Whisky Forum - Vertical tasting suggestions

hemicellulose · Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2018 9:09 pm Post subject: Vertical tasting suggestions

I'm interested to explore how aging impacts the taste of a spirit in more depth. I'd like to do a vertical tasting from a single distillery and I am looking for suggestions. Many distilleries though complicate this by changing the style with different age releases. This is in no way unfortunate, simply inconvenient for my purposes because it conflates the impacts of age with those of different cask types, or peating levels. An example of this would be Balvenie where their 12 is "double wood", their 14 is rum cask or "peat week", their 15 is sherry butt, their 17 back to "double wood", and their 21 port pipe aged. Wonderful they have a diverse range! But not a straightforward comparison of ages. Does anyone a have good suggestion about an age set from a specific distillery that would highlight the impact of age in as much isolation as possible? Thanks!
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NAS single malts are made shareholders, not drinkers. Don't think time in the cask is important, have some vodka. If companies were more focused on their whisky stocks and less on their market stocks, there wouldn't be this NAS problem.

lincoln imp · Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2018 9:19 pm Post subject:

Glenfarclas, Ben Nevis, Benromach to name but a few, Glenfarclas is probably is the easiest to source.
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Pour me a glass please.

Grant M · Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2018 10:19 pm Post subject:

There are not many that are simply "x" amount of years older and have matured in identical types of casks, even many of the sherry cask offerings are a combination of different sherry casks or have some bourbon cask in there also.

For a vertical tasting I would suggest Glenfarclas or Aberlour.

hemicellulose · Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2018 12:23 pm Post subject:

Glenfarclas, brilliant! I should have been able to think of that, but failed. Readily available. Dedicated to a core style. And very tasty! Perfect. Thanks Lincoln Imp and Grant!
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NAS single malts are made shareholders, not drinkers. Don't think time in the cask is important, have some vodka. If companies were more focused on their whisky stocks and less on their market stocks, there wouldn't be this NAS problem.

James T · Master Of Malts Joined: 05 Feb 2011 Posts: 2969

If you like blended whisky Ballantine's is a good one to do a vertical tasting

hemicellulose · Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2018 2:01 pm Post subject:

Thanks, James! I'll admit, I haven't really delved into blended scotch whisky. There are some I am curious about, but my very first scotches were blendeds and they put me right off scotch for years. To me, all of the Johnnie Walker line has a taste that reminds me of the smell from freshly opened boxes of latex bandages. I'm not sure where that flavor comes from as I've now had most of the component malts that go into different Walker lines. Still, it's made me leery of investing in a bottle to try.
_________________
NAS single malts are made shareholders, not drinkers. Don't think time in the cask is important, have some vodka. If companies were more focused on their whisky stocks and less on their market stocks, there wouldn't be this NAS problem.