Water of Life Society Tasting 14/4

Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover

09/10/2014

 Our fourth tasting of 2014 (14/4) is all about preconceptions and misconceptions – to prevent them we are blind-pouring all drams and allowing you to taste and evaluate them with no information from the bottle.

2 for a poond, 2 for a poond our bespoke Whisky bottle covers confirm no expenses were spared when organising these meetings! Also socks make great bottle covers!

Blind taste testing whisky is the ultimate tasting experience relying on only what your senses and experience tell you.

1. The Yamazaki Single Malt Whisky – Distillers Reserve ~ 43% (Beam/Suntory)

Straight in with a curveball from our president and NO.1 Japanese whisky fan – Richard

Some thought this was perhaps a fruity highlander or speysider  – which in some ways it almost is as Yamazaki was setup by Taketsuru to emulate the great single malt scotch whisky production in Scotland.

2. Ardmore Traditional Cask ~ 46% (Beam/Suntory)

Me again with the last chance saloon. This Ardmore Traditional Cask was discontinued the previous week and replaced by the new Ardmore Legacy. Gone is the 46% ABV non-chill filtered standard expression from the Highland Ardmore Distillery.

3.  As We Get It – Highland Whisky – 67.9% (Ian McLeod & Co. Ltd.)

Intentionally blurry shot of the undisclosed Highland ‘As We Get It’, I hope people took our advice to add water to this one. Lots and lots of water. At 67.9% this is one of the strongest whiskies I have come across. Watered down it does reveal some of its very enjoyable heavily-sherried nature.

4. Duthies Islay region blended malt whisky ~ 46% (Wm Cadenhead)

Back to peat, but this time without the twist. We received some very interesting guesses as to which Islay distillery this came from, I can confirm that most of your guesses were probably correct (to some degree). This is actually a blended malt not a single – which nobody detected (not even us!)

5. BenRiach 17 Years Old Solstice 2nd Edition ~ 50% (BenRiach & GlenDronach Distilleries)

Finally la piece de resistance, the BenRiach 17 Solstice – possibly one of the best standard expression whiskies under £60 a bottle!

So hopefully those who participated learned something and got to enjoy some good and some great whiskies too. Normal service will be resumed from next week.

Specific tasting notes can be found by clicking on the links for each whisky.