The Balvenie Doublewood 17 (50 ml double shot in a mini)

Tasting notes:
      To eschew simile in favor of metaphor, The Balvenie Doublewood 17 Year Old is two eight and a half year-olds.  This is no dig at its flavor profile: eight and half year olds are fun, and two of them will play together and have a good time.  One seventeen year old will be sullen and will basically stay in his room, listening to emo music so that he can bemoan his miserable perception of his own existence.  Just to himself.  In other words, loads of entertainment.  Meanwhile, the pair of eight and a half year olds are lively and enjoy exploring new things.  Or at least this is what my friends who are not so child free as I tell me.
     This pair of eight and a half year olds, let's call them Vinnie and Woody.  Yes, the second one his parents named after the Toy Story character.  At least they picked the protagonist and not some bit character.  At any rate, Vinnie and Woody begin with lemon halves hardened to coconut half hardness.  Not as fragrant this way, but Vinnie has always had a thing about lemons, and his mom has found that he does better with them (winces less) when she lets them sit out and lose some of their sour.  Woody plays along, but smells his more than anything else, and digs the bitter tinge of the rind.  Then comes the persimmon gelato.  It's an amazing persimmon gelato, spewing clouds of glory (Wordsworth probably wouldn't approve of that appropriation, but it's lost on our boys).  Vinnie and Woody are enjoying synaesthesia: the tang, the purplish red, and even the cold of their gelato all smell amazing.  But they don't recognize their experience as such, because they're eight and half years old, and they have yet to distinguish clearly their senses anyway. 
     Next, the shaved ice truck rings its bell in the street, and the boys run to the window, then to Vinnie's mother, to plead their case.  "We're so thirsty," they whine (or is it wine?), pointing to their mouths.  They receive a definitive no and retreat to the basement, where they play amongst the musty, empty wine casks strewn about down there.  "Is this a muskrat cask?" Woody asks. "Muscatto," Vinnie corrects, though that is also a guess on his part.  He also guesses Sauvignon Blanc to be the words on the cask Woody moves to inspect next.  "Did somebody use this barrel to store Gibson onions?" Woody asks.  They look at each other unknowingly, as they've both just mouthed words they've heard their besotted parents use, despite the fact that they are much closer to on target than they realize.

     When they emerge from spending time in the basement, Vinnie's mother tells them they smell differently now and should wash up.  They make their way to the guest bathroom and can almost taste the scent of dahlias wafting from the small vase full of them on the back of the commode.  They run their hands under the water, but then finish by trying to get a lather from the decorative soaps shaped like flowers and waxed to hold their shape.  Thus, with the faintest hint of soap, they finish and wonder how they are supposed to dry their hands on the postage-stamp sized cotton towels there. 
     Back on the living room floor, having just finished cleaning up, they ponder the afterglow of their exploits, when the distinct flavor of fiddleheads sautéeing in an iron skillet waft over them.  Vinnie and Woodie look at each other and know that the fun will not end any time soon.

  
  


Rating:

--On the scale of works of literature that don't make you work too hard to figure out what they're trying to say--
The Balvenie Doublewood 17 is Lord of the Flies--Granted, it's less transparent than The Giving Tree, but what isn't?  It's a great commentary on human nature, wrapped in a riveting storyline and compelling characters.  It's a classic that works on multiple levels at once.
   
  
 

                                                                      --Stephen


   

Our thanks to Andy Weir and The Balvenie for the sample!

The Caperdonich 17 from The Rare Casks* (30 ml terribly mini)

Tasting notes: 
This whisky pours out tawny like a puma.  Grrrroooowwwllll!  A nose of buttercream, thin mints, flowery perfume, fermented bananas, and new tires on an old car.  As the nose comes into greater focus, Stephen gets buttery oily spice.  Bill says it’s a curry, just not exactly a curry.  I aver that I’d eat at lot more Indian if this were a curry.  So we’ll say it’s a limited release ghee running down a helical water slide off an oil rig set into the North sea.  In time the nose gives a slight note of egg, like albumen bubbling white on a hot tarmac, the blue blazers of the welcoming detail flapping in the strong coastal breeze.  The mouth is delightful, smooth, and balanced.  Scallions (the green part), mint (just the leaves), and peanuts (shells only).  Salted cod drying on slate shingles.  Dreams of the rarebit hound, but in the mind of the rabbit.  The finish has allspice or mace, but with some sweetness like myrtle berry and rosehip candies formed into miniature garden gnomes.  Wisps of clove de-tanged, like a cobra defanged.  We are left only to imagine how a few drops of water would open this up.  But this was so delicious at 57.8% abv that with only 10 ml’s a person, we weren’t able to try adding water.  With just 96 bottles out there, be sure to take one down, pass it around, and tell us what you think of it.

Rating:

--On the scale of NFL quarterbacks--
The Caperdonich 17 from The Rare Casks is Colin Kaepernick--  And not just because it’s a near homophone.  No, it’s the deadly accurate passing and lightening fast running--just ask the Packers.  The Caperdonich brings news skills to an important position and destroys the competition.
   
  
   
 

                                                                      --John 
    
    

 
Our thanks to Abbey Whisky for the sample!



*--The Rare Casks is a range of single malt Scotch whiskies bottled exclusively by Abbey Whisky.

The Highland Park 21 (the 50 ml they left out of the big bottle)

Tasting notes:
      The Highland Park 21 smells like a Provence cottage's kitchen in which a nearsighted adolescent aspiring chef misread Nana's recipe, and mistakenly used prime rib, venison, and plums rather than stew meat and plum tomatoes, and then slow-cooked them with fennel, pine needles, sequoia bark, moonstone, and Miss America's tiara. It's recaramelized cotton candy waved under my nose (and winged feet) as Mercury speeds by, tossing me a complicitous wink.
     On the mouth, a tapestry woven from slippery elm and hemp, interwoven with platinum threads. A perfectly ripe cantaloupe sectioned into a copper bowl, liberally aerated by the breath of non-martyred saints. It's a tesseract mosaic embedded in five dimensions, whose axes are sherry, bourbon, the tears of women crying at Avatar, Lite-Brite™, and sherry. (Yes, there's a Euclidean sherry hyperplane fruitlessly—no pun intended—endeavoring to bisect 5-space.)
     Going down the rabbit's hole: Baked apples with cinnamon, kirschwasser Molotov cocktail, and the feeling of burgeoning cavities suddenly receding to the sound of the cavalry's retreat. The ambition to become a fully actualized human sheds all shreds of pretension, and my chakras blossom like little girls squealing with delight as Miley Ray Cyrus walks among them.

  


Rating:

--On the scale of memorable moments in Las Vegas, and one that you'll be happy to share with your beloved--
The Highland Park  21 is yelling Blackjack!--There's the mounting excitement when first you're dealt an ace, and then when royalty follows, you shout "Blackjack!" (hopefully not like a n00b) before coolly and calmly collecting your tumbled towers of tokens into your Prada man bag preparatory to cashing out. 

   
  
  

                                                                      --Bill

The Highland Park 21 (700 ml Viking Nectar of the Gods vessel)

Tasting notes:
      On the nose, apples sautéed in butter and sherry and served in gumshoes that are lined with rabbit fur to keep from scuffing your loafers.  Caramel buttons on your lover's shirt, hanging on the chair next to the bed.  Dark chocolate zippers on the pants crumpled in a heap on the floor.  A series of coffee toffees stuck to your lover's body so as to form a path for you to follow.  In other words, by the time you've nosed the Highland Park 21 for a while, things are already going very well for you, but there's also the distinct note that they're about to get even better.
     On the mouth, it's like diving into a vat of Odin's blessings.  There's tannic leather and caramel coating a driveway made up of Carrara marble pavers held in place with mortar fashioned from the finely ground ash of cherry pipe tobacco.  And there's a convertible Mercedes-Benz SLR at the end of it.  There are also wood resins from barrels hewn from 5,000 years of Amazonian trees.  Interestingly enough, making such barrels features prominently in all of the ultimate cooper "bucket" lists--though they don't call theirs that.  Maybe also hints of a book burning in which the bonfire sucks evil out of the air instead of actually belching evil into it (figuratively and perhaps literally--the latter depending on how much one is into books--so yeah, literally).  In other words, it's truly fantastic.
      On the finish, we return to the scene from the nose, only to find your and your paramour in the afterglow, feeding each other honey crisp apples and blood oranges sprinkled with cane sugar. (Who cares? The sheets are silk...and they're black.  And no, that doesn't make you creepy--it's a fictional scene.)  The finish isn't overly long, but it's poignant: a moment or six of fully requited bliss.  Pick your favorite meaningful context.  Got it?  OK, it's easily better than that.  And in the long run, drinking the HP 21 will mean more to you than that experience did, too.  Guaranteed.

  
  


Rating:

--On the scale of artfully not saying directly what's on one's mind--
The Highland Park 21 is just about every scene in which Anthony Hopkins appears in Remains of the Day--If it were possible for someone to hold more in his eyes without letting it out, I'd pay good money to see it.  In terms of emotional subtlety and power, the whole thing is simply exquisite.
   
  

                                                                      --Stephen


  

The Chieftain's Strathisla 12 Year 2000 (30 ml desk stash mini)

Tasting notes:
Hibiscus, buttered scones, lavender tea, and a tear-dappled pocket square.  In linen.  All of this comes with the force of an unexpected (but not unwelcome) kiss.  The pulse quickens and the nose reveals not so much a particular taste as a sense of elation and relief, perhaps like Noah seeing the dove return with an olive branch, or watching Chuck “The Iceman” Liddell make his way down to the Octogon at UFC 47.  Such is the promise of this whisky.  Such is the change it heralds.  The mouth is a jubilee of microscopic ball bearings rolling soundlessly in the purest grease formed of the earwax of cherubim, or the Vaseline wiped into The Iceman’s craggy visage moments before the fight.  Imagine gargling a tablespoon of mercury: that’s the hypnotic smoothness on mouth.  Unlike how the cinnamon challenge prompts a violent gag reflex, this mercury challenge, if you will, relaxes the throat so thoroughly that it radiates peace throughout my being.  (The Malt Impostor legal team insists we not refer to the “mercury challenge” but after I cry artistic license they relent on the condition that we add “do not try this” in red letters.) DO NOT TRY THIS.  The finish is a paintball match where instead of Karnage Rip Tournament Grade .68 caliber paintballs, the gun fires a blend of Valrhona malted milk balls and cashmere wool cotton balls.  Also .68 caliber.  You drop to your knees in surrender, whip off your Dye Invision Goggle I4 Pro Mask, and open your mouth to receive this chocolatey, woollen wonderspout of loving love.

  
  


Rating:

--On the scale of things that start out good and end better--
The Chieftain's Strathisla 12 Year 2000 is this noteworthy set of corrections to a recent article on hipsters: 

An article last Thursday about Williamsburg, Brooklyn, erroneously included several products that are not sold at the store By Brooklyn. Its merchandise does not include dandelion and burdock soda, lovage soda syrup or Early Bird granola. The article also referred incorrectly to the address of the thrift shop Vice Versa. It is on Bedford Avenue, not Bedford Street.

In other words: it's so good, it's hard to get your head around it.

    

  

                                                                      --John







Our thanks to Sam Filmus and ImpEx for the sample! 

The Laphroaig 10 (50 ml cold winter's night nip with tube)

Tasting notes:
     The Laphroaig 10 is a cardinal point on a (hidden) compass rose at the center of the maze on the floor of the Chartres Cathedral, a well-thumbed reference malt in the library, a bookend to the love of whisky. What made it once so distinctive and such an outlier to a neophyte, a newly-converted acolyte, has been hyperbolized like a hyperbola in other X-treme Islay drams, much as Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA has taken hops beyond it's logical extreme. But a trip back to the source of my love of heavenspawn peatfire and smokeangels—a trip not taken for some time—rewards more than Proust's bite into a madeleine, more than Jackie Robinson's stealing home, more than Aretha Franklin's eagle protecting his nest, the Laphroaig 10 takes us home to a home we never knew we had; a central spot near a warm hearth, fire ablaze, rich meaty stew in the kettle, and bonhomie keeping the cold world at bay.
     On the nose, seaweed deep-fried in bacon grease: A carnivore's answer to kale chips. Actually, rejoins Stephen, the answer is bacon. Always bacon, only bacon, except when the answer is Kevin Bacon, Roger Bacon, or Francis Bacon. It's the smell of sunset on the beach, victory after a long battle.
     On the mouth, crystallized driftwood smoke, focusing my Chi, rearranging the maltcave liquor cabinet holdings according to the 11th – 20th rules of Feng Shui. [John: Bill! There are only ten rules of Feng Shui!] "Those who say do not know, and those who know, do not say." The post-prandial-eructation of a contented fire-breathing dragon who eats only peaty dwarves and alabaster plaster scale models of Michelangelo's Pièta. It's…it's…a burlwood dictionary stand, place held by a Lorelei's braided hair bookmark, all situated at the shiny midpoint of a pentagram of inlaid abalone shells and mother-of-pearl.
     The afterburn is as satisfying as blowing the carbon out the exhaust of a 700cc crotch rocket, as fresh as morning dew on ferns in a climax forest, as incomparable as a Platonic form. It's eating the best pork loin served with ripe pineapple slices and chutney: charcoal chutney. Burnt umber chutney. Ending with ballerina slippers oozing Lotrimin® and Natalie Portman's Black Swan leg warmers.

Rating:

--On the scale of things that move me to previously unimaginable Gardens of Paradise--
The Laphroaig 10 is the rebooted Star Trek's transwarp transformer beam that >>>STOP STOP STOP!!! This is Stephen and John interrupting this rating, performing a necessary geekerectomy intervention on Bill. We can't allow him to bathetically move from the poetry of the dram to the gadgetry of Star Trek. Snap out of it, Bill, and try again!<<<

Fine. 
--On the scale of things that move me to previously unimaginable Gardens of Paradise--
The Laphroaig 10 is itself--Enough said.

  

                                                                      --Bill

The Chieftain's Range Benriach 17 Year 1993 (30 ml cook's mini)

Tasting notes:
     Imagine a lime, a green onion, and a peppermint having a torrid three-way.  Ok, don't imagine it that distinctly.  Actually, just imagine the progeny of such a union (it is possible: none of those reproduce sexually, after all ).  If you can get that in your head--and get out the imagery I started you with--then you'll have a good read on the nose of this dram.  OK, I should add: imagine the torrid three-way  the three-pronged progeny  the mixture of the three in a sauté pan with a rare almond and orchid liqueur.  Yup, that's it, and it's utterly lovely.  The mouth introduces honeyed notes and a slight astringency or bitterness, as does the peppermint's hurt feelings at not always getting to be the dominant flavor.  There's nice, mild spice firing on the finish that lingers like the green onion's guilt (it was brought up as a fundamentalist--whatever that means in the Scallion community).  Wow.  Give it a minute or two more, and the finish makes one thing very clear: that Scallion fundamentalism is some serious plant religion.  The post-finish is gorgeous: it's the lime's afterglow at checking off another item on its bucket list.
 
  

Rating:

--On the scale of wholesome fruits and vegetables--
The Chieftain's Range Benriach 17 Year 1993 is the rutabaga--Sweet and full of fiber, this tuber is the love child of a cabbage and a turnip.  But you won't see this vegetable mixing with many other major ingredients, if at all.

 

                                                                            --Stephen

Our thanks to Sam Filmus and ImpEx for the sample!