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My Handcrafted Opinions on Whiskies, Distilleries and Other Related Stuff

Most Recent Whisky

Most Recent Whisky Review

Woodford Reserve Distillers Select Straight Rye

This bottle was labelled #3031 from Batch 0887 and bottled at 45.2% ABV.  The nose was very nice, herbal tea with mint and sweet vanilla notes.  The mouthfeel is fresh, light and oily, bittersweet on palate with more vanilla, candy, black coffee and dark chocolate.  The finish has peppermint, wood and grassy rye notes.  With water it gets sweeter, even honeyed, while heat builds in the finish with chilli spiced dark chocolate.  Overall very delicious; a light and subtle of straight rye.

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  • Sunday, 22 November 2015 18:05

    Vom Fass: A New Destination in My Whisky Journey

    Written by
    Vom Fass: A New Destination in My Whisky Journey

    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.


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    Random Whisky

    Whisky Castle Edition Kaser

    There is a little story behind my acquisition of this very interesting bottle of single malt from a small Swiss distillery. I first learned of it in the book 101 World Whiskies to Try Before You Die. Unavailable in USA I found their website and attempted to order a bottle (or sample) online. As they only delivered in Europe I tried to get a bottle delivered to my father in the UK. However website was in German, no credit card details were requested or taken, no confirmation or follow up email was ever received (I think it went straight to Junk Mail) and so I put it out of my mind, assuming failure, and vowed to come up with another plan. That was August 2013. In January 2014 my father travelled to USA to visit me and in his bag was a bottle of Whisky Castle Edition Kaser. They had shipped it to UK and included an invoice with shipment. As I was not expecting the shipment and had not seen the invoice I had basically ignored their fine whisky (and their invoice) for over 4 months! I felt bad and can assure all readers that I have since dispatched payment along with an apology. The nose is quite rich and rather good with dark fruits, and a light yeasty, even cheesy note (Kaser = cheese). The taste is blast of spice and alcohol, citrus peel and cayenne pepper. Finish is spicy, malty and a touch of tobacco. Plenty going on and what it lacks in complexity and subtlety it makes up in overall flavor and overall punch!  I spent a little time trying to come up with a line about Swiss whisky, like Swiss cheese, being full of holes.... but it isn't.