irish whisky

Proper Twelve Irish Whisky Review

/ Dave S. Koster / Leave a comment

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Happy St. Patricks’ day!

According to 23-and-me, I’m about as Irish as a Polack who’s consumed a 5th of Irish whiskey and a pound of Soda bread. However, my wife is more Irish than I am Polish, so we celebrate. Like most Americans, that means corn-beef and cabbage, soda bread, whiskey, and Guinness. As such, it seemed like a totally perfect day to avoid work (I’m supposed to be working on an analysis for social indicators in Prince William Sound, AK – or something, I need to read the investigation plan again. Basically, I’m still pulling data together.)

IN ANY CASE – seeing as how it’s St. Patricks day and I was going to get some anyhow, I decided to review an Irish whiskey. AND NOT because I wanted to start drinking at 4. Which I did. The first thought that occurred to me was to do a review of Jameson cask mates. Those are weird, good, and always worth the money. However, since most everyone is probably already drinking Jameson, I thought I’d show some love to something I’d never tried before.

I went with Proper Twelve. It’s about the same price as a bottle of Jameson and claims to be rich and smooth with hints of Vanilla, Honey & Toasted Wood. Which I’d say is a fair description, mostly.

The nose is a little on the harsh side with a pretty astringent quality fresh out of the bottle but calms down once it’s been open for a minute or two. After it calms down, there is only the very slightest hint of vanilla with lots of honey, even more, toasted oak, and something like pear (reminds me of Jameson Limited Reserve 18, actually).

This one has a full mouth-feel and a bite to match the initially harsh nose. However, it’s not a strong bite, just a bit of spice and alcohol. In spite of having very strong flavors of honey, along with toasted wood and that weird pear-like quality, this one is on the dry side for an Irish whiskey, which I’m finding to be really nice, actually. The finish is when all the sweetness comes through, making for a pretty drinkable product. It’s like getting a burst of sweet in the back of your mouth. As the bottle suggests, it is rich and reasonably smooth, though not quite as smooth as something like Jameson.

As with every time I try something new, I try it neat first, then add an ice-cube to see what that does. Don’t do it with this one. Nothing nice happens to the flavor. It opens the wrong flavors. The bitter tannins of the grain and wood came straight through the otherwise pleasant honey/pear thing it’s got going on. While the bitter tannins are absolutely present in the flavor (even neat), they hide behind whatever else is going on. Super not true once you toss some ice in there.

My pronouncement on this: It’s good, I’d buy again – drink neat. I don’t see this one mixing well, and it really doesn’t go well on ice (maybe granite rocks would be good though.)

Another reason to buy this one is that they donate to first responders for every bottle sold. While this is likely to benefit those blokes in Dublin, it’s still a worthy cause.

Cheers!

Whisky review – Kilbeggan

/ Dave S. Koster / Leave a comment

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I picked up a bottle of Kilbeggan in honor of last week’s budget-meeting eve, which is sort of like Christmas eve, except on budget day, the only present I’m likely to get is enough funding to carry on through the end of the fiscal year, and if I’ve been a very good boy, a bit of carry-over that will not only help next year’s budget picture, but also give me a bit of breathing room in the deadline department. This budget-eve, I’m looking at tomorrow as a likely exercise in begging for more project work to keep everyone employed. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m writing this, before the meeting, but you’re not seeing it until later. My hope is that by having a dram of the stuff, and writing about it, I’ll be able to sleep and not keep myself up worrying about how to pay for things.

I know I promised to not get all snobby and shit about whisky, but Kilbeggan is an interesting one and deserves a bit of snobbery. At some point, I’ll wax poetic on the merits of pot-stills and stuff, but not today, what I will say right now though is that a good triple-run pot-stilled Irish Whisky is the way to go. Killbeggan boasts the oldest licensed pot still in Ireland and traditional methods, and I think that the product speaks well to the use of pot stills.

As you can probably tell from the photo, it has a pale gold color. The Nose is heavy with something like apricot accompanied by a hint of almond. There’s also a definite note of heavily toasted oak. The flavor continues that strong apricot-like fruitiness, with oak but adding a very long cinnamon-spice and honey finish. It’s got a really full mouth feel too, giving it a distinctly heavy quality compared to the last couple of whiskys I’ve tried. I think my first reaction to tasting was ‘holy crap, I just got punched in the mouth with flavor’. It’s smooth up front, but there is a distinct burn as you near the finish.

My rating on this one is: Drink neat. I’ve had it before and remember liking it, I still like it.

Hell-Cat Maggie Irish Whisky Review

/ Dave S. Koster / 2 Comments

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Look! Another whisky review blog – I’ve decided to try and do these about twice a month so that I don’t blow a hundred bucks a month on whisky. Since I don’t make any money at this, I can’t exactly write it off as an expense. In any case, I’m riding at 100% review rate of Irish Whiskys and I feel a bit weird about that given that the blog purports to involve bourbon. That said, this one was on sale and I’d never seen it before, so I thought I’d give it a go.

To start, this isn’t a fancy enough bottle to come in a cardboard tube that waxes poetic on the flavor profile. Rather, this one comes with the borderline alarming story:

“Hell-Cat Maggie was a well-known criminal in Manhattan’s five points district and a member of the notorious Dead Rabbits gang. She was a fierce street fighter and actually filed her teeth and nails into points to better shred her opponent’s skin.”

Interestingly, not only is this write-up largely accurate, it gives me all I need to know about this whisky at first glance: I will not likely be treated to a smooth, complex, yet delicate drink. It’s more likely to kick the crap out of me.

Since there isn’t any description of what I SHOULD taste, I’ll just give you my impressions. And as my palate isn’t developed much beyond “this is good” to “this is really not that great”, you can take all of this with a grain of salt.

The nose contains pear, cloves and hints of caramel. The first taste that struck me, however, was the oak. It was surprisingly strong, not woody, but certainly the dominant part of the flavor profile, bringing with it notes of caramel, spice and grain. If you put it on the rocks, the pear flavors come out much stronger. The finish is extremely long and spicy, largely owing to the high level of oily conigers that originate from the last part of the distillation process (the tails). It’s also got a healthy burn. Not quite as bad as most bourbons, but generally more than a typical Irish whisky. This one is also not particularly sweet, which is one of my usual complaints about mid-shelf Irish whiskys.

On a scale of mixer to neat, I put this one at rocks or add just the tiniest bit of water to open up the flavor profile. For the cost, probably not a go-to, but this is a good one. I’d consider buying again.

Green Spot Irish Whiskey – My first whisky review blog

/ Dave S. Koster / 4 Comments

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The first thing I want to say about this post is that it’s a day late because I didn’t schedule it. So, sorry about that. Not that it matters an awful lot, nobody was expecting this one anyhow, except for me.

The other day, I was sipping on some whisky or other and thinking, in that “anything’s possible” sort of way you really only get from a a runner’s high or drinking. Presumably, other drugs get you there too, but as these are the only two I’ve got any experience with (less so on the running lately), I’m going to stick with it. Anyhow, I was thinking “you know, I have this blog with bourbon in the title and the closest thing I have to a post on actual whisky has to do with a pair of bourbon glaze recipes buried somewhere back in the history.” This let me to the natural conclusion that “Hey! I should blog about whisky too! That’d be awesome!” My lovely, supportive wife raised her glass and said “here here, now shut the hell up so I can watch Buffy. And put some of whatever you’re having in my glass.”

Anyhow, as I set out to write a brilliant, humorous and thoroughly engaging first post on whisky, I realized not only was that not going to happen, but you can’t actually write about whisky without being pretentious. You can’t really be both pretentious and funny because then it’s even MORE pretentious and makes you feel like it’s time to put on a polo shirt and head down to the county club. Pretension just sort of goes with the territory of talking about whisky, which is a bit odd considering that the vast majority of whisky is consumed is through two ounce shots intended to bypass the whole ‘flavor’ thing and get the drinker as pissed as possible in the shortest time possible. Alternatively, the whisky is consumed with a carrier, such as cola, to mask all but the most powerful of flavors.

What’s more, and this is a good one, we once had a “bottom shelf-bourbon” tasting at our place. It was great, everyone brought one or two bottles of something cheap, only most folks brought something more mid-shelf, which includes a lot of what I’d rate ‘drink neat.’ Someone, however, slipped in a bottle of Seagram’s-7. I decided to do the tastings blind and so when the Seagram’s came out, nobody knew it had come out and I heard all kinds of stuff about the mellow nose and hints of vanilla and caramel and how damn smooth it was. Sure it beat Ezra Brooks, and Elijah Craig, but it also beat out Old-Grandad, Four-Rose, Maker’s Mark, and even a bottle of Woodford Reserve.

Needless to say, talking about nose, flavor, and finish is about as helpful in picking a whisky as looking at the label. Unfortunately, if you don’t talk about those things, all you have left is: “It didn’t burn so much and it was pretty sweet.” That’s fine, but not helpful.

In any case, I did do all the hard work of tasting a whisky for this blog (there’s even a picture) and I do want to say something about it. I apologize if it’s pretentious.

To give some history here, I got this bottle at Christmas, a friend brought it over as a gift. I’d never heard of Green Spot before then. It’s a light gold in color with a subtle nose (that is, it doesn’t singe your nose-hairs if you get in there and give a good sniff.) My first reaction was -wow, this is smooth, a bit spicy, and only has a hint of the oily conigers in the finish that you so often get in Irish Whiskys.

In reading the back of the bottle, you’re promised a nose of orchard fruits and spice, with aromatic oils, barley, and toasted oaks. The taste is described as spicy with green apple cloves and toasted oak with a finish of lingering spices and barley.

In general, I concur with the assessment on the bottle. This is a damn fine whisky. I would say that green apple and spice are the dominant flavors here, but not in the apple & cinnamon oatmeal sort of way. If you’re looking for it, the toasted oak is proud and present, but is generally out-matched by the spice and apples. I tried this one neat and wouldn’t recommend ice rocks. I feel like the flavor profile would start to break down as it’s just this side of watered down. I bet a cask-strength would be much stronger with the flavors.

My final recommendation on this one?

On a scale of mixer to neat, I put this one at neat. I’d buy again.