Day #8 has been delayed by a number of days due to personal reasons, but we push onwards and upwards. I decided to shake up the glassware for this sample and give the Glencairn the night off.
The smell immediately reminds of the Scotch liqueur Drambuie. In my whiskey experience, there are only two whiskey-centric products that remind my nose of Drambuie: this is either Drambuie itself or a whiskey that has been exposed to mizunara oak. The alcohol, like a yippie dog in the park overwhelms all other sounds, is very peppy on the nose which makes discerning additional aromas challenging. Working past the alcohol, there are aromas of red apple, gentle vanilla, cinnamon, and a bit of orange marmalade. The following note on aroma might raise an eyebrow or two, but I do not mean it in a negative way, merely a way to convey a smell association - Scotch tape. This whiskey (along with Drambuie and mizunara-influenced whiskeys) has a Scotch tape smell to me.
The taste has a surge of alcohol and youthful grain. There is a prickly energy to the whiskey, like putting your tongue to a nearly drained 9-volt battery. The taste is less complex than the nose. Imagining what cedar and incense might taste like is how I feel this whiskey tastes. A bit of candied ginger. The sweetness is low, but this is not a tannin-rich drying whiskey either. Subsequent sips and the alcohol remains strong. I am betting this is a fairly high proof whiskey, above 50%, perhaps even flirting with 60%.
The finish is medium to long, almost certainly thanks to the strong alcohol. The spicy incense and Scotch tape vibe persists for quite some time and dominates the finish. I do not get much fruit or grain influence in the finish.
Wow, I am mildly perplexed by what we have today. My brain is shouting mizunara oak influence which takes me to Japan. Truthfully however, once mizunara's influence on malt whiskey became the stuff of legend, many producers rushed to include some semblance of mizunara oak in the maturation of their whiskey. For most, the inclusion of mizunara oak was at best inconsequential while for others it was nothing more than pure marketing trickery. All this to say, I have genuine pause in locking in my guess of a Japanese whiskey. I am going to gently back away from the Land of the Rising Sun and look more towards the United Kingdom. I definitely think there is grain as well as barley whiskey involved. I suspect this is quite a youthful blend, no more than 10 years old, but I strongly believe its age will be denoted as a single digit. There is definitely ex-bourbon used in the maturation, but virgin oak as well due to the lack of heavy vanilla/oak/char. As for strength, this is indeed a whopper of a whiskey. Higher than 50% ABV and possibly as high as 60%.
My Guess
Type/Style: Scotch Blended Whisky
Region: Scotland
Age: 6 to 10 years old
Maturation: Virgin Oak, ex-bourbon
Strength: 55% ABV
Producer: No idea, but not a major blender, more like a small, independent shop
Sip, Mix, or Skip?: Sip (with dilution)
Reveal
Name: The Blender's Cut, Cask Strength
Type/Style: Blended Irish Whiskey
Region: Ireland
Age: Non-age stated
Maturation: New charred oak, ex-bourbon, ex-Oloroso sherry
Strength: 65% ABV
Producer: Two StacksPrice: $54
Official Tasting Notes
Their Killowen Distillery might be the smallest in Ireland, but size only matters to a point. This does mean that they work with other independent distilleries when blending their juice. The Blender's Cut is a cask-strength version of their Two Stacks Whiskey that comes from Dundalk's Great Northern Distillery. It's a blend of malt, grain, and pot-still Whiskey, 5 juices in total, aged in virgin oak, ex-Bourbon, as well as Sherry casks. Bottled at 130 proof, it's one beastly and rich blend with a complex balance of spice, fruit, and a touch of peat.
Final Thoughts
Getting to try these samples totally blind is genuinely fun. Normally when I sip whiskey blind, I place a few bottles on the counter and ask my much better half to pour each into identical (but anonymously marked) glasses such that she knows what's in each glass, but I do not. Sure, this is blind, but not totally blind, I still know precisely what's in the superset. This Advent calendar is truly blind and what a great exercise in perception and psychology it has been thus far.
For this particular example, I detected a Scotch tape vibe which made me think Drambuie or a mizunara oak maturation. In watching the reveal video posted by this set's creator, their tasters identified smells of balsa wood and/or birch wood which provided a great jolt of clarity for me. I totally agree with that description but up to this point had never been able to verbalize in such a way; a new smell/tasting descriptor added to my stable. On paper this blend is quite complex - two different grain whiskeys (light and dark, whatever that means) as well as three types of barley whiskey (malted, unmalted, and peated). The final result is indeed interesting, but not proportionally complex to its ingredients list. In the end, the saving grace of this blend is its price - $54 for a 65% ABV blended Irish whiskey is not an awful price. Further if one were to sip this blended Irish whiskey alongside a standard blended Irish whiskey, the standard offering would wither away as forgettably as sipping tap water.
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