My Handcrafted Opinions on Whiskies, Distilleries and Other Related Stuff
This is a Texas bourbon finished in Pinot Noir red wine casks at the Western Son distillery in Pilot Point Texas. If you haven't heard of Pilot Point, dont worry about it, neither had I and I have lived and / or worked in Texas for over quarter of a century! The nose has some red berry fruits and sweet port wine along with the usual suspects of corn and sawdust. The taste is smooth on palate with some oak, brown sugar and cola. The finish has white pepper, green oak and ends with drying wine notes. It's good... but for me this 42.1% ABV expression misses the fruit from the nose in the taste and finish that would help balance out the bitter / oaky notes of the finish.
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Location: Hard Rock Hotel, Sentosa, Singapore
Date: April 2016
Price: $ 21 SGD ($15.50 USD)
Recipe: No recipe
Garnish: Maraschino cherry
Served: Up
Comments: Dry, not too sweet and a little on the small side.
What is this about? Check out http://www.somanywhiskies.com/item/749-the-manhattan-project-ii
Location: Homemade, Singapore
Date: April 2016
Price: Free
Recipe: 2 parts Maker's Mark, 1 part Luxardo Maraschino Liqueur, 1 part Antica Sweet Vermouth, dash bitters
Garnish: With the maraschino liqueur in recipe no need for cherry
Served: Up
Comments: I totally stole this recipe from Reserve 101 and it now my "go to" homemade recipe. A little sweet, need to try with rye.
What is this about? Check out http://www.somanywhiskies.com/item/749-the-manhattan-project-ii
My increasingly rare blog postings have evolved more recently into me trying to consolidate my various responses, postings and comments from the various online whisky forums that I frequent into a single (hopefully coherent) position on the burning whisky issue of the day. I have noticed in these forums that I often find myself out of step with the online (generally very nice) whisky online community. Recent examples of this include the uproar over Makers Mark ABV reduction and the furor over Balcones owner’s decision to remove Chip Tate from the company.
(Side note: can anyone tell me if the #nochipnobalcones thing is still applicable because there is no Chip?)
I am clearly a contrarian, I freely admit that and I have always shied away from the herd at every opportunity. I like to seek the other point of view and I don’t accept very much at face value (except perhaps cash). So perhaps I should embrace this as my role in in the #whiskyfabric?
My thoughts these days have turned to the waning Compass Box campaign to “increase transparency” and their online petition to change the SWA / EU regulations that govern such things. The immediate reaction from the online community to the news that one of the recent Compass Box whisky releases fell foul of EU laws was so strong and full of the righteous indignation that only whisky bloggers can generate that my contrarian response kicked in like the Millennium Falcon’s hyper drive and I posted several questions and comments on various online sites that as yet, I feel, have been largely unanswered. Perhaps you would like to try?
Firstly anyone who can tell me that this was an issue they cared about before this one, and to my knowledge only, highly publicized recent example, please feel free to send me any blog posting or magazine articles that clamored for more transparency and EU law changes. They will be gratefully received and I will publish on this website along with a full apology with links to the aforementioned blog posts. That some people are furious about an issue they didn’t care about three months is slightly ridiculous to me. If it didn’t matter then why does it matter so much now?
Which brings me to my next question; am I the only the only one who is slightly cynical about the Compass Box motive for leading this campaign? They are painting themselves as the industry outsider, fighting against “the man” (as someone much more eloquent than me put it on one forum), helping the consumers who are being denied information they desperately need by faceless government drones and setting up a petition all of which just so happens to deliver a fantastic marketing and brand coup to Compass Box and drive lots of extra web traffic to a Compass Box website. The really cynical would even suggest, with hindsight, it would have served Compass Box well to be the “mystery industry insider” who informed the SWA in the first place and generated all this lovely (and free) publicity. Stranger things have happened in Marketing and as I recall John Glaser came from Diageo Marketing rather than distilling or blending? To be clear I don’t think this is what happened, but you have to admit it would have been a stroke of utter genius if it had. At the very least they have spun it brilliantly and made lemons from lemonade (just please don’t make any more Orangerie).
Finally I have challenged everyone to step back, and think about this from the average whisky consumer perspective, rather than the very narrow perspective of the whisky blogger. Of course the blogger wants to know the exact make up of his bottle and can differentiate the difference between a blend containing some 40 year old whisky and a 40 year old blended whisky. But can the “man in the street”?
Perhaps I am being patronizing and harsh and making unfair assumptions about the average consumer. I admit that thought occurred to me, but then I looked at the current US primary election and that thought stopped occurring. To the whisky savvy (as anyone reading this incredible obscure blog is bound to be) I would I contend your demand for transparency opens door to abuse, confusion and resentment. All the reasons the current legislation were put in place as certain people chose to emphasize the age of some of the whiskeys in their blends. As I have said before, one man’s “transparency” is another man’s “confusing jargon” and I am not convinced that “full disclosure” is the real answer and is really a better solution than what we have now. No system is going to be perfect and as I stated earlier pretty much no –one seemed to have much of a problem with current system until one whisky came along….
Location: Emirates Airline, Business Class
Date: March 2016
Price: Free
Recipe: Menu offered Classic and Perfect Manhattan. This was the Classic.
Garnish: Cherry
Served: Rocks (with nuts on the side)
Comments: You can't beat free! My first 40,000ft Manhattan but not my last
What is this about? Check out http://www.somanywhiskies.com/item/749-the-manhattan-project-ii
Location: Bones, Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Malaysia
Date: March 2016
Price: $37.90 ($9.09 USD)
Recipe: Not on menu
Garnish: No cherry...!
Served: Rocks
Comments: Good value, dry and interesting, probably rye rather than bourbon
What is this about? Check out http://www.somanywhiskies.com/item/749-the-manhattan-project-ii
Location: PS Cafe, Singapore
Date: February 2016
Price: 19 SGD ($13.50 USD)
Recipe: Not on menu so no recipe
Garnish: I cherry
Served: Up
Comments: Nice and fairly priced (for Singapore), perhaps a little sweet for my taste
What is this about? Check out http://www.somanywhiskies.com/item/749-the-manhattan-project-ii
Location: db Bistro, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore
Date: December 2015
Price: 25 SGD ($17.70 USD)
Recipe: Rittenhouse Rye, Antica Formula Vermouth, Orange bitters
Garnish: Not 1, not 2 but 3 cherries!
Served: Up
Comments: High price for standard cocktail (welcome to Singapore) but very good, so I had two!
What is this about? Check out http://www.somanywhiskies.com/item/749-the-manhattan-project-ii
Location: Cru, Queenstown Hilton, New Zealand
Date: December 2015
Price: $22 NZD (15 USD)
Recipe: No recipe, bartender told me he used Sazarac rye
Garnish: Cherry
Served: Up
Comments: Mixed for me upon request, not on cocktail menu. Good but great which was a small surprise as I really like Sazarac rye.
What is this about? Check out http://www.somanywhiskies.com/item/749-the-manhattan-project-ii
Location: Homemade, Singapore
Date: December 2015
Price: NA
Recipe: 2 parts Marker's Mark, 1 part Antica Formula Vermouth
Garnish: Lemon peel
Served: Up
Comments: I recreated the simple recipe I recently tried in Dubai (with no bitters) and a lemon peel garnish. It worked well.
What is this about? Check out http://www.somanywhiskies.com/item/749-the-manhattan-project-ii
Location: Manhattan Grill, Hyatt Regency, Dubai
Date: December 2015
Price: 65 Dirhams ($17.70)
Recipe: Makers Mark, Carpono Rosso, bourbon infused cherry
Garnish: Menu said cherry but it came with lemon peel
Served: Up
Comments: Most expensive to date but good. Balanced and not too sweet. No mention of bitters in menu.
What is this about? Check out http://www.somanywhiskies.com/item/749-the-manhattan-project-ii
I recently moved to Singapore which for the most part has been a fantastic experience and a great professional and personal move. However whisky in Singapore is heavily taxed and expensive. How expensive you wonder? Let me put it this way, on the last occasion I purchased a few bottles of my favorite whiskies I soon received two phone calls on my mobile as I was leaving the store. The first was from my bank asking me if I aware that someone had obviously hacked into my account online and was draining all of my cash and savings at an alarming rate. The second call was from the Prime Minister of Singapore thanking me for the contribution I was making to their welfare budget and because of me the hospitals could stay open for another month. He also asked if I knew when I was next going to buy some whisky so they could place an advance order for a new fighter jet.
Aside - I have found this great new app on my iphone. Its called "Phone" and everyone who has it has their own unique number (It is usually the same number you use for texting people, I guess that is where they got the idea) and if you enter the number and press send the app connects you to them and you can actually talk to each other.
Then a couple of weeks ago I found the Vom Fass store in a mall. Vom Fass sells their own range of liqueurs, oils, vinegars, cognac and of course, whisky. But what makes it such a great place, especially in Singapore, is that they will let you sample anything in the store and sell the range in 100 ml, 250 ml, 500 ml and 750 ml bottles. This means I can try and buy a wide range of whiskies, and recently their 25 year old Armagnac, without spending so much money that even a corrupt FIFA official (that is all of them apparently) at a World Cup venue selection meeting would say “ooh, that’s a bit much”.
As I have said before, usually when discussing distillery tours, Seaton’s Success Formula is “Samples = Sales” and the more I have to spend (and in Singapore it is always more) the more I need to be sure I am buying something I will enjoy or at least find interesting (increasingly hard to do now I am 600 whiskies into this website). I will post notes for the first two whiskies shortly and you can expect to see many more, including the Armagnac, over coming weeks and months.