Paul John Bold Peated

Amrut, after having blazed an Indian trail across the whisky landscape, has in it's wake a solid single malt offering from Paul John Whisky from Goa.

Their spirit is nice and flavorful with a lot of tropical fruits. They also have a nice mix of peated and unpeated expressions to choose from alongside some rather tasty single cask offerings.

For the last few months or so I've been working hard to rub shoulders (read connect on Twitter) with whisky bloggers from around the world to basically increase my knowledge base and learn from the good ones. One of those bloggers is @TheWhiskyWire who routinely holds 'Tweet Tastings' for different expressions.

Essentially how this works is that interested bloggers get a 90ml sample from him and then at the exact same time around the world the samples are opened. What follows is a sort of collective global tasting notes on Twitter which allows for different opinions and comments. Needless to say it's a super fun exercise which lasts for about an hour.

You get to connect with other bloggers and share tasting notes making it a cool way to taste a whisky.

The Bold is fully peated, served at 46% and, as you can guess, my sample is from a 90ml mini.

Deep peat. Oak. Dates. Bananas. Chocolate. Wild berries. Sandalwood. Warm it up and the flavors come through more. Now more dark honey. Warm citrus. Bourbon. Vanilla. Hint of black pepper. Soft leather. Green tobacco leaf. Cigar box. I really like the nose. It's multi-layered and you can sit with it for a while. 23/25

Full bodied. Smoke. Tobaccos. It's quite savory. I might have wanted it to be just a touch on the sweeter side. All spice. Cinnamon. Oak. Bitter chocolate. Touch of salt. Brine. Aniseed. All enveloped in woodfire. The palate is nice enough but I feel the nose promise more. 21/25

Medium to long. Oak. All spice. 21/25

Look, this is not a bad whisky. I like the peat in here. It's different and nicely layered (especially the nose). I would have liked some of Paul Johns' signature fruity flavors to come out more but they didn't. Maybe they were going for a different approach. Does it work? Yes and No. Lovely nose, average palate and finish. Should you buy it? Sure, why not? Or maybe better split with a couple of friends.

Whatever said and done this was my first Tweet Tasting and so the experience was top notch even if the whisky really wasn't.