Tasting Notes: Michel Couvreur Pale Single-Single
Michel Couvreur Pale Single-Single
Here’s a whisky a little bit off the beaten-path.
Michel Couvreur is a Belgian who lives in France. He buys casks that have aged for the requisite 3 years and 1 day in Scotland, and imports them to Burgundy, where he proceeds to age them in casks of his own selection.
The big deal about Couvreur is that he doesn’t believe that distilleries matter (hence, he never says where he buys his scotch). Rather, Couvreur believes that the quality of a scotch is to be found mostly in the wood in which that whisky is aged (hence the focus on using his own casks to age what he buys).
Couvreur has a range of whiskies, but today we will be looking at the Pale Single-Single. This simply means that it is a single cask of single malt scotch, bought from a single distillery. This particular expression is 12 years in age and has been matured primarily in Spanish sherry butts.
The bottling itself is beautiful. Placing the label around the corner of the square bottle is interesting, and the cork is sealed up with wax like Maker’s Mark. Bonus points for design. But I’m also taking those bonus points back because it took me 20 minutes to chip away at the wax (no easy opener/tab like Maker’s Mark), and the cork needed to be popped like a wine top. The resulting hole in the cork meant that there was a lot of evaporation/condensation inside the bottle after I tried to stop it up. You’ll notice in the picture above that I had to ditch the cork and use one of my wine stoppers.
Michel Couvreur Pale Single-Single
ABV: 45%
Color: Golden Honey, slightly clouded
Nose: Sherry, Honey
Taste: Super-honeyed and strangely hot. No real evidence of the sherry butts. More prickly than you’d expect for a bottling at only 45% abv. Maybe a pinch of vanilla or pastry on the second glass.
Overall: This just seemed really one-note to me. Not a whole lot going on, and a higher alcohol profile than I’d anticipated, which might be masking some other tastes. The difficulty I had opening and storing the bottle also lowered it in my eyes. Bring in the fact that this is a $75 bottle, and it just isn’t worth it. For $75 I could buy a Laphroaig 15. For $10 more I could buy an Ardbeg Uigeadail or Highland Park 18 at my local whisky store. This just isn’t anywhere close to being in their league. Ultimately, this whisky is like a concept car. Interesting idea, but outrageous price tag for what is essentially vaporware.
Other Opinions:
- Whisky Fun is the only blogger I could find who had reviewed this bottle. In fact, Serge seems to have spent a day reviewing the entire range of Michel Couvreur whiskies. He found a few more flavors than I did, notably lemon, strawberries, gooseberries, sea breeze and apple pie. Going back, I could taste something of a baked-goods taste (the pastry I mentioned), though I don’t think I could be nearly as specific as he is in identifying the taste. Despite finding this to be a more complex dram than I, Serge still gave it a rather mediocre score of 79.
Related posts:
