Fawning over February's Pour & Sip whiskies!
The shortest month of the year is here, and whether you like it or not, it’s brought Valentine’s Day with it. With that in mind, a few of the whiskies in this month’s Pour & Sip box may have names alluding to Valentine’s, Galentine’s, or even Palentine’s. See if you can spot them!
Four Roses Single Barrel 100 Proof
As the story goes, in the late 1880s Four Roses founder Paul Jones proposed to his beloved. She said she would let him know her answer by wearing a corsage of roses to an evening ball if she accepted. As you probably guessed, she did indeed say yes, and so Jones Jr. named his bourbon Four Roses. These days, Four Roses boasts five yeast strains and two separate mash bills (named ‘B’ and ‘E’), giving it 10 different bourbon recipes to experiment with. However, its Single Barrel releases always use the same recipe (catchily-named OBSV – check out Pour & Sip Digest for more on these this month) using mash bill ‘B’, with 60% corn, 35% rye, and 5% malted barley. This superbly rich, complex bourbon is bottled at 100 proof – otherwise known as 50% this side of the pond!
The One Moscatel Cask Finished
A fruity, honeyed delight from The Lakes Distillery's The One range, finished in ex-Moscatel casks. The One is a blend of grain and malt Scotch whiskies from Speyside and Islay, though at its heart is The Lakes’ own single malt. The distillery itself was founded in 2011 by Paul Currie (he also set up the Isle of Arran Distillery), and you’ll find it in a renovated 160-year-old farmstead in a Lake District national park. Back in October 2020 (our second ever box!) Pour & Sip featured the Orange Wine Cask edition, and though it’s from the same range, this is a thoroughly different dram. The whisky has taken on an abundance of chocolate and stone fruit flavours from the wine cask, making it an excellent after dinner sipper.
The Glenturret 10 Year Old Peat Smoke (2021 Release)
The Glenturret’s annual 10 Year Old Peat Smoke release is a delicious nod to the distillery’s history – records show that The Glenturret dug peat from the moss at our water source for whisky production in the early 1800s. In fact, the owners claim the distillery is one of Scotland’s oldest, though it’s also likely that when it’s rumoured to have been distilling during the early 18th century, it would almost certainly have been illicit. While today most of its production is unpeated, this limited release features a splash of peated spirit alongside it, matured in both first-fill and second-fill European and American oak casks. At 50%, expect rich smoke and soft fruits and florals throughout the distinctive whisky.
Bunnahabhain 12 Year Old Cask Strength - 2021 Edition
A shiny new Bunnahabhain (pronounced ‘BOO-na-HAven’) for you, this is the 2021 edition of its annual 12 Year Old Cask Strength release. The Islay distillery wanted to recreate visitor cask strength tastings of its beloved core 12 Year Old whisky in the distillery’s iconic Warehouse 9, so now you don’t need to make the pilgrimage to the Scottish Islands to do so! Bunnahabhain and ex-sherry casks are a match made in heaven, and this burly expression showcases all the cask’s warming, fruity flavours along with the seaside influence from the whisky itself, all at 55.1%.
Hibiki Japanese Harmony
As the name suggests, Harmony is a well-balanced blended whisky from the Hibiki range of Japanese whisky – Hibiki was launched in 1989 to celebrate Suntory’s 90th anniversary. Harmony features malt whiskies from the Yamazaki and Hakushu distilleries, as well as grain whisky from the Chita distillery. The whiskies are drawn from five different cask types, including American white oak, native Japanese Mizunara oak, and ex-sherry casks. If you recognise the Suntory and Hibiki names, it may be from the 2003 film Lost in Translation, where Bill Murray promotes the latter in a fake commercial. This whisky is very much real, however, full of honeyed fruits, florals, and fragrant wood.
