We promised to rewrite our collective history of drinking underwhelming blends from parental cupboards in our formative years.
And consensus was ….. we delivered!
- Michel Couvreur Overaged French Malt Whisky (43%, £90.78)
- Cadenhead Blended Scotch Whisky 25 Years (41.4%, £70)
- Mossburn 12 Year Old Speyside Blended Malt Foursquare Rum Finish (57.9%, £65)
- The Cooper’s Choice Campbeltown 9 Year Old 2014 (cask 1133) (53%, £80) – Master of Malt have this discounted to £75.06 (link)
- Wemyss Malts – Spice King Highland & Islay 12 year old Whisky (52%, £37.95)
- Compass Box Duality (54%, £180) – Not currently on sale, may return on the Compass Box website (this link).
We started with Michel Couvreur Overaged Malt Whisky, a NAS expected to be 12yrs+ (could be much older) taken from Scotland & racked in sherry casks in Burgundy caves for a few years of 🇫🇷 ‘over maturation’. This wasn’t a contender for dram of the night, but in the social drams afterwards, feedback was that this won ‘most intriguing’. Quite a bit of flip-flopping as to whether we’d pay the £90 RRP.
A Cadenhead Enigma 25yr blend followed with a ‘Walnuts, church pews, caramel’ nose suiting our location in St Crux. More 🧡 for this than the first (good value for £70/41.4%) but that was about to be blown away…
By a Mossburn 12 Year Old Speyside Blended Malt, a collaboration with Foursquare Rum🍹 that romped to dram of the night with over half the votes. This is the start of an annual Cask Collaboration Series where Mossburn blend / finish a different Scotch using barrels sourced from a distillery across different spirit categories. Very tropical 🌴 fruit, a tasty cask strength (57.7%) & a great price point (£65), much 🥃❤️.
A teaspooned Sauternes cask Campbeltown from The Cooper’s Choice (£80/53%) stretched the blend theme & piqued interest, but not as much as our final two…
We headed north to Highlands & Islay with a Wemyss Malts – Spice King 12 year old, intrigued by the ‘herbaceous smoke’ finish, a new descriptor for the club, which was a snip at £37.95 (52% ABV).
We then rounded off the night with Compass Box Duality, a smoky Ardbeg combined with a PX-matured Bimber whisky. Bottled at 54% ABV, the release has an RRP of £180 with 1,050 bottles available (now 1,049). Huge 🙏 to Compass Box for providing a great blend which we thought gave a smoother, more refined Ardbeg experience.
The use of the entrance to St Crux by ghost tours meant we had to turn away a few looking for the wrong type of spirits 👻 but those correctly hunting for 🥃 weren’t disappointed & we were touched to get feedback like “You’ve done it again, super interesting tasting!”
