Ok here we go, more Managers’ Choice madness, today it is the turn of Clynelish, already considdered one of the highlights of the series. My love of Clynelish and all its waxy, coastal glory is well documented by now so I’ll spare you any excessive pre-tasting blether and get on with it.

Clynelish 13yo. Douglas Laing OMC. refference OMC1845. 50%. 70cl.

Colour: Straw

Nose: Hints of wine, saivingnon blanc, grass and nail varnish. Lots of pear drops, little whiffs of candle wax and a delicate minerality. Gooseberrys, white flowers, pebbles, a little coastal character and some slight notes of varnish.

Palate: Quite zingy and sharp with notes of wet gravel, lemon juice, cereals, coal, soap, lavender, wax and sheeps wool. More sharp fruits like grapfruit and gooseberry with more drying coastal saltiness towards the back. Develops some nice, crisp spiciness after a while and becomes quite warming.

Finish: Good length, warming and fresh.

Comments: Fresh, tasty, uncomplicated, quaffable Clynelish. Not earth shattering but very nice.

Score: 84/100

Clynelish 1997-2009. OB ‘Manager’s Choice’. 1st fill bourbon barrel. cask: 4341. 2126 bottles. 58.5%. 70cl.

Colour: White wine.

Nose: Much richer and more direct than the OMC, with sweet vanilla on top of some really beautiful classical Clynelish aromas. Sea breeze, melon, citrus rind, key lime pie, salt, oysters, seaweed, beautiful coastal aspects to this one. Super clean, invigorating and a great example of how good a first fill cask can be when it’s balanced.  Becomes a little chocoaltey and mentholated after a while, like mint choc chip ice cream. With water it becomes even more aromatic with notes of bubblegum, herbs, sandalwood and pink grapefruit.

Palate: Surprisingly powerful notes of air freshner, pine resin, beeswax, menthol, vanilla cream, a really beauitfull sweetness and candied peel. Honey glazed nuts, marshmallows, then hints of salt poking through the sweetness, lovely balance between sweet and dry. Now notes of parma violets, seaweed and cured ham. With water… softer obviously but still fairly similar to undiluted, same freshness, same zing, maybe more intense citrus qualities and a more luxurious, mineral coastal feel.

Finish: Long and full of bubblegum, vanilla, seashore, salted almonds and wax.

Comments: For all my harping on about how I’m not a fan of first fill bourbon casks this just goes to show that when you put the right spirit into a good one for the right amount of time you can get dynamite whisky. This dram is overflowing with flavour, power and complexity. Great cask selection as usual by Diageo.

Score: 90/100

A word about tastings over the ‘festive retail gifting zone’. Please don’t come to this blog anytime in the next week or so seeking calm, measured or in any way useful tasting notes or reviews. I have stored up some utterly fantastic drams ranging from the historical to the downright obscenely delicious and legendary to help lubricate my passage through this year’s marketing festivity season. And I fully intend to unleash them on these pages over the coming days in all their pornographic, drool inducing, mind mincing splendour. You have been warned…

After the Managers’ Choice Caol Ila last week lets have a go at some much older, much more fairly priced expressions from the same distillery. Caol Ila is arguably the most consistent distillery on the planet, you can find stunning examples of it at almost any age from any era in its recent (last 40 years or so) production history. In these days when peated whisky has become somewhat boring due to all the modern stuff not holding a candle to all the old, rare and incredibly unobtainable stuff, Caol Ila offers one of the final outposts of affordable but top notch aged, peated malt. Today we’ll have three different 30 year olds.

Caol Ila 1979-2009. BBR. cask 4412. 53.1%. 70cl.

Colour: Immediately fantastic coastal notes with some really big pristine aromas of green tea, salt, lemon juice, minerals, seaweed and mercurochrome. Silky, green peat qualities with notes of heather and old kreel nets in the background as well. Lovely green fruits underneath it all. The nose is very crisp and fresh with all the coastal qualities coming through in vivid HD. With water there are loads of soft fruits coming now with further notes of sheep’s wool, eucalyptus, germoline and oysters.

Palate: Luxuriously oily and fruity with a great mix of coastal and medicinal aspects, bandages, tincture, hospital gauze, TCP, iodine, all kinds of medical elements to it. More notes of various teas with lots of different dried herbs as well. With water there is more silky saltiness and notes of dried seaweed but also some bubblegum, hessian and tar.

Finish: Long, remaining coastal and very fresh.

Comments: Flawless old Caol Ila, delicious, complex, well balanced and effortlessly drinkable. This was sold for something like £75 when it came out, well done the great people at Berry Bros for that one. I preferred it without water but I think that was a mood thing.

Score: 91/100

Caol Ila 1979-2010. BBR. casks 4604/4605. 55.6%. 70cl. (No picture but for all intensive purposes it is identical to the above image.)

Colour: More closed than the 09 bottling, but it is rather beautiful with similar notes of green fruits, green tea, medicine and coastal aromas. It feels a little looser at first nosing, not as concentrated as the previous one. Given time it unfolds some beautifully delicate medicinal notes with more obvious aromas of manure, stables, baled hay and granny smith apples. More farmy than the 09 bottling but not quite as zingy with its coastal qualities. Water makes this one even more farmy with more notes of engine oil, hay and then putty and wax.

Palate: Unexpected first notes of green olives, brine, kelp and sawdust. Then black tea, putty, germoline, spices, minerals and hints of Orangina and cranberry juice. With water: Ahhhh! It became really coastal, lots of oysters and lemon juice with more kelp, kreel nets, wet pebbles, seashore and saline notes. More subtle hints of tea, bread, peat oils, almonds, a little vanilla, malt and dunnage.

Finish: Long, lemony, saline, with dried peat, smoke and fish nets.

Comments: Brilliant but not quite as brilliant as the first one.

Score: 90/100

There was a third 1979 Caol Ila by Berry Bros but I haven’t been able to find a sample in time so we’ll have something different instead. This bottling was still only an advance sample at the time this sample was scrounged.

Caol Ila 1980-2010. Dewar Rattray. cask: 4679. 58.8%. 70cl.

Colour: Straw

Nose: Big and oily with sharp notes of fresh lemon juice, kippers, brine and freshly baked bread. Then further notes of linseed oil, camphor, minerals and toast. Quite an intense salty streak running through it, very powerful stuff, not as delicate as the Berry bro offerings. With water it becomes a little more similar to the Berry Bros bottlings, more ‘in line’ shall we say. Some green fruits, a little grassy, yet more really crisp saltiness and some waxy lemon rind.

Palate: Again very big and oily with a sweet, almost mentholated peat quality. Lots of sharp, arid coastal qualities, very briny and citrusy with some really interesting metallic notes as well. Some floral notes in the background and a little vanilla, this is otherwise quite a difficult Caol Ila, more demanding and austere than the previous two in my opinion. With water there is lemon balm, limoncello liqueur, greengages, tincture, oils, more gristy peat flavours and a little earthiness.

Finish: Fairly long, very intense and focused on mouth tingling coastal flavours.

Comments: This one is quite different and globally much more difficult than the other two, however it is still delicious and does reward a it of patience very nicely. One of the saltiest drams I’ve had in a while.

Score: 90/100

Further proof of Caol Ila’s mind bending consistency and ‘across the board’ quality.

Yesterday’s post about the Caol Ila Managers’ Choice seemed innocent enough to me at the time but it sparked quite a bit of blether on the whisky-online Facebook outpost. Much of this chatter was concerning the prices of the Manager’s Choice series of casks and the old quality versus price argument. Well, I have to agree these bottlings are too expensive for what they are, I’ve tried a few and none of them really justify their price tag, not even the big hitters like the Caol Ila or Clynelish. That said, the price is understandable in many ways, bottling twenty something single casks from each of their distilleries is not really in Diageo’s best fiscal interests and they evidently put a lot of effort into getting them right. Obviously to them the money spent is as much on PR as it is on niche, nerd-pleasing bottlings. So we don’t have to agree with the pricing but then again we don’t have to buy them either. As everyone has already pointed out there are official bottlings and independent options from many of these distilleries that are often both superior and cheaper. As always the fun is in rooting out the wee gems, sorting the wheal from the chaff, or the malt from the grain if you want an elitist and snobbish ‘malternative’ sentiment. So today lets continue to half-heartedly poke the slumbering heifer of controversy with another stab at the MC series. We’ll do another of the big four, ie Lagavulin, Caol Ila, Clynelish and today’s choice… Talisker.

Talisker 10yo. OB. 2010. 45.8%. 20cl.

Colour: Gold

Nose: Wet forest flora and lots of coastal seashore freshness. Quite austere in many ways for a standard bottling with lots of minerals, lemon juice and graphite coming through. Big whiffs of grassy peat and steel wool with sheeps wool and fresh grass, then the classic pepperiness comes bounding out. Little medicinal notes of tincture, tcp and bandages with lovely oily background notes.

Palate: Oily, coal smoke and gristy green peats come first with notes of grapefruit, hessian, white flowers, stone fruits and engine oil. Green peppercorns, smoked haddock, plasticine, blood oranges,  cranberry juice, pencil shavings and paint. Becomes steadily more herbaceous with notes of chives and wax with a little spice.

Finish: Great length and pretty big on coastal notes, camphor and pepper.

Comments: One of the best standard bottlings around, supremely drinkable but if you’re in the mood to pay attention it’s a pretty challenging whisky as well. The MC definitely has its work cut out.

Score: 89/100

Talisker 1994-2009. OB ‘Manager’s Choice’. Cask 7147. Bedega Sherry butt. 582 bottles. 58.6%. 70cl.

Colour: Warm nose full of fresh butter, parsley, honey and flecks of salt that get bigger and bigger with time. Leafy and herbaceous with notes of sorrel, mint, wet earth, seashore, pebbles, oil and graphite. Like the Caol Ila yesterday this one smells much older than it is, in fact it reminds me a little of the official 30yo’s.  Flowery minerals and sharp notes of grapefruit and white pepper. The nose is much more concentrated and compact that the 10yo. Lets add water… now it’s just more leafy, more mineraly and more citrusy.

Palate: Buttery and chocolatey with after eight mints, orange marmalade, coriander, digestive biscuits, cereals, lots of peat smoke, greengages, fried chicken breast with a wholegrain mustard sauce (what a stupid tasting note). Surprisingly palatable at full strength but lets do the aqua thing all the same… With water there is some more intense notes of green peppercorns and more zingy citrus notes. Not too far from the 10yo in its ‘reduced’ profile.

Finish: Really similar to the 10yo now, maybe some more up front flavours of vanilla and bit more mouth-coating.

Comments: It’s top-notch stuff for sure but for me it’s still the same score as the 10yo. So one is £30 and the other is £300. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions from that but at least the quality is consistent.

Score: 89/100

Tomorrow: something that’s less likely to annoy people. Maybe.