Reviews by: Mishima
the balvenie doublewood 12 year old
- Reviewer
- Mishima
- Color
- Glowing clover honey
- Nose
- Honey and vanilla predominate on an even bed of maltiness and side of fruit. If you get curious and patient (give it 15 minutes in your glass) it will open up some flowery perfume, a whiff of sherry, smoke, and peat.
- Body
- To the heavy side of medium.
- Palate
- Integrates well with the nose, that is mostly honey and malt, but without any syrupiness.
- Finish
- Fairly long and rather acidic, here the vaunted sherry makes itself finally a salient addition with a lingering spice - one that will stay in your mouth for upwards of an hour.
This is a well constructed rather straightforward Speyside whisky. If you are looking for a well sherried whisky, look elsewhere. Yet for a shoulder season malt - late spring or late summer - this is a fine bottle to savour.
bowmore 17 year old
- Reviewer
- Mishima
- Color
- Pale Straw - the light of 3 in the afternoon on an Autumn Day
- Nose
- Unfurls itself slowly in layers. Smoke and peat, not overwhelmingly, they play first and second chair. A malty undertone with trills of iodine, salt, and seaweed provides the main melody. After the first movement, subtle sherry notes come to the fore along with a rippling spicieness. Breath taking.
- Body
- Full and creamy.
- Palate
- At once malty sweet and whisky sour - notes of salt and spice, and those nigh ineffeable 'organics' take turns as the complimenting flavours.
- Finish
- The sourness of the palate stays while the sweetness fades. A brush of salt, iodine, and a fair bit of metal = copper actually, like biting a penny. Will stay with you until you eat something, smoke something, or brush your teeth. And then maybe you'll taste it with your breakfest the next day.
This is a whisky with a distinct personality. It is elegance and the sea - the captain's cabin if your will - everything you want from a maritime whisky, with subtlity, polish, and even gentlemanly restraint. A note: give this one plenty of air - grows both rich and mellow with a fair decanting.
glenfiddich solera reserve 15 years old
- Reviewer
- Mishima
- Color
- Like new polished brass
- Nose
- Malty, a touch of honey and toffee, pears like the 12, but more subdued, a bit of alcohol
- Body
- Thin, it sprints over your tongue towards your gut
- Palate
- Reflects the nose well, a bit of cereally goodness, a bit of toffee that strengthens as it airs out. Smooth and slightly sweet it grows sour and sharp with water.
- Finish
- Brief and slightly drying, a touch of sour wininess - the 1/3 sherry cask making its mark
Since I read about the unusual solera vatting process I've wanted to experience this whisky. Perhaps my high expectations were to blame for my eventual disappointment. The nose lacks definition and complexity, but it swills easy and smooth, tasty, but easily forgettable. The bottom line though, is that I'd rather drink the glenfiddich 12 over its older brother.
buffalo trace kentucky straight bourbon whiskey
- Reviewer
- Mishima
- Color
- Heavy oaken brown in the bottle, lighter, buttescotch yellow in the glass
- Nose
- The Jungian archtype of Bourbon measured out in 30 ml: The first rising sweetness, corn syrup thick till it is almost maple. Underneath the wood plays, american oak and Kentucky summer, a shy spiciness that imitates nuts, burnt toffee, cinnamon. It is the long wafting must of a plantation home, the fetid aroma of nostlagia and decay.
- Body
- An easy medium, swaggers without pomposity. Slick but not oily.
- Palate
- It is not the saccahrine swill the nose sometimes suggests, but fufills the undercurrents, the elegant, wonderfully restrained wood dominates instead, allowing the nebulous spices a word in here and there.
- Finish
- It is not until after you swallow that you get any sense of alcohol from this whiskey. But like a lingering resentment it comes all at the end, fierce and brutal - a heaving fire that smolders down to a tingle that will slowly fade, leaving a velvet thickness in your throat. And a touch of dark chocolate my senses discovered long before but my mind could not evoke.
Buffalo Trace is polished, elegant enough for a cigar and smoking jacket scene, without losing the raw frontieer spirit credentials that the word Bourbon evokes. It is a quiet unassuming bottle, affecting no pretensions, but its plummable depths, and easy swilling straight from the botttle attitude marry together the two worlds of whisky without compromise.
highland park 12 years old
- Reviewer
- Mishima
- Color
- Light Staw, A June Sunrise
- Nose
- Floral, a breath of apple blossoms. The lapping brine of the sea. Peat, neither too much to overwhelm the other aromas, nor too little to ignore. Sherry, and its promise of choclate and oranges.
- Body
- Medium thick, a swelling ocean oily rolicking in your mouth
- Palate
- Sweet, a deep honeyed flavour that turns to sherry (that bit o' chocholate) and then fruit, bright fresh fruit, sometimes apples, other bannanas, perhaps something else.
- Finish
- It begins hot, cooling as it dries, leaving your tongue velvet enshrouded, thick and lush with the last touch of honey and sherry vying for dominance.
This is of course the whisky known as the great all arounder, and for good reason. It represents in turns most of the divergent scottish whisky experiences all in one relatively inexpensive bottle (only the lowlands are not adequately spoken for). It is also the great back and forther. Every time I taste this whisky I find something different. From the same bottle I have found it to be one day more peaty/salty, another more sherry/fruity. Some days it is sweet, others, bone dry. It is like a vibrant friend, always changing, always enganging in some unexpected way.
the macallan cask strength
- Reviewer
- Mishima
- Color
- a ruddy chestnut
- Nose
- At first shy, only a touch of sherry and a whiff of oak. Then fruits bloom, dark and unnamed, perhaps plums, then obvious oranges married with a lush chocholate. The wood develops, polished oak, a mahogony library reminiscient of old bourbon, and just a whisper of smoke. Ends up where it began, with sherry coming once again to the fore. Water brings out more sherry and some walnuts.
- Body
- Medium bodied. Wants to be thicker but all the alcohol keeps it afloat.
- Palate
- There is a good complexity here, even if it does come off bitter. Black tea overbrewed and left to grow cold. The bitter half of oak. Burnt sugar. Still a little sweet. The most pleasant part is the flavour of apples underneath all this. But soon enough the alcohol deadens the tongue. With water it tastes like a more assertive highland park 12.
- Finish
- The instant you begin to swallow that chocolate odour fills your mouth with its flavour, of rich dark chocholate melded with yes of course wood and sherry. Somehwere a crooner under a street lamp lights a cigarette, and so a touch of smoke accompanies the dessert, along with tabacco, but not the thin cheap kind, but the thick pungent roll your own a Raymond Chandler character might smoke. Oh and the high clean burn of almost 60% abv, but that really goes without saying.
The cask strength is much superior, in limited experience, to the standard 12. The nose is more flamboyant, the finish livelier, and the whole the thing comes off feeling over the top. Unfortunately the palate suffers, remaining bitter even with the addition of water. Still, it does a nice job of simulating the wood panelled library and leather armchair I'm sure I'll never be able to afford.
talisker 10 year old
- Reviewer
- Mishima
- Color
- Always a little darker than I remember, a roan bronze
- Nose
- A gentlemanly peat takes his glove and smacks you in the face. Not a woodsy smoke, but more akin to the odour of brisket smoking on a cold day. There is more here, sherry, not shy, only reservedly reticient. A sea brine sweetness joining the peat smoke and sherry together.
- Body
- Creamy, light but mouth filling at once.
- Palate
- Somewhat sweeter than you would expect lurking under the smoke. There is sherry, spice and oak here, all swaddled in that nebulous peat haze that comes to the fore and retreats in turn. Just a hint of the pepper to come.
- Finish
- The peppery finish this whisky is (in)famous for. A long, long burn that stars like a screaming siren from the distance, speeding and blueshifting into your mouth it fills your senses with 4 alarm fire. Eventually it fades to a prickle that will stay for several minutes unless you douse it with water, or another sip.
Gracefully beautiful, enticing and over the top, it is a Shakespearean tragedy, crafted perfectly from beginning to end, and yes with the vicious bloodbath which steals the show and hushes the crowd right before the curtain closes.