This would be fun to taste along with the Nikka Coffey Malt, Coffey Grain, and Miyagikyo Single Malt.  So many possible variations from just the one Nikka Distillery at Miyagikyo, a great opportunity to explore the ways in which malt and grain can play together.

So cheers.  This bottle might not quite be worth the price of admission in my book, but it is the best Bushmills I have ever had by quite some margin.  It has been a joy to sip on during the hot late summer evenings— it has a lovely refreshing quality from the lemony acidity and slight astringency.  I could see someone who really enjoys sweeter Highlands or maybe Lowland triple distilled malts finding this to be quite excellent and probably deciding my grade was way off.

This was weird and really unlike any of the other Chichibu I have tried.  I was told that the nose was a bit strange but that the actual body was quite tasty.  I am not sure I agree.  This is one of those drams whose flavor profile was just too wacky for me to really relax with— but weird enough that I could see myself one day craving to try again.

Mellow and restrained, the palate is simple and the body is quite light.  It is an easy drinker— a  nondescript sweetness is backed by just a hint of smoke.  Bits of ginger, orange, and tea give some complexity to the body with just a hint of cocoa near the end.

Pirates?  Smugglers?  Lovers?  A three hour tour?  Who exactly is going on the ‘night cruise?’

An intriguing combination of peated malt from Scotland and Westland’s five malt blend, all distilled, casked, and aged in the Pacific Northwest.  The result is a dram the combines some of the sweet honey and barley sugar of the Westland American Oak with the savory, slightly earthy, notes of a heavily peated Highland scotch.  

The hints of smoke and caramelization gave the dram some depth, though too much of the spice remained faint and subdued in the background.  Adding water to the dram only seemed to bring out the honeyed sweetness and leave many of the other flavor notes sunk in the background.  It was an interesting dram— I would happily accept a pour of it, but I do not think I will be hunting a bottle any time soon.

Ao, one of Suntory’s latest product launches, leverages the monolithic size of the company to blend together whiskies from every corner of the globe (where Suntory at least partially owns a distillery).      According to Suntory, in Japanese Ao means blue and blue is the color of the water that connects each of these distilling regions to one another.  In Tahitian one meaning of the word Ao is world, so in my opinion the label makes more sense if we just pretend as though Suntory intended it to be read in Tahitian.

The bottle is delicious and thought provoking, a worthy pick up for anyone looking to explore American Single Malts, barley, yeast, or sherry casks.

Not the worst blended whisky I have ever had— nor the worst grain heavy mash-bill.  It’s not very complex and the whole of the Amrut single malt lineup towers over it in terms of the depth and complexity of the flavor profile.  While it was alright, I won’t be searching it out again any time soon.  I think I’ll stick to my Amrut single malts.

My introduction to Westland and what a cracker it was: peat, sweet, and bbq all come together beautifully.

Curiosity satisfied.  I loved this.  The baked earthen oven and caramelized vegetable notes hit my right in the savory spot.  The unpeated Indian malted barley and the peated Scottish barley are in perfect harmony in this bottle.  One brings savory spices, the other sweet peaty smoke, each furthering the complexity of the dram.  The whole scene takes me straight to a beachside “Baby’s First Luau,” hanging out with parents and friends in the shade, salty ocean in the air, food slowly cooking.

The lightly peated ‘Edited’ is the middle child of Paul John’s core retail range, sitting between the unpeated ‘Brilliance’ and heavily peated ‘Bold.’  It combines elements of both, balancing the influence of Scottish peated malt against the tropical and tangy malted six-row barley from northern India.

Two single cask halves of the “Luna Release,” I would have assumed the 12Y Peated was the “dark side of the moon” and the 5 Year unpeated “the light side.”  According to Stefan Van Eycken, who provided the bottles at the tasting, the inspiration was Taiso Yoshitoshi's "One Hundred Views of the Moon.”