Last night I met up with a friend of mine who just came back from Bhutan. Which, by the way, the Bhutanese call their country Druk Yul, or Land of the Dragon. She went there not as a tourist (which, is very limited anyway and someone literally has to accompany you at all times), but as something even more rare - she went there to work and lived there for a period of months.  She had special permission from the ministry to do this, etc.

So what did she do?  She brought me back some Bhutanese Whisky.  How cool is that?  And how cool is she?  I’ll do a more thorough post on this, but wanted to post up some Whisky Bottle Porn of Coronation Silver Jubilee Whisky (or CSJ Whisky for those in the know) and a few tidbits she told me.

1. This whisky is from the Gedelphu Distillery, which is incredibly remote.  Apparently everyone that can go to Bhutan flies into Paro (which is the only paved airport in Bhutan).  Gedelphu is a 2 Day (Day!) bus ride from Paro and it is in the middle of nowhere.
2. The weird peacock design thing is actually a hat that the king of Bhutan wears on special occasions.  The design on the bottle it the Bhutanese flag, except where the King’s peacock hat is would normally be a dragon.
3. The bottle is labelled as 25’ Up and 42.8% v/v.  My first thought is to thank goodness it’s not 50’ UP because I’m not sure I’d be able to deal with that.  In reality, I’ll go through at a later date and put some research into what those markings actually mean.
4. The blend is made with “Extra neutral” grain whisky to commemorate the 25 Years of Enthronement of “The 4th Druk Gyalpo”, which basically translates to the 4th King of the Land of the Dragon.  Totally sweet.

So, now for some whisky bottle action.  I’ll post a formal review and do some more searching on this whisky in a little bit, but thought I’d share my excitement with everyone.  Here’s to hoping it’s amazing, right?

- StrongLikeCask

The Glenlivet.  Or The Real Glenlivet.  There’s not much I can say about the distillery that hasn’t already been written somewhere.  The distillery was established in 1824 and has generally been killing it since.  So much so that until The Glenlivet fought for it, many whisky brands appended “Glenlivet” to their name just to try and get some positive glow from the brand name affiliation.  Even Macallan did it.   But that was then and this is now.  Does the legend hold?

The Glenlivet 15 Year French Oak Reserve

Color: a pale, pale gold

Nose: Strong brown sugar.  Almonds, vanilla, some freshly baked raisin bread and spearmint.  very delicious nose. there is a little bit of pine there, too.  Though you have to search for it.

Palate: very chewy.  a decent amount of oak and the raisin bread (though slightly less sweet) is still there.  a new cinnamon butter cookie is present, but there’s not as much favor as the nose promises.  Even with that, it’s very easy to drink.

Finish: the finish is very nice.  it’s long, drying, with an underlying sweetness and a minty tinge on top.  The finish lasts quite a bit.  A long drying sweet tinged deliciousness.

Overall: So the legend still holds.  This is a really delicious dram.  It’s one of those whiskies that surprises you with its drinkability, just because the flavor is somewhat complex and layered, but easily approachable.  It’s a great dessert dram and a price point of under $40 for a 15 year old whisky is pretty damn great.  Price paid: $39.99

Other Opinions:

• Whiskyboys also like the dram, though find more wood than I did.  They all found it sweet, though.
• The venerable Dr. Whisky finds loads in the nose from hippie oils to salty black licorice and contends that everyone will find something different.  Well put.  He also gets the dry finish but finds more in the palate than I do and equated Glenlivet cork popping sounds with flatulence.  Methinks the good Dr. enjoyed the whisky a bit much that night (though truth be told, there is NOT a satisfying pop on my bottle).
• The average on For Peat Sake is a low 78 with descriptors like “Not Offensive” and “too much alcohol”, which frankly confuses me but so be it.
• Peat and Smoke finds oak and spice as well, but agrees on some of the sweeter notes.  He thinks its too sophisticated and complex for a daily drinker.  Take that, stereotypes.

- StrongLikeCask

There are many things that I appreciate about living in San Francisco.  Amongst them are my proximity to two K&L Wines stores and Beltramo’s.  There’s also the Whisky Shop, Bev Mo, Cask, and a slew of other stores that make it even more expensive for me to live here.  I started using Mint.com just to try and stick to a whisky budget.  I stopped using Mint.com to ignore the fact that I am bad at sticking to a whisky budget.

K&LWines  has gotten a new guy in the liquor department by the name of David Driscoll.  How much he loves his whisk(e)y is palatable.

And one of the new initiatives he brings with him is some exclusive casks from A.D. Rattray, and some pretty fun bottlings from Murray McDavid.

Murray McDavid has a pretty nice, though short, history in the whisky industry, and now own the Bruichladdich Distillery.  They are an independent bottler, and K&L got their hands on some of their Bowmore products.  Bowmore is a distillery from Islay, one of the oldest in Scotland (that is now owned by Suntory).  Some of Bowmore’s products could be a great entry for our 40 under $40, but other Bowmore products are some of the most sought after and reach a very high price.  Chateau Petrus is a bordeaux varietal vineyard (Pomerol) in France that is one of the most expensive in the world.  Putting them together seems quite promising, no?  Especially at a price point of under $70 for a 13 year old bottle of whisky.

Bowmore 1996 13 Years Old Aged in Chateau Petrus Casks, Murray McDavid

Non-chill filtered, no coloring, limited release of 1200 bottles.  Bourbon casks and then Chateau Petrus casks.

ABV: 46%

Color: Orange gold with a pinkish hue.

Legs: Small and sloppy.

Nose: Graham crackers, berries, mulled wine, cinnamon, candied dried fruits, and some honeyed sweetness.

Palate: VERY sweet.  Smoke undertones, which is nice.  Creamy trifle is here, too.  First time I’ve found that in a whisky.  The sweetness is a bit much, actually.  There are definitely plums here.  Some berries and stone fruit.  But all of the sweet and none of the tartness.

Finish: The finish is interesting.  It’s fairly short, and not altogether too sweet.  It’s actually fairly spicy with a little smoke.  There’s still the drying sweetness of fruit, but mostly spiciness - cinnamon and pepper.

Overall: I’ll start by saying this is good.  Actually, it’s really good.  I’ve had three quarters of the bottle already as it’s become my nightly dram.  However, I think my expectations for this whisky were a little too high.  It’s not as good as I wanted it to be, or as the marketing led me to believe.  What I liked is that it’s interesting to see that the Petrus cask really does add a lot of fruit to the Bowmore flavor.  I think what it does to the color is also pretty exceptional.  I’m happy I tried it, happy to have tasted it, and the price point wasn’t too bad.  But, based on the couple of things I read, I was expecting a bit more and wanted to herald this as a bottle of which I wish I had bought more.  As it stands, I can’t.  Price paid: $59

Other Opinions

• David Driscoll at KLWines finds a little bit of everything, from stone fruits to cranberries and peat smoke.  It was this review that made me purchase the bottle
• Doug Buress, another K&L staffer finds some of those same pitted fruits along with peat smoke and some dark chocolate
• The bottle itself has notes of blackcurrant, cherry, mulberry, vanilla, toast and peat smoke.

-StrongLikeCask

Switzerland is known for many things: cows, cheese, neutrality, chocolate, fondue, gold, banking, the Alps, and probably pigtails.  Whisky?  Not so much.  When it comes to liquor, most folks probably know of Goldschläger (the origins of which aren’t even Swiss), but whisky wouldn’t be top of the mind.  Let’s try to change that.

I was lucky enough to travel to Switzerland to celebrate my grandma’s 100^th birthday (she’s awesome, still lives on her own, and remembers all her kids, grandkids’ and great grandkids’ names).  Before going,  I wanted to do some due diligence and try and locate some whisky I could purchase in Zurich Duty Free.  And apparently  I had been spelling whisky wrong.  Really, I was looking for “Swhisky”.

What?!?  That portmanteau, potentially one of the most awesome and terrible words I’ve seen actually exists and represents a real product.  It’s 100% Swiss whisky and it’s award winning.  Their motto, google translation tells me is to “do good and not evil”  Weird for a whisky, but I can get behind that.  Swhisky has several lines - the amazing looking Prestige Collection, the Grand Crus Collection and the Club Collection which contains two releases available in Zurich’s duty-free: Challenger and Skipper.   I was able to pick these up at duty-free, though I was a little dismayed that they run a hefty price.  The company has a whole slew of other releases that I could not get my hands on that have apparently won awards, though they have problems making enough to meet demands.  LonelyPlanet even recently posted a nice article about the company.

Liquor in Switzerland is purchased in a grocery store (I did not find a liquor store anywhere).  When I tried to figure out where to purchase and shop for whisky, my uncles had no idea where I could get some except maybe for department/grocery stores.  The selection in those stores was pretty light - though many did carry the Appenzell Single Malt I write of below.  One store I found (Globus) did have a bottle of Ardbeg Lord of the Isles for sale at around 130 Swiss Francs (and I was excited!) but when I tried to purchase it, they claimed the price was a mistake and wouldn’t sell it for less than 400 Swiss Francs.  It made sense - it seems that everything in Switzerland is pretty pricey.  Oh well.

My parents who got to Switzerland before me visited Appenzell, a region of Switzerland best known for its cheese and herbal liquor (which interestingly can’t be imported into the US because they refuse to release all their ingredients).  While there, they found an Appenzeller Single Malt, called Santis Malt – a 100% barley single malt whisky that is aged in ex-beer barrels, and they were kind enough to pick up the 500mL bottle for me as a birthday present.  The packaging of this one is awesome (though once again, the whisky was pretty expensive) and was found in the Appenzell region as well as the Globus store I visited.

Lastly, though not whisky, I was able to take home a bottle of some amazing cognac.  My uncle maintains a few grape vines on his small farm, and in 2003 he decided to make some of the grapes into cognac.  The bottle is gorgeous – the label is written in sharpie on 24 karat gold leaf (eat that, goldschlager).  And the taste?  Well, let’s just say I’ll be willing to try different cognacs from now on.  The cognac had amazing stone fruits on the nose, and on the palate it was sweet, developed nicely into tartness, and honeyed cinnamon flower petals.  I was extremely impressed.

Anyway, so that’s Switzerland.  It is an amazing place, and though whisky is a bit harder to come by, there are still some surprises to be had.  To close, below is a picture of my Grandma.  When 11 AM rolled around on her 100th birthday, she asked if it was okay if we started drinking wine.  If you’re looking for something to toast later on, raise a dram to her health.  And to yours.

- StrongLikeCask