Here's a whisky that I will admit that I had never heard of before this past weekend: Blackadder. My very knowledgeable bartender brought it to my attention, after she gave me a brief explanation it became the next whisky to fill my glass. Blackadder is the project of one man; author Robin Tucek who co-authored "The Malt Whisky File". All Blackadder bottlings are his personal selection. Blackadder chooses whisky from different distilleries to be used for their label, it would be a fun project to try and track them all down for a taste. All of their bottlings are single cask, no two bottlings are ever the same.
Blackadder's concept is to produce "whisky from the old
school", giving you a
product that would be reminiscent of what you would have found in a pub over a
hundred years ago. Blackadder does not
believe in chill-filtering their whisky, a process where the spirit is
chilled to freezing (or below freezing) prior to bottling. This removes any cloudiness from the whisky
but also removes many of the natural fats, oils and flavors in the whisky. Also, Blackadder does not add any caramel to the
whisky for coloring or flavor. The end
result is that the whisky you taste and see is exactly what came out of the
cask. In fact, the only filtering
process applied to Blackadder is a light filter that removes any wood splinters
from the cask, and only for your safety. When you hold up a bottle of Blackadder to the light you can see sediments floating
around the bottom of the bottle - something I am not used to but was a bit of a selling point for me.
The particular bottling that I came across (the photo
above is my own) was the 1999 Raw Cask, distilled at Glen Spey on April 6th,
1999. This was bottle number five of
298, an example of how limited their production runs are.
Since I tasted a cask strength whisky I decided to add a few drops of
water to open up the flavor (as I had recommended in the "How Do You Want
It?" review). The distiller encourages this as well, and discourages adding ice. This whisky had thick
legs, likely a result of the oils and fats that had not been filtered out in the
bottling process. The color was a light
gold, I would assume that this was at least partly due to the fact that because Blackadder does not
add caramel to the whisky. I had added
the water which definitely opened the nose, I could still tell by nosing
that it was a higher-proof whisky, I could smell the oak as well. The mouth feel was medium, it burned as it
rolled across my tongue (to be expected for a whisky around 120 proof), the
flavors really opened up in my mouth.
Glen Spey is a Speyside distillery and the whisky flavor reflected that, I felt that it was a bit spicy as well. The
aftertaste was pleasant, but fleeting.
Rating: 3.5 out of a possible 5 Casks
Reason: The whisky automatically won points for
originality. It was a fun experience to
try a limited-run whisky in its natural, unfiltered, unflavored state. As a cask strength whisky it can be difficult
to pull particulars out of the taste and nosing, after adding water this became
a bit easier. It was spicy and oily with
a pleasant mouth feel and an interesting look.
The flavors were good, but not commanding enough for a higher
rating. Still, a 3.5 rating is good in
my book, if you ever get a chance to try one of Blackadder's bottlings you
should take advantage of that.
Cheers,
Charles
Follow me on Twitter @whiskeyreviewer
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