Canadian Mist Collingwood

This whisky is aged in white oak barrels and finished with toasted Maplewood mellowing. The whisky is blended together and then put in a marrying vat for nearly a year with toasted Maplewood staves, to mellow the whisky. Distilled by Canadian Mist in Collingwood.

Nose: Fresh cut wood (green), brown sugar, light floral and fruity rye, a bit earthy and candy-like...maple syrup and caramel. Integrated is a light floral note, perhaps peonies. A very enjoyable nose. An odd part is that there is a note of pear which I find typically in Scotch and not Canadian whisky, which does make for an intriguing addition as well. There’s also orange peel, green grapes, and some berry notes – raspberry in particular- which I notice more clearly the farther my nose is from the glass. Oak is also in the background ever so slightly. The one thing I don’t love is that the rye sometimes seems a bit misplaced in the nose which doesn’t help it, and there’s a sour, meaty note coming from, I assume, the corn...85%

Taste: Quite sweet, the fresh wood from the nose comes in and gradually heats up with some rye flavour and spice before being covered for a second by sweet, syrupy wood notes before finishing with rye spice once more. It does a decent job of going with the theme but I wouldn’t object to more complexity. I like the combination of the sweet and the spicy in this whisky – there’s not too much of either for me but they’re both distinctly there. It’s pretty easy drinking too. 77%

Finish: Dusty and spicy rye, framed with a bit of sweetness from the maple. It fades slowly into a more oaky, dry finish. Quite pleasant – I like the changing nature of the finish and the final result is good. 80%

Intrigue: Decent, and quite approachable (if not too sweet). This is a fabulous mixer (if not a bit pricy for what it gives), and it survives ok as a sipper. 80%

Weighting the nose 25%, taste 35%, Finish 15%, and Intrigue 25% the overall grade is 82.

*I realized I would never have time to upload all my Canadian whisky reviews to connosr properly, so I've been importing the tasting notes in bulk to expand the whisky base on connosr. For more info on the whisky (with similar tasting notes), see my post at whiskywon.wordpress.com/2013/09/…