pop & pour

Merry Christmas everybody!!  I do not mind telling you that I will not be blogging tomorrow.  Or the day after.  Or the day after.  My calendar odyssey ends tonight with a special super-sized offering from the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, a group that buys single casks from renowned distillers, bottles them itself and sells them only to subscribed members, giving each bottling a unique name and number.  Christmas Day’s 100 mL bottle was from Society Single Cask No. 3.160 and was titled “Islay beach scene”; all I know about it is that it was aged for 10 years and is a highly potent 59.9% abv, making it (I believe) the booziest whisky in the calendar, just in time for the holidays [ed. note: not quite true, as it turns out, as Day 21’s Kilchoman KWM Cask clawed over the 60% abv mark].  The label also provides some handy, if overly poetic, tasting notes to guide your drinking experience:  this whisky is supposed to smell like “pork chops and lemony prawns on a beach barbecue, then hints of buttery mint” and taste like “burnt heather and barbecued meats with fruit”.  I did not get the pork chops, although I did quite enjoy the aromas on this whisky, which started out very clean for Islay, sea spray, breezy peat and mineral notes, before sneaking in the diesel oil and woodsmoke we were all expecting.  The peat is richly balanced and far from dominating on the palate, which actually did remind me a bit of BBQed meat, or at least a brisket smokehouse, along with sweet honey, oyster shells and canned pear.  With a dash of water, this SMWS offering holds together and restrains its monstrous alcohol exceptionally well — a strong finish to what I feel was a substantially better Advent Calendar this time around.  I only was really missing one thing in the 2015 calendar:  something from Japan.  Maybe next year?

I rolled through the Day 25 whisky so that I could end my string of calendar posts with my personal KWM Whisky Advent award-winners, my favourite bottles from the past month.  Here we go:

• Best Value Dram:  BenRiach 10 Year (Day 16) — How this bottle only costs $64 is a complete mystery, but I would highly recommend that you grab it before somebody changes their mind.  Incredible balance and complexity for a scotch this young and inexpensive, from a distillery that keeps churning out winners.
• 3rd Place (Tied):  Kavalan Sherry Cask (Day 23) and Gordon & Macphail Connoisseurs Choice 2003 Caol Ila (Day 18) — Kavalan is nothing short of a revelation in the whisky world to me, and everything I’ve ever tried of theirs has been just prime quality.  With a whopping 4 Connoisseurs Choice bottlings in the calendar, G&M stood a good chance of scooping a podium finish, and their deft handling of Caol Ila took them to the promised land.
• 2nd Place:  Kavalan ex-Bourbon Cask (Day 5) — Call me predictable, but I don’t care.  I couldn’t get this bottle out of my head for days after tasting it.  The Kavalan Sherry was deeper, darker and more complex, but the ex-Bourbon hit on an emotional level and delivered amazing purity and a nose to be savoured for days.
• 1st Place:  GlenDronach Revival 15 Year (Day 7) — Can you believe it?  For the second year in a row, a scotch from the GlenDronach distillery takes the heralded Pop & Pour Whisky Advent Calendar crown.  A worthy successor to its big brother Parliament from last year’s calendar, the Revival packed an unbelievable flavour punch in its teenaged frame and was simply one of the most abjectly delicious things I have ever tasted.  It is a no-brainer purchase if you ever come across it.

A quick thanks to Kensington Wine Market and its owner/whisky guru Andrew Ferguson for another year of hard work and brilliant sourcing to create a 25-day whisky experience like no other.  It cannot be easy to find that kind of array of quality 50 mL bottles year over year, and in some instances Andrew’s dedication took him directly to the distilleries themselves to have the mini-bottles made just for this calendar; the effort certainly shows through and the result is remarkable.  Same time next year?