What was the last bottle you finished?

Laga 16 this evening. Really enjoyed this bottle and sad to see it go!

@Wierdo nice going, keep us posted if you ever get an answer. I know many rumours go around about these things but I've heard it from more than one source. All the better if it isn't and continues to be available from here onwards.

What have you shifted to in terms of your preferences?

@cricklewood I've emailed info at Benromach as well and they've not replied so I'd say the rumours are correct. Shame that. They actually make more money on the 100 proof than they do on the standard 10 so I'm not sure why they've made that decision?

In terms of my tastes I've moved towards highland malts and coastal malts. Springbank, Benromach, Balblair etc. I've moved towards stuff with less in your face flavours and a bit more complexity. In terms of peat I love a lightly peated malt best of all. But, I find with the heavily peated stuff it can be a bit one dimensional for my liking at the moment.

That may change though and I go back to loving powerful peat monsters again.

I finished my first ever comp’ed bottle on Sunday at my in-laws’: Signal Hill. All in all, not a bad whisky, but I don’t think I’d pay the $40 LCBO asking price. At the risk of angering my fellow Canadian whisky fans, Signal Hill tastes stereotypically Canadian; light, sweet, and not very complex. Nice bottle design though...

For $40 or so, I’d rather get Wild Turkey 101, Weller Antique 107 (if it’s available), Crown Royal Northern Harvest Rye (the bête noire of many Connosr members), Lot 40, and more.

There is a little story that goes with this post and I will try to keep it short...

Well, a close friend of my parents just passed away a little over a week ago.

He he been in assisted living for over a year due to health complication from his brain tumor. This of course limited how much alcohol he could drink. Anyway, last November when I went to visit him and brough with me my bottle of 21yo Redbreast. I knew he enjoyed the 15yo, when I brought that one on one of my visits, and I knew he would be really happy to try to the 21yo, and I was right.

Well...

Last week, Thursday, at his wake, I opened up that same 21yo for all of those who would like to have wee dram. It was crazy to think that the last time I opened it up for a dram was when I was visiting him. Did we finish the bottle? No we didn't. There was still exactly 150ml left, so I got three 50ml viles (with screw caps), and I divided it up. I plan to give one vile to each of his sons, and keep the third for myself.

So, I did and didn't (since I still have 50ml of it left) finish my bottle of 21yr Redbreast.

Anyway, the bottle is now empty, but the memories that bottle was/is a part of, are still present.

I just finished my Lagavulin 16. I really enjoyed this bottle, and I’m sure it’s related to the fact that I received it as a gift from some co-workers last year as a “going away” gift.

@OdysseusUnbound Imuch appreciate the sample you made me. I hope to get to it (as with the rest of them) before July.

It was haere ra (Maori for goodbye) to my bottle of Kilkerran 12 tonight. Man I enjoyed that bottle - full of lemons and creosote.

Corryvrekan finally bit the dust last night, alas!

Lot 40 standard also went earlier this week.

Sad to see both go really but it also means I can open another so every cloud . . . :)

Woodford Reserve Bourbon. The bottle was bought in about 2011. It still tasted good. One down, dozens to go.

@Victor is that dozens of open bottles to go, or dozens of Woodford Reserve to go?

A couple kills over the weekend:

Kilkerran WIP #6 (Pink) Bourbon Wood. One of the last WIPs, so older, and therefore showing less distillery character than my favorite early ones. Totally nice and sweet and easy, but I'm not kicking myself for failing to stock up back when this one was current. The newer Kilkerran 8 Cask Strength is better.

Elijah Craig Small Batch Bourbon. I bought it for when friends come over, and come they did—like locusts. I'm happy that I had some cheap (relative to scotch) bourbon on hand for them to drown with mixers. And for @RianC, I'll add this mini-review: overly sweet oak juice begging for a pour of Coke.

Thomas H. Handy Sazerac Rye, 63.1% ABV 2016 release. I think that this is the 6th bottle of Thomas Handy I/we have been through: (3) 2010 release, (1) 2011, (1) 2012, and now this 2016.

@Victor How long was yours open? Curious what evolution you experience with your bottle? Mine has been open for about two years now and is half full. Time to revisit it . . .

@Nock, my bottle of 2016 Thomas H Handy was open for 26 months. At first I was somewhat disappointed with it, until after I tried it with water.

connosr.com/thomas-h-handy-thomas-h-handy-…

That bottle just got better and better. It was fabulous with or without water after 8-16 months becoming fruitier and no less spicy. The very last of it was insanely good, very spicy and very very fruity. This was the largest positive air effect I have seen with releases of Thomas H. Handy Sazerac Rye. Usually I tend to prefer it earlier after the bottles are open. In this case I will be enthusiastic to wait and see what happens with my other bottle of the 2016 release. The tannins I had noticed in the review when the bottle was first opened were unnoticeable to me by the later phases of my having consumed the last of the bottle's contents. .

@Victor I think we already talk about this. But I guess I missed your review on connosr.

I also was highly disappointed with the 2016 and much preferred the 2015 (I opened them both on the same night April 15th 2017). But when I revisited the bottles semi-blind in September of 2018 (along with 2009, 2010, and 2014) the 2016 came out on top followed closely by 2009 and then 2010. I guessed it was the 2010 . . . nope. I was shocked. I mean they are all great batches, but for some reason the 2016 was my favorite blind. Go figure.

@Nock so your experience with the 2016 Thomas Handy was much like mine-- viz. a lot of air was very good for it.

Oh snif it's with a slight sense of melancholy that I pour the last drops of my a'bunadh batch 61. It was one of the first bottles marking my forays and journey into whisky...

@RikS I feel that way at the end of every bottle of A'bunadh.

@Nozinan I am a little nervous about how well that sample of Batch 26 I gave you will hold up in that little bottle for multiple years. I'll just have to trust that the high proof will keep it in OK condition. I would hate for you to be disappointed in the batch numbered with your birth number. It was a great batch out of the bottle. .

High West Rendezvous Rye, 46% ABV, a blend of a 16 yo 80% rye content straight rye, probably sourced from Barton/1792 Ridgemont and a 6 yo 95% rye content straight rye, sourced from MGPI, formerly LDI, formerly Seagram Distillery. The ratio of the two ryes was not given. This was bottle # 519 from Batch # 56. I bought this bottle in 2011, and it has been open nearly 8 years. This was a great bottle of a great rye, but the last 2 or 3 years showed some of that "pickle juice" flavour that @Nozinan is always tasting. I don't ever like pickle juice in rye. The moral of the story: finish off your Rendezvous Rye within the first 4 years it is open!

Last drips out of a glenkinchie 12. Sweet, creamy, gentle. Open for many years. Probably won’t buy it, but it was the one that got me into whisky. Thank you glenkinchie

A true connosr, with a seemingly appropriate expression...

thesun.co.uk/sport/mma/…

The stupidity of it all...

@RikS clearly fake. No seal. I HOPE it wasn’t alcohol. At 700 cc and 40% that’s 280 g. The recommended maximum for a male in 1 day is 40 g.

@RikS I have this batch. It's over half gone and I doubt it will last much longer

A time capsule sample and the last of the bottle. As @paddockjudge stated "good whisky shared becomes legendary".

@RikS

Seeing the source of the article, I would rather look at what's on the 3rd page of The Sun. But I was game, I did check out the article.

Black & White Blended Scotch, 40% ABV, the one with the two Scottish terriers on the label. This is one of the inexpensive blended Scotch whiskies which I like. It is a simple malty blend. The bottle finished was a 750 ml one. I'd one day be tempted to own another, except that now my local stores only carry the 1.75 ml size. Yikes! That's a bit much. Not that I don't have a few of those "handles" on hand right now, but those take forever to go through.

Aberlour A'bunadh, 60.2% ABV, Batch # 45. This Batch 45 has been a very well received Batch of Aberlour A'bunadh. I can tell you, and did in a review, that this was an excellent bottle.

connosr.com/aberlour-abunadh-whisky-review…

In the category of "even two bottles of whisky bottled from the same batch can be very different" @Nock was unlucky enough to have a bottle from this batch which was 10 points lesser than this, and 10 points lesser than most bottles of Batch #45. We tasted them side by side, and they were recently opened bottles. What I really want to know, maybe from Ruben, @whiskynotes, is, is A'bunadh one of that overwhelming majority of sherry cask Scottish malts using "sherry seasoned barrels" rather than actual casks which previously held sherry? Sloshing wine around in the barrel for 6 to 18 months is a different thing than actually holding sherry held to maturity. I still like A'bunadh plenty, but tasting whisky whose dominant flavours are nearly 100% from sherry sloshings rather than from actual sherry maturation cask influence removes what little romanticism I have left from sherried malt. On the other hand Amrut Intermediate Sherry Matured Malt gets dumped directly into casks which just before held actual sherry. No wonder it is so good.

My affection for A'bunadh remains. I care about taste and smell, and discount beautiful and fictitious notions of the creation of the elixir in the bottle. While my affection for A'bunadh remains, the romanticism does not.

@Victor I can't tell you with absolute certainty which casks Aberlour is using, but if a distillery like The Glenrothes launches a new core range from 10 to 25 years and ALL of them are sherry-seasoned casks, then I'm quite confident a wide-scale high-turnover product like A'Bunadh is also using sherry-seasoned casks. It is simply the industry standard at the moment: you cannot get enough old casks these days and A'Bunadh is obviously composed around first-fill casks, and lots of them.

Are you sure Amrut uses different casks? References for that? It would surprise me.

@WhiskyNotes, thank you very much for your quick response.

I rely only on the Amrut story that they ship cask-strength Amrut to Spain, dump the sherry casks in Spain, re-fill them with the CS Amrut whisky, then ship them back to India. Whence the story? Well I did read it here:

whiskynotes.be/2012/world/…

Did I read it anywhere else? I am not sure where else I may have read it.