Glen Garioch Highland 1797 Founders Reserve

"I've never met a single malt that I didn't like."  Well, that WAS true before I tried this Glen Garioch Founder's Reserve.  That is a harsh statement, but I found this to be a terribly harsh scotch.

This one really surprised me.  Unlike Cardhu, or Edradour that just did not have enough substance for me, this Glen Garioch was overpowering in its alcohol taste.  I was afraid to exhale near open flames.  And that overpowering taste just killed everything else for me.

This should have been a good one.  It got 4.5/5 stars at masterofmalt.com.  People seemed to like it.  But when I tried the first dram from a new bottle, I almost thought someone had bottle everclear by mistake.  It is 48%, but other scotches that I have tried have been higher than that and haven't been so overpowering.

Needless to say, this one cries for water.  I don't particularly like adding water to scotch, but for me, Glen Garioch absolutely needs it.  Once tamed down with about 20% water, it loses the strong alcohol taste, but that still seems to be one of the stronger tastes. It is actually better when the water is upped to around 33%, but I find it flat with that much water.  The other flavours also get watered down, which I don't particularly care for.   I don't know what else to say.  I had expected this to be much much better.  Not a particularly expensive scotch, and I will finish it, but for this price point, I still think that Aberlour 12 is the one to beat.

Glenmorangie Quinta Ruban - 12 Year Old

After reading the reviews of this whiskey, I almost wanted to get into the car and buy a bottle.  Even the name is appealing:  " Quinta Ruban".  But the reviews had "Charlie Browned" me before.  Cardhu and Edradour were both good, but not over the moon good like I had read in the reviews.  So I decided to wait.

Then, due to a snowstorm, I got unexpectantly stranded away from home for an extra night and hit the liquor store looking for this.

Glenmorangie makes a few of whiskeys of this type....Lasanta (The Christmas whiskey perhaps?), Nector D'Or, and Quinta Ruban.  Each is finished (extra matured) in a different cask. While Lasanta (Sherry casks) is also supposed to be quite good, Quinta Ruban, finished in Port casks, seemed to be particularly impressive.

This is very good whiskey.  Very very good.  Even my non scotch drinking friends liked it and rated it as one of the best of those that I had fed them.  It is a slightly sweet, but not a Speyside sweet - more like the difference between a sweet fruit and a mouthful of sugar.  It is just very, very tasty.  At 46% there is a bit of an alcohol bite, but it is still reasonably smooth.  This will definitely be my goto single malt for some time.  It ranks up there with the Bowmore Devil's Casks and Bowmore Wine Cask Matured, both of which were a one off limited edition whiskey that will not come again.  There is lots and lots of Quinta Ruban available.

Glenmorangie claims that it only uses casks twice, not repeatedly like some others do, and there is definitely quality to the whiskey.  It is a highland whiskey, coming from Tain, Scotland, just north of Inverness.  (The Speyside region is just east of Inverness.)

In any event, I am quite happy to find a great whiskey, costing about the same a Cardhu, but, to me, it is much, much superior.  Give it a try, and let me know what you think.

Cardhu 12

Cardhu is another Speyside whiskey.  It received some extremely favourable reviews at sites of visited, with some people describing it as their favourite malt.  I was very much looking forward to trying it, after reading the overwhelmingly positive reviews.

I am still trying to sort this out.  It isn't as obviously sweet as other Speysides I have tried but it is quite smooth.  It has a "dark" taste to it.  Sort of like the "dark" part of "dark chocolate".  Kind of a caramelized butterscotch dark, or "dark" toffee.  The alcohol is pronounced, but distinctive so that it does not detract from the taste of the whiskey.

While it is good, I would not describe this as a whiskey to get excited about. I can see why some people would like it quite a bit more than me, but I just didn't find anything extremely interesting about it.

One thing that I did like, was that I LOVE the bottle.  It is beautifully and thoughtfully shaped, with indents on the side for grip and a funnel like lip for pouring.Very well thought out.