long finish, warm as woodstove, of candied orange peel, savory herbs (bay leaf, thyme), cinnamon, white pepper, and cedarwood.

Laphroaig Triple Wood, 2012 ed.

Laphroaig Triple Wood 2012

Another salvo from the good people of Laphroaig, the Triple Wood is released without statement of age; I’d suppose it to be relatively young.  Basically an extra-matured iteration of their Quarter Cask, the whisky first ages in used Bourbon barrels, then in smaller, 18^th-century-style European oak casks, before finishing in Oloroso Sherry butts.  I was really excited to try this when first I read about it, but when I finally got my hands on a bottle, I was initially left a bit nonplussed.

I had expected an olfactory hybrid of Speyside and Islay, but this dram was something altogether different.  My first impression was that it was a little oddly put together, almost jangly in the mouth, like an awkward teenager, all knees and elbows.  The Quarter Cask is not my favorite Laphroaig, and upon opening, the Triple Wood clearly showed the same ashy, almost industrial smoke. 

That said, as I worked through the bottle, and it saw more and more air, it knit together and became quite delicious, just as the Quarter Cask eventually did.  The more overtly petroleate smoke notes faded to a cleaner ash, and the Sherried sweetness came to the fore, wrapping its silky texture around the whole.  All in all, a fine single malt, if a bit spendier than I’d like it to be, at around $75, and certainly not something to which I’ll return again and again like their paradigmatic 10-year.

nose: Ashy, mossy smoke, spicy maritime pierwood; banana peel, pumice, and sweet lemon caramel; smoked salmon and tart green apples; a hint of nutty chess pie at the finish

palate: Hits the tongue sweet and lithe, with coursing flavors of saddle leather, Meyer lemon, green papaya, blood, ashy heather, and salty flesh, with a long, ringing outro of bright citron, butterscotch, and seawater.  The muscular angularity of the 4er cask all done up in lemons and lace; a basket of apples and roasted nuts next an old campfire by the seaside