Old Pulteney 21yr Old

Today was marked by a rare pleasure, the chance to taste a range of whisky from a place called Wick in the far north of Scotland. Called the Maritime Malt, the marque is a big supporter of seaborne adventure and Sydneysiders will see their 70 foot clipper clear the heads and turn right for Hobart this Boxing Day. I’ll admit I hadn’t heard it mentioned much before today.

Jim Murray scored the Old Pulteney 97.5, a score that has never been exceed and only a handful of other crafted whisk(e)y has made the grade. Now, I’m not entirely sure you can fully trust the palate of a single individual, even one as experienced and indeed descriptive as Mr. Murray, but here he makes a fine point.

Anyway, the liquid.

In your glass you get an oddly darker whisky than the 30yr old from the same distillery. It is an excellent whisky to smell; complexity and fineness of flavour that will have even the most ebullient of whisky describers searching for a thesaurus and flavour map. All the Old Pulteney drams have a enchanting seaside flavour to them, a salty backbone that spice, sugar and malt cling to on a seemingly everlasting slide to a delightfully distant finish in this expression over all the others.

The 21 is rested in a Fino cask, and the dry nuttiness it lends takes this from a fine drop to a truly memorable one for me.

Often described as the most Northerly Distillery in the UK, Old Pulteney actually has lost this distinction with the restoration of distilling at the Wolfburn still in Thurso at the start of 2013. Thurso is only another 20km towards Father Christmas from the stills in Wick, but there’s not much of Scotland left for a leapfrog attempt.

Freed from their unique geographical burden, their still is a unicorn. It has both no head nor swan neck, a legacy from their initial delivery to the site many moons ago. The stills that were delivered to the site were too tall for the stillhouse, and obviously keen to get on with the making of some truly excellent whisky, the executive decision was taken to cut them down to size. The result is called by many a smugglers still, a throwback to the delightful history of whisky, freedom and sticking it to the ruling classes. They also use a 90 meter long set of pipes to cool the spirit, a practice left in the past by most, but you cannot argue with the result of a worm tub finish.

This is the perfect whisky to buy your dad or know-it-all best friends who insists their brand is the pinnacle.

Not cheap at $200 from Nicks, but worth every penny and you’ll get free delivery at that price. For those of you unwilling top trust this special liquid to the hands of Australia Post, you can also find a bottle at the Oak Barrel, World of Whisky, Camperdown Cellers on Parramatta Rd and Liquor on Oxford here in Sydney.

No. 3 London Dry Gin

Packing wise, this gin is a winner from the start. Packaged in a fine white box, beautifully printed, I’ve got a feeling of anticipation usually reserved for the premium end of the whisky and cognac spectrum. The bottle slides out, hand wrapped in a custom printed tissue map of the home of Berry Bros. & Rudd wine merchants. The bottle itself is adorned with the key to the premises at No. 3 St. James Street and closed with a great piece of lead foiling stamped the the merchants Royal Warrant.

Uncorking the bottle you get a massive hit of juniper. The theme of threes is more than just packaging. Three fruits; juniper, grapefruit and orange lie down perfectly with three spices; angelica, coriander and cardamom. Designed as the last word in Gin for a Dry Martini by a man with a doctorate in distillation, the liquid certainly doesn’t disappoint.

46% abv makes it a pleasure in a G&T, particularly when you pair things up with a quality Quina Fina tonic and a decent squeeze of lemon. The juniper is a standout in a super Dry Martini, and I liked a 5:1 ratio with Dolin that I’ve just sucked down too.

This is the perfect gin to supercharge your Gin classics for the holidays. The spirit of cricket might have taken a beating these last few days in Australia but you shouldn’t think that everything English has gone past date. London Dry Gin defines a style as old as modern drinking for a reason, as a category it is great and this is its epitome.

Brandwise, this is a beautifully conceived and executed example. The story is inextricably welded to an authentic history. The paper hand wrapping of each bottle, like the proprietors have been turning out of St. James St more than 300 years. The spirit is distilled in the copper pots in Schiedam, Holland, where the original gin the British stole improved upon came from.

$80 a bottle from Nicks. Not the cheapest of juniper liquids in this country but a delightful change up to the citrus driven English and more floral craft gins on the market.

An excellent gift or treat to any lover of Mother’s Ruin.

Glen Grant 10yr Old

This is a good entry to the world of single malts, while you’ll have to put up with a rougher mouth feel than you’d find in a blend of the same price, there is more interest on the palate and the finish.

Hazelnuts and stonefruit, with the creamy vanilla that comes from a rest in ex-Bourbon casks. This is a tasty standard for your shelf or drinking cabinet.

In perhaps the best piece of marketing outreach I’ve seen thus far, the box came with a note mentioning the distillery edition. A cask strength bottling available only to those willing to make the long trek up to Spey. A tantalising reward, worthy of such a long road, in the imagining at least.

The 16 yr old is worth tracking down, they’ve a bottle hiding behind the bar at the Baxter Inn here in Sydney.

A gateway whisky in price as well, five cents back from $40 here.

Four Pillars Gin

Four Pillars Gin launched last night in Sydney, a few days after bottles of the 1st batch began to drop into the mailboxes of Pozible funders around the country.

An obvious passion project between two lovers of the juniper spirit, it is a worthy addition to the current crop of homegrown spirits producers starting their journey around the country. They’ve made their home on the edge of the wine producing Yarra Valley in Victoria, sourcing water and a measure of inspiration from their locale.

Distilled to epitomise a modern style of Australian gin, juniper and citrus take a back seat to more subtle cardamom, star anise, coriander seed and cinnamon. Australian botanicals, namely the Tasmanian pepperberry leaf and lemon myrtle also make an appearance. Lovers of a London Dry will be disappointed with the lack of up front in this gin, but you’d be wrong to assume that a lack of juniper dominance signals a lack of complexity in the taste. There are classic matches, with orange, cardamom and cinnamon passing over the palate in an elegant fashion.

This gin is softer than the English batting line up. It will provide an elegant stage for the country’s bartenders to experiment with and will bring many Australians claiming not to be gin drinkers into the fold. The toned down citrus notes come alive when a squeeze is added to your gin and tonic. In a martini it can get lost a little in the vermouth, but I’m hanging out for a homegrown Australian version with Four Pillars and the Regal Rouge. It is good in a negroni, settling down into a unique, if slightly floral take on the drink.

It’s an elegantly designed package, with foiling on the label and and individual batch numbering beneath the foil closure and cork. The copper foiling is a well planned allusion and story starter for the center of the brands universe, a gorgeous Carl still named Wilma. Copper is a key brand element again in the extremely covetable cocktail shakers the team have produced for launch.

With only 420 bottles in each release, this is unashamedly small batch and craft in every imaginable way. There are plans afoot too for a barrel aged Old Tom, calling on the local vineyards for some ancient aging stock, whispers of a fresh take on Sloe and a series of seasonal releases based on local botanicals, like the unbelievably delicious native finger lime. Plenty then to get excited and keep an eye out for.

You should buy a bottle to enjoy over the Christmas period, it’s a local passionate project that will be the perfect foil for long, lazy afternoons watching the Australians school the English on something they took to the world. Something of a metaphor for the ambition of this gin.

Look for this on the back bars of anyplace small, or at Camperdown Cellars Parramatta rd, Elizabeth Bay Cellars, Salt meats Cheese in Sydney. Trade distribution again through the team at Vanguard. RRP in the high sixties.

Monkey Shoulder

You will have had a blended scotch before, but fewer will have run into a blended malt. Purists will be quick to point out that every malt not marked Single Cask is, in fact, a blend but Monkey Shoulder were one of the first to the party in marketing it as such. At around $40 a bottle, it is a worthy addition to my Spirits of Christmas recommendations and an attractive entry point for a present for a friend or relative that likes a scotch.

What you get in the bottle is a blend of three William Grant’s Speyside malts. There is reference online to them being Glenfiddich, Balvenie and Kininvie but given they’re released in batches of 27 casks and there is no statement other than dufftown provenance it might be that, but could also be different.

The flavour is smooth and rich, characteristic of its ex-Bourbon cask resting. There’s complexity there if you’re really willing to go looking for it amongst the creamy, buttery middle. The finish is quite impressive given the price point and you’ll also be well rewarded chucking this round in any whisky cocktail, with a more complex than a blend but more rounded than a malt kind of result ending up in the glass.

The bottle looks great, with the metal monkeys perched on the shoulder and that weighty base.

The liquid gets its name from a condition afflicting the men of the malt house. A lifetimes toil shoveling grain can leave you with a mightly painful arm, neck and the joints between, called the Monkey Shoulder.

Pick a bottle up online here.

A Vodka for Rum Drinks

This is the first of my Christmas Spirits buying guide for 2013.

When you love the flavour, finish and variety of distilled spirits as much as I do, there is no response more annoying than “I won’t drink anything but vodka.”

If you don’t like the taste of alcohol, you should probably be looking for a different drug.

This Christmas though,  there’s hope. Think of Ciroc Coco as a gateway to the world where the taste of booze is an integral part of the overall experience. This towering white hued bottle will open up a world of Tiki drinks, releasing your alcoholic handbrake and sending your careening down the hill to Hunter S Thompson country.

I can almost hear the battle hardened whisk(e)y lovers out there scoffing at my prose but there’s joy in these Frenchman’s tears for you as well. Think of this as liquid childhood, a chance to hark back to a world when you didn’t know or care what a mash bill was, or the relative merits of Quercus alba over anything else that grows in Europe. I dare you to drink some and not grin a little.

This is no whipped Cream flavoured number, the Coco is fresh and clean, plus the abv is pared back to a just 35% and that means this is the sort of fun that you can just throw back and start getting involved with.

Ciroc Coconut

Expect to part with about $70 for a bottle.