My Handcrafted Opinions on Whiskies, Distilleries and Other Related Stuff
I don't recall seeing very many 15 - 20 year old Canadian whiskies so I was intrigued when I saw the 20 and 15 year old expressions of Mt Logan in the Liquor Depot in Alberta on a recent business trip. The Mt. Logan brand is exclusive to the Liquor Depot retailer and the juice is made at the Highwood Distillery in Alberta and bottled as Canadian Rye whisky at 40% ABV. The nose is sweet with vanilla, Werthers Candy and lemon peel. The taste is very smooth and creamy with coffee, cocoa powder, butterscotch, vanilla toffee and Scottish tablet. The finish shows some sign of 20 years in a cask with pepper and oak notes and black tea. A little water thins out the creamy mouthfeel and the sweetness goes down (which some might find more balanced) but overall I would avoid water with this as it doesn't handle it very well, for my palate anyway, and would be easy to over dilute. Of the two expressions of Mt. Logan Canadian Rye that I tried (15 year old and 20 year old) I preferred the 20 years old (neat) but both were good.
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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.
Location: Homemade, Singapore
Date: November 2015
Price: NA
Recipe: 2 parts Bulliet Bourbon, 1 part Antica Formula Vermouth, 2 dash Peychauds bitters
Garnish: Sour morello cherry
Served: Up
Comments: I liked the ever so slightly sour cherry note with the sweet bourbon / vermouth in this one
What is this about? Check out http://www.somanywhiskies.com/item/749-the-manhattan-project-ii
Location: JW Marriott, Juhu, Mumbai, Reflections Bar
Date: November 2015
Price: $11.49 (753 Rupee)
Recipe: Not observed but bar tender told me used Canadian Club
Garnish: Maraschino cherry
Served: Up
Comments: Nice and cold on the larger side. Use of Canadian Club meant it was less sweet than one made with bourbon. Good one.
What is this about? Check out http://www.somanywhiskies.com/item/749-the-manhattan-project-ii
Location: Moscow Monarch Centre Hotel, Lobby Bar
Date: October 2015
Price: $12.50 (800 Rubles)
Recipe: No info provided / not observed
Garnish: Maraschino cherry
Served: Up
Comments: Nice, clean, not too sweet. A well executed "classic" Manhattan
What is this about? Check out http://www.somanywhiskies.com/item/749-the-manhattan-project-ii
The original Manhattan Project was a research and development project that produced the first nuclear weapons during World War II. My personal Manhattan project will be slightly less impactful. Probably. As readers know in 2011 I set myself the task of finding and reviewing every whisky in Ian Buxton’s recent books 101 Whiskies to Try Before You Die and 101 World Whiskies to Try Before You Die. I was successful (pausing for gentle round of applause) but it did have a side effect. I know Ian won’t mind me saying that some, while interesting, were not that great and so I frequently found myself with bottles that I did not particularly enjoy. I have enough Scots blood in me to know that I could not see them go to waste so I started to dabble in mixing cocktails and found two that I particularly enjoyed. For unwanted or unloved scotch I would mix Rusty Nails (equal parts Drambuie and Scotch over ice) and for American whiskies, bourbon, rye and Canadian, I started mixing Manhattans. The simple and classic Manhattan recipe is 2 parts whiskey, 1 part sweet vermouth, 2 dash of bitters a garnish (cherry or citrus peel) served usually chilled but occasionally (and as I came to like them best in the Texas summer) over ice.
I have the great fortune to travel a lot for my job which means I frequently find myself in airport lounges, hotels and restaurants and often bored to tears by their whisky options I started to order Manhattans (a classic cocktail so there is a variant of it on almost every cocktail menu). And so like the thermonuclear chain reaction that was at heart of original Manhattan project, one passion led to another and now I find myself trying Manhattan’s all around the world. From now on, armed with a trusty camera phone (and probably a little too much jetlag), I will also use my website to track my Manhattan project noting location, price, quality, garnish, recipes and any other tweaks or embellishments of interest. Like the England football team in a World Cup penalty shootout I won’t be trying to score them, I don’t score whiskies either, just sharing my experiences and opinions with all of my readers (if there are any left).