Distilery: Glenmorangie
Whisky Region: Highland
Age: 10 years
Date Distilled: February 2000
Cask Type: Second-fill ex-bourbon hogshead
Outturn: 312 bottles
Abv.: 59.2%
Colour: Pale Lothlorien gold

Tasted before: Glenmorangie Original

Nose:
The first impression is very sweet one with dominant caramel, some whiffs of vanilla and butter. The second impressions are more fruity. With water I get an idea of toasted aromas.

Taste:
Without water this dram has a oily a tittle sirupy mouthfeel. Some nutty flavors join forces with caramel and honey.

Aftertaste:
The aftertaste is long and warming.

Conclusion:
For me an atypical dram for this distillery since the lack of floral and the typical fruity notes.

Limburg chitchat: “I haven’t bought an original bottling in ten years“. This tweet (by OliverKlimek) I read on twitter the other day. Well, this quote matches quite well with a question I’m asking myself for weeks now: „Can I truly be a whisky geek if one of my favorite whiskies is an original bottling?“ Frankly this sounds a little bit polemic but it seems like some folks in the whisky scene tend to have that opinion. So I think it’s time to have a closer look into the world of independent bottlers.

That independent bottlings are the greater ones is a very popular opinion and there always was the myth that independent bottlers simply go to distilleries and snaffle the best cask out of warehouses, while the half-baked owners of those distilleries only sell average spirit. Well that’s pretty much not the case. In fact the ever growing market for independent bottlings is more and more fed with average spirit because it’s getting harder and harder for those independent bottlers to find and bottle good stuff. The reasons for this are obvious:
Firstly the world wide demand for whisky explodes these days. On this years Whisky Fair in Limburg, Germany, Antony McCollum from the independent bottler „Chieftains“ told us that last years demand has passed the numbers which were predicted for 2014. Nobody in die whisky industry anticipated such a high demand for scotch whisky ten years ago. The consequences are that the warehouses are getting more and more empty and the distillers hoard their stock for blends or their own bottlings.
Secondly the market for single casks itself pretty much disappeared. The big companies behind the popular blends like Johnny Walker or Chivas Regal have bought all distilleries they needed ensuring the constant flow of the required spirit. That’s the reason why Diageo who produces Johnny Walker owns over 30 distilleries.

On the other hand the big independent players like Gorden & McPhail, Signatory Vintage or Cadenheads have big warehouses which are more or less full of casks. But the snowballing international whisky markets will steadily increase and the demand for independent bottled whisky will follow. Sooner or later those big warehouses will fall dry since the supply of new casks abates.What do the bottlers do against these trends? Well, they mainly follow two strategies:
Firstly they go to the distilleries with their own empty casks and ask them to fill these casks with new make which then will mature in their own warehouses. But are those whiskies still comparable to those which were matured on-sight? What’s about terroir? Oh, I think that’s another story… And let’s remember 50% of the flavors a whisky gets from the wood in which it is matured in. If a distillery only sells their new make without having the hands on the the cask in which the new make will mature, they loose major influence on the resulting product. So it’s comprehensible that distilleries often do not want their brand name on final products of independent bottlers.
Secondly some independent bottlers already bought their very own distilleries like Gordon & MacPhails did with Benromach Distillery or Signatory Vintage did with Edradour. Alex Bruce from Adelphi reported that they are planing to build their own distillery. I think these examples are no coincidences, they pretty much highlight an ongoing trend.

All this will change the whisky market in different ways: The prices for independent bottled whisky will steadily increase and the average quality of independent bottled whisky will get worse.

Let me conclude and answer my question: Independent bottlers offer us whisky connoisseurs the opportunity to get hands on some really excellent whiskies, which otherwise would be lost in blends. On the other hand not every independent bottled whisky is excellent and beats original bottlings. Not least since the big players understood that the connoisseur market is asking for non-chillfiltered and higher strength whiskies these days.

Independent bottlers enrich the whisky scene for sure and it will be thrilling to see how the whisky industry will handle the increasing world wide demand and which role the independent bottlers will play in this future.

As a passionate whisky aficionado I do tasting notes on a more or less regular base. My tasting notes tend to be rather long. Well that may be a result of my anxious attempts to be as powerfull eloquent as those great Whisky writers such as Charlie MacLean, Jim Murray and last but no least Michael Jackson (R.I.P).  Some of you might agree with me and eventually relate to my thoughts. And I’m sure some could not follow me at all. Guess what, same here with tasting notes by others.

When I recently read a comment by someone big in the whisky (blogging) world claiming that the tasting notes of someone else are extremely accurate, I have to admit I was a little bit irritated and decided to look somewhat deeper into the mysteries of olfaction and taste.

Olfaction and Taste of Whisky

Why it’s so hard to describe flavors, aromas and taste of Whisky accurately? Why can tasting notes be so different from each other? And what do we exactly mean when we use terms like ‘smell’, ‘nose’, ‘taste’, ‘mouthfeel’ or ‘aftertaste’? I’m not a specialist in that at all but I’ll try to summarize what I’ve read about these topics mostly on wikipedia.

Firstly let’s look at how we taste and smell Whsiky…

When we are talking about taste and smell of food, wine and even spirits we’re actually describing impressions of four sensory systems, the haptic system, the trigeminal sensory system, the gustatory system and last but not least the olfactory system.

At this point you might think, ‘What the heck…, why are you bothering me with such scientific terms? I just wanna enjoy my dram!’ But wait, all this isn’t rocket science at all and helps us to understand how and why we taste and scent the way we do …

Firstly the haptic system

Well that’s quite simple. The term haptic system describes the sense of touch of our mouth and mainly our tongue.

Is a product hot or cold, soft or hard? Is it oily, sirupy or more fluid?

The haptic system covers the ability to estimate physical attributes such as temperature, consistency or viscosity of a product.

Secondly the trigeminal sensory system

Well, I think that’s a little unknown sense but you will see, it’s pretty obvious. The  facial nerve (lat. Nervus trigeminus) plays a major role in this. Ok, that’s not as obvious as expected but via this nerve we notice attributes like burning, biting, hot, tingly – you name it. Actually we sense pain with this nerve and receptors for this can be found in our mouth or on our tongue and in our nose as well.  In a pleasurable context it’s hard to find an adequate or simpler description for that. Maybe something like the sense of intensity matches it well.

Together with the haptic system this sense describes what we call the ‘mouthfeel’ of a whisky.

Thirdly the gustatory system

Again a rather complicated term for something very simple. It simply means our taste. But stop, actually what is taste? Often when we say taste we rather mean a combination of taste and smell. The human tongue is able to sense four different senses of taste. That are sweatiness, sourness, bitterness and saltiness. Receptors for each of this tastes are located on certain zones on our tongue. I think everybody knows these essential taste senses.

And now some of you’ll think there’s something missing. Yes you are right, there are two more senses I did not mention yet. The first one is called umami. This term is japanese and means something like beefy, meaty or savory. Food treated with monosedium glutamate is perceived as umami. We do not find glutamate in Whisky at all, but meaty or beefy flavors are not that much uncommon in tasting notes, aren’t they?

The second sense I didn’t mention so far is the sense for calcium. Some studies indicate that mammals have a sense for calcium. I think at this point of time it isn’t relevant but I mention it for the sake of completeness.

In summary there are four maybe five gustative senses which can be used to describe the base taste of a product. These are sweatiness, sourness, bitterness and saltiness and maybe umami.

Fourthly and finally the olfactory system

The olfactory system describes our sense of smell. The sense of smell is fully developed by birth and olfactory cells located in our nose are renewed every 60 days. Generally the human assessment of smells is learned at the ages from 5 up to 10 years. A human being has the ability to distinguish between 10.000 kind of smells and an unexperienced can name only 50% of them. By training this rate can be raised up to 98%.

First conclusions

 We have senses for physical attributes and for the intensity of something. Furthermore we are able to taste the four base tastes sweatiness, sourness, bitterness, saltiness and we have the ability to distinguish between 10.000 kinds of smells or flavors with our nose but the untrained can only name 50% of them.

Well that leads us to the question how we learn and remember flavors, aromas and smells.

How do we learn flavors and aromas or more generally spoken how do we remember smells?

Well, imagine! You’re out somewhere in the streets of a city and suddenly a smell hits your nose and you nearly immediately bear a certain experience, place or feeling in mind that has totally nothing to do with the situation you are actually in right now. I’m pretty sure everybody has made such an experience. But what has this to do with tasting and nosing of whisky, you might think. Well more than you expect, I guess…

Often smells are strongly associated with places, feelings or events (e.g.  ‘Christmas’, or ‘Sea’) and that actually describes what scientists call pre-semantical or implicit memory. Some smells are stored by linking them with visual impressions, personal feelings or certain places. Those smells can’t be named they only can be described by their linked events, places or feelings. That’s why those memories are called implicit memories.

Ok that’s the one part but there are smells you certainly can name. E.g. ‘That smells like peat smoke’. This is the case if you associate a smell not only with a place or a situation but a certain object. This kind of memory is called semantical memory.

Well that are some scientific facts but now some examples…

Imagine ever since your childhood you drank orange juice strictly only for christmas. And now you’re in a situation where somewhere behind you eats an orange and you smell the orange flavors and aromas. What do you think you’ll remember? Right, christmas and not the orange fruit… That’s because your brain has stored this smell linked to christmas (an event) and not with the fruit (an object). That’s an example for your implicit memory.

An other example may be the smell of a cold fireplace. Ever since your childhood you lived in a house with an open fireplace. And you now you’re on your holiday and you step your foot right into a holiday home with a fireplace. You nose hits the smell of cold ashes of a burnt out bonfire and even without seeing it you will think that this house has an open fireplace. And probably you’ll be right and that’s an example for your semantic memory.

Both types are not strictly separated but can go together as well. And what do we learn from this? The description of smells is a very subjective matter. The fact that majority of people knows what you mean by saying ‘That smells like an ripe apple’ is due to the fact that all this people know apples and have certainly smelled an ripe apple before.

That leads us to something that’s called ‘common vocabulary’. Everybody who is familiar with this common vocabulary of smells will understand statements of others if they’re using the same vocabulary.

Whisky-wise that means we need to learn a common smell vocabulary and write our tasting notes with them. But it’s not as simple as that. If you grew up in germany your vocabulary of smells could be in parts totally different from somebody’s who grew up in Scotland. As a german I do not really know who christmas cake smells and on the other hand a scotsman will normally not know what I mean by saying ‘that smells like Aachener Printen’. To put it in a nutshell, it’s very important how, where and even when you were socialized.

With this in mind  we can now understand wherefrom descriptions of whisky like ‘burned rubber’ or ‘on a christmas morning’ or ‘wet morning pier’ originate, but we necessarily do not better understand them. But if we look from a totally different angle at others tasting notes, this will be fun and will give us insights into something very special, namely into the authors personality.

APPEARANCE

The whisky appears clear, pale golden with green reflexes. Small and relatively fast legs with small tears run down the glass.

NOSE

Without water the dram starts very fruity with peaches, green apples and apricots in the nose. After that it turns lightly grassy with some sweet vanilla and caramel aromas. Over all this lies a whiff of sourness.

With water the dram opens up and the nose changes and the fruity aromas are making room for other flavors.  Creamy and buttery vanilla, caramel, muscovado sugar and a whiff of pipe tabac complete the fruity aromas.

Overall a fruity yet typical bourbon nose.

TASTE

The fruity aromas appear again and some nutty and buttery aromas join. The high alcohol doesn’t do too much on the tongue.

As expected the dram gets more gentle with water and the nutty and butterscotch aromas stand out.

The aftertaste is relatively long and some strong peach aromas appear.

CONCLUSION

As one of my first Rosebank this dram raised my attention for this regrettably closed distillery!

RATING - 90/100

APPEARANCE

Very light and pale white wine color – clear

NOSE

First heavy peat smoke with an intense sweetness hits my nose. Then caramel and vanilla flavors with a whiff of tabacco aromas pull through. Later, when the smoke settles down, clear flavors of raspberry-cream candy appear. A sweet, delicate and delicious nose!

PALATE/TASTE

The peat smoke comes back. Salt appears and pushes the distinct sweetness of the nose into the background. A gentle sweet and sour tabacco aroma comes through.

AFTERTASTE

Long lasting, peppery and heavy aftertaste which reflect the flavors and aromas of the nose.

RESUME

A young but very delicious Bowmore bottled by the SMWS. This Whisky is a little bit difficult to describe and somewhat strange but it’s a clearly untypical expression of this distillery.

SMW 81/100

APPEARANCE

Golden amber colored and clear in appearance.

NOSE

Wow that’s a very intense and typical Highland Park. Sherry flavors and heather smoke is clearly there. The 55.6% abv let expect lots of alcohol tingling the nose but that’s not the case at all.

This dram is very spicy. European oak is clearly there with the dark and light bitter flavors. Later some dark fruity notes like cherry and figs are comming through. Overall this dram isn’t to sweat but with some air and a little bit of time some sweat vanilla flavors appear and fade away as soon as they appeared. A very spice, oaky and dry dram with whiffs of smoke.

TASTE

The mouthfeel is a little bit oily and creamy with a great overall texture. Not too sweat with some bitter tannins from the euopean oak. Later slightly peppery notes appear. After the zip is swallowed the typical Highland Park phenomenon appears: A mouth drying effect is followed by an immense mouth watering. Awesome… Overall the taste is dominated by an explosion of flavors. Oaky spices with the typical heather honey smoke. Complex and delicious.

AFTERTASTE

A long lasting aftertaste with hints of nuts. THe typical sherry notes and the smoke are coming back.

COMMENT

A really good and intense HP with lots and well balanced flavors and the typical destillery characteristics. The ex-sherry refill butt gives the distinction to this bottling. The nose is a stunner which is followed by the complex and explosive peppery palate. A great dram and a fantastic example of an awesome single cast bottling. Thumbs up!

RATING: 90/100

APPEARANCE

This dram is dark golden colored and very powerful in appearance. Oily and syrupy in the glass this dram looks like pure nectar.

NOSE

First impressions are very intense raisin flavors. Rum raisins – not too sweet – nearly dry raisins hit my nose. Later some sweet and little sour notes coming through which bear pineapple and coconut in my mind! Overall this dram has a very, very intense and delicious nose!

TASTE

The mouthfeel is very oily and well textured. Sweet and intense aromas of pineapple, raisins and coconut dominate the taste.

AFTERTASTE

The aftertaste is long and sweet. Starting with the exotic fruity flavors the aftertaste ends with well balanced and sweet biscuit aromas.

CONCLUSION

A very intense and uncommon whisky. This dram is very exotic. Not so much the single aromas rather the combination of them make it exotic to me. This is something special from Japan but amazingly tasty!

RATING 85/100

APPEARANCE

The whisky is clear, yellow-golden with great reflexes. Small and fast tears with small legs run down the glass.

NOSE

My first impression of this dram reminds me of french croissants with some apricot jam and almond splinters.

The dram starts gentle and somewhat reserved. But quickly aromas of butter, almonds, vanilla and some whiffs of caramel appear and getting stronger. The 57,2% above are clearly there but aren’t unpleasant.

After a little while my impressions turn into plain butter cake with a hint of lemon and almonds coated with white chocolate.

Even if it sounds very strange over… all this something like aromas of roasted lobster carcasses come through.

With water the whisky won’t come up as expected, so this dram definitely does not need any water!

Overall this dram has a great gentle bourbon nose!

TASTE

The mouthfeel begins oily and its 57,2% abv are again not unpleasant.

Flavorwise the dram starts sweet with nutty aromas and as expected the flavors as described before dominate the palate.

CONCLUSION

Amazing stuff! Although this whisky is from the Glenmorangie distillery the dram is completely different compared to the SMWS 125.26 I reviewed earlier this year!

RATING - 91\100 

APPEARANCE

Golden, clear and relatively dark for a whisky matured in an ex-bourbon cask.

NOSE

Wow, a very complex bunch of fantastic and clear flavors hits my nose. Aromas of peach, apricot andpineapples alternate with oaky and creme brulee kind of flavors (vanilla and caramel). All that is layered with a whiff of bourbon sourness and oaky spices. A very intense, complex and delicious nose.

PALATE/TASTE

In spite of his 52.2% abv. it‘s not too spirituous – no tingling on the tongue. A creamy and watering mouth feel introduces the strong fruity and sweet flavors known from the nose. Even the subtle whiffs of bourbon sourness can be detected. Simply delicious and complex taste!

AFTERTASTE

The medium length aftertaste is dominated by peach, peach and once again peach… ok there are also some apricot and pineapple flavors, but the peach is all around. The fruity flavors are completed by the well known creme brulee aromas.

RESUME

Wow, what a dram … what a whisky … what a cask … One of the best Whiskys I‘ve ever tasted. Sweet, fruity, oaky and simply fantastic. It‘s a perfect example for Glanmorangie‘s famous wood finishing! This whisky was matured in one of Gelnmorangies so called ,designer casks‘, a cask type made of slow-grown and air-dried american oak which is seasoned and newly toasted.

The perfect and complex oaky flavors in this whisky are mixed up with the fruity distillery character. For me this whisky represents all the characteristics of the recent Glenmorangie style and is also a great example for the big influence of the wood.

RATING: 95/100