Which bottle did you just buy and why?

@Victor I don't doubt your experience with OP. My defining experience was a little differet. Sitting in a Masterclass at Spirit of Toronto with @padddockjudge and, I believe, @cricklewood. The 12 YO had a nose that reminded me of gefilte fish mixture before it is cooked. I've tasted OP since then but I only remember the fish...

@Victor - I believe it was you that extolled the virtues of the old 17 to me, prompting me to buy two bottles before they went extinct! Top whisky too and I still have a full bottle and a sample that I keep meaning to open. I see a h2h (way out) on the horizon ...

I agree about Pulteney's profile and always enjoy the salty, cerealy notes it offers. The standard 12 was a staple for many years but I haven't had it since the rebranding. I was always unimpressed with how, even at 40%, the distillate held up and always feels fat and juicy. I'm hoping this cask strength bottle will offer this in spades.

@Nozinan - the first bottle of the 12 I ever opened had an 'off' cork and it took me a while to realise this was where the cabbage and drain water smell was coming from! It settled nicely with a new cork and some air but that initial pour was, er, not that welcoming.

I'm imagining gefilte fish to have a rather potent fish odour, like mashed anchovies and dried squid?

@RianC well, it’s a little different from anchovies and squid, but definitely fishy, with some fresh grated onion…

This beauty arrived on Friday. A little FOMO goes a long way. Halfway through a tasting @paddockjudge tells me he bought one online and that it was free shipping. That’s essentially just over 10% off the total cost of acquiring it unless you live in London.

I had considered getting one last year but balked at the price. But finishing @talexander’s heel with the group last week (I still have the sample he gave me in November which I intend to review), this is such a fantastic whisky, I wanted to have one for future consumption.

@Nozinan - looks lovely! What is it, bourbon, rye or something exotic and wholly Canadian?

Recent acquisitions:

The PCs were a bit of an impulse but prompted by catching a review by chance, liking what I heard (peat and sherry, essentially, but some funky cask selections too) then seeing some were still available and on offer. I got the last two bottles at the Green Welly. Not cheap but have high expectations. Lots of comparisons to Octomore ...

OP was bought a couple of weeks back. Again, saw it whilst idly perusing online and always wanted to try it like this so bit. Wasn't cheap but was also on offer which helped me bite.

Picked up the Laga this morning as I had some vouchers to use at Waitrose. Ended getting £14 off which seems about right to me. I'd baulk at paying the asking £76!

Here's the bit where I promise myself no more until Xmas . Well, I can't afford any now but, in fairness, they all met my criteria in that they were relatively good deals and/or one-offs (of sorts) that wouldn't hang around long.

And, as an aside, has anyone seen any Springbank 10 lately? Not seen any for well over a year now ...

@Nozinan Canadian whisky at 67.9% ABV. Wonderful! That would have been just a pipe dream for me when I went on my first whisky-buying trip to Canada in 2011. In 2011 95+% of Canadian whisky was sold at 40% ABV.

@Victor I believe that since your last trip up here there have been a number of releases above 60%. Many will still be around for you to try when we next meet.

@Nozinan yes indeed,

@RianC re the Springbank, no I haven’t seen any for ages and I do keep an eye out. Next time I see any Springbank I will let you know.

Nice haul in your pic and particularly the PCs. Not had this one but it looks to be really nice. That perfect blend of PC sherry and peat can be hard to beat if done right.

My two to add to this theme are a Loch Lomond blended whisky consisting of a blend of malted barley from a column still and a pot still. It’s been matured in a bourbon cask and it’s called Glasshouse. It retails at about £27 and it’s a lovely dram. Light bourbon cask notes of vanilla and mild coconut. Lots of fresh fruit too. Definitely not my last bottle of this.

Why. Lots of good reviews and they are right.

It’s the same with the second bottle. Good reviews from people who I respect served me well. Ledaig Sinclair series. Bourbon cask and then finished in Rioja casks. £32!!!!

I can’t quite believe you can get this for just over £30 here. The Rioja provides a lovely red fruit sweetness to the smoke and subtle dirty edge to the Ledaig spirit. A very well put together whisky. Another one I can’t help but recommend.

Cheers..

@Timp that's very interesting what you say about Glasshouse Blended Scotch Whisky. Certainly, combining column still malted barley whisky with pot still malted barley whisky can reduce costs and, if done well, make the product very price competitive. Clearly it is already demonstrated that the process CAN be done well. Thanks for reporting this!

@Victor no problem. It’s interesting what Loch Lomond are up to at the moment. Nice pricing too.

@Timp - They sound lovely. I've eyed the Ledaig for a while but the low price actually put me off I'd trust your judgement and may have to indulge. Wasn't too keen on the 18 though. Have you had it? How do they compare if so? Cheers

@RianC The Port Charlotte Cask Exploration series are a fun experimentation on wine finishes. The series so far have had MC:01 (Marsala cask), MRC:01 (Bordeaux Wine cask finish), PAC:01( "French Bordeaux Gironde wine from the Pauillac region"), OLC:01 (Oloroso Cask finished), and SC:01(Sauternes finish). Some are not in the wine finished whiskies but, Bruichladdich have done a decent job of complementing their Port Charlotte distillate signature with the wine finishes. MRC and OLC are favoured by those who tried the series. Personally, I thought that PAC:01 was the most balanced of the releases so far.

@RianC no not had the 18 but certainly enjoy the ten.

The sample you sent last time was a lovely batch.

I haven’t purchased enough of the ten to see if it’s like the Springbank ten where I look forward to seeing what the batch variation has changed. Always good just slightly different each time.

Maybe time for another one.

Found a cool Balcones glass set leftover from last holiday season marked down to $32. Couldn't resist. Batch is from August 2021.

Recent auction acquisitions. The Pinwinnie is one I've been after for a while but always been priced out. Got this for a decent price and it's in better knick than I'd expected. I planned to drink it but might keep it for a while - it's gorgeous ha!

The JW is from a period (late 70s/early 80s) that I know is good. I'll be drinking this one And I'm excited to see some sediment in the bottle ...

Laffy was an impulse buy as I was outbid on another bottle. Paid £45, which seemed OK, but I have no real idea of the period. Does anyone know when they changed this label? Early 2010s, I think, so could potentially be from the mid 90s to then. Plan is to consume but when the time and people are right.

Cheers

Got this to compare with the "bonded"

Went to pick up some beer and a Tempranillo to use in the Hirschgulasch for the Oktoberfest celebration my wife and I are having this Saturday. While standing in line to checkout, my wife spotted a bottle of Booker's and told the guy to add it to our cart.

This is the Booker's 2022-02 The Lumberyard Batch. I am hearing good reviews so far on this so my hopes are high that this will be a good one. MSRP is supposed to be $90 and this place charged $99 so not too bad (except that Book's MSRP is getting so high!) Seeing it online for close to $200.

May crack this in the evening of Oktoberfest when the crowd thins a bit.

Booker's 2022-02 7-year old, 62.40% ABV

Recent acquisitions: the Thompson Bro's bottles have come highly recommended and there's a rumour that the 6 yo blend is a 'teaspooned' Macallan. Apparently some Famous Grouse went into some Macallan at the bottling plant. Possible, for sure, but who knows.

You might notice the malt blends cap is all twisted. Well that because, in my haste, I pulled it off the bottle while attempting to get it out of the tightest packaging I think I've ever come across I was thirsty, what can I say ha.

The Coal Ila though is a special bottling for Royal Mile whiskys. Cost me £100 but has been finished in a refill amontillado cask for 13 months. It's like the heavens have heard my calls

Way too much buying lately but I keep seeing bottles that meet my criteria and there was no way I was passing that Caol ila up. And, in fairness, the two blends were very reasonably priced.

We're doing some floor board sanding today so most of my whisky have been ousted from their hideouts. Man, I need more space ... The house looks like a bottle shop!

I've been at a wedding on the west coast of Scotland this week. We had a bit of a day free and as we were just over an hour from Campbletown I took the opportunity to tick one off the bucket list and booked a tour of Springbank.

I had to show a bit of restraint in the distillery shop afterwards not to burn into the overdraft in the midst of a cost of living crisis or buy a load of bottles to cynically sell. Ideally I wanted one bottle from each of the distillates that Springbank do. I also wanted something from the cage, there wasn't a lot of choice in the cage but I got this Springbank 7 year old rechar bourbon cask. I got a Hazelburn 15 Oloroso cask, which was recently released and is apparently very good and a Longrow distillery handfill. I asked online before and of all the handfill bottles available at the distillery apparently the Longrow is currently the best as it has some of this year's 18 and 21 year old in the vatting.

These bottles will all be opened at some point. Probably not straight away but they'll defintely be opened.

As for the distillery tour. It was fantastic. £10 per head, lasts about an hour and you see a distillery operating essentially as most distilleries did 50 years or more ago. One of only a handful of distilleries to have traditional floor maltings. You get a dram on the tour, a 5cl sample and glass to take with you. Springbank is hard to get to. But if you were going to tour any Scotch distillery I think Springbank should be near the top of the list.

On our tour we were the only Brits. We were with a large party from Poland. Outside the distillery before the tour were a bunch of people from Scandinavia and I think Belgium who from listening to them had done the tour the previous day and were just back at the shop to stock up before heading home. I was quite struck by how this distillery that was barely known in Britain a few years ago now has a reputation that spreads to Europe and beyond.

We then had the scariest car journey of my life on the way home yesterday. Driving through the Highlands in a storm. Roads winding around mountains with hundreds of feet of mountain above you hundreds of feet of mountain below you, warnings of falling rocks, the wind buffeting the car and rain so heavy visibility was poor even with the wipers on full.

@Wierdo - oooh lovely haul! Sounds like a great trip and very scary drive.

Will have to make my way up there at some point!

@RianC nice looking whisky’s. That Caol Ila will be outstanding I would imagine. Good score on those TBs. They are bottling some good stuff it seems.

@Timp - you'll be welcome to a sample when I open it, of course, but I got them all at Royal Mile whiskies, if your fancy has been tickled! No free delivery though, which sucks.

@Wierdo lovely bottles and sounds like an entertaining trip. Been looking at the hand fills on auction but really nice to get one properly from the shop. Just been saying to my wife we need to go back to Campbeltown to spend a bit more time in the area.

Didn’t get a chance to do a tour when I visited as we had to get the ferry to Isla later that day but as you indicate probably hard to beat. Nice write up. Cheers.

@Timp bit disappointed we didn't have time to visit Islay. We looked out of the window of the caravan where we were stopping and could see Islay and Jura quite close. Just a few miles away across the sea. Ralfy mentioned this once in one of his videos but when you visit it reallt brings it home how close Campbletown is to Islay. When you think about it some incredible whisky comes from a fairly small geographical area. Islay off one coast of the Kintyre peninsula. Off the other coast of the peninsula you have Arran. Then at the tip of the peninsula in Campbletown you have Glen Scotia, Kilkerran and Springbank a few minutes walk from each other. I bet they're all within a distance of 50 miles of each other.

Regarding the handfills from what I hear they're all generally good. At the moment the Longrow is the one that fans recommend. But they all get decent reviews on whiskybase.

@Wierdo nice haul!

Purchased a bottle of Gold Spot Pot Still Irish Whiskey from Mitchell & Son. This is a limited edition 9 year old whiskey matured in a combination of bourbon, port, sherry and Bordeaux casks and is bottled at 51.4% ABV.

This is a belated birthday gift for my wife. I had read about this whiskey just before her birthday back in July but this is the first time I have actually found it for sale. We opened this one the same day we got it and both really enjoyed it. She is more the Irish Whiskey aficionado then I am, but I would rate this on first taste as one of my top 3 Irish whiskeys.

Need to see if I can grab another one of these before they are gone!

Finally someone while in the US was actually able to bring me the bottle I asked for, OGD 114. To the Americans it is as common a site in a liquor store as WT 101. For Canadians, it is harder to come by than Blanton's Gold. They also grabbed a FR SB Select which also is not available in Canada.