Malt Mission 2008 #250

Smokehead Extra Rare
Islay Single Malt Scotch Whisky
40% abv
£34

Another week come and gone on the Malt Mission. 250 drams later and I am still loving it. Hope you are. Thanks to The Scotch Blog for posting THIS this week(look forward to Drammies results next week, Wednesday), thanks to YOU whiskynerds for reading, and thanks to you youtubeturds who have helped this video we made get over 15,000 views. Have a great weekend.

I have quite literally had no time for Dr. Whisky this week. Sorry for thin posts as of late, will be back on form soon. We had the original Smokehead back at Malt Mission #72. This "Extra Rare" version is an exclusive for World Duty Free (for now) and we can assume the contents are a little more, um... rare. For more info on Smokehead Extra Rare see Whisky Grotto.

TASTING NOTES:

Yum and wow. Active and exhilarating. Sweet with booziness. Burnt and cheesy. Saganaki (Greek Flaming Cheese)! Very winey, salty, some fresh raw salmon, celeriac, all trapped in a musty closet of peat smoke.

Candied, kind of soapy, and quite smoky. Wine gums, lemon scent dishwashing detergent, green jelly beans, Nesquick. Late nuttiness with smoke persisting among sweet, synthetic orange juice; Sunny D?

SUMMARY:

A departure from the original release of Smokehead, and I would love to know what element in this release makes it "extra rare". Distillery source? Age? Type of cask? Marketing decision? It doesn't, and shouldn't really matter. It is about flavour. I enjoyed the nose, but for me, while certainly smoky and heady, this relies too much on the cleaning-agent characteristics with the cocoa, fruit, and smoke being overpowered by a "lemon fresh" janitor's closet.

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North American Adventure #2

Crown Royal XR (Extra Rare)
Canadian Whisky
40% abv
$175.20 (CAD)
$145 (USD)

Crown Royal is currently distilled at Gimli in Manitoba. This is a limited release made from the last batch of whisky distilled at the Waterloo distillery which closed in 1992. Shortly after closing, a fire destroyed most of the mothballed distillery and warehouses. Some of the whisky was saved and released in summer 2006 in the strictly allocated Crown Royal XR. Master Blender Andrew MacKay set out to try to create the finest Crown Royal ever to be bottled, and whether he achieved it or not, it is certainly among the rarest and most precious releases from Crown Royal.

Tasted this at the LCBO with Inder Marwah.
Special guest tasting contributor's notes will be in quotation marks.

TASTING NOTES:

Marachino cherries, or just the brine. Vanilla ice cream. "Lots of raw sugar, bits of chocolate. Iodine? A little rubbing alcohol."

"Burnt toast, blackened Naan in a pan." Marzipan, banana flavoured liquid penicillin. Compact in a way that I found charming and Inder found boring("Sweet, bitter, nuthin"). Lots of creamy oak and a whiff of smoke.

SUMMARY:

Inder was not impressed, but I really enjoyed it. It was sweet but well offset by the slightly puckering oak and fired bread flavours. Yeah, it's expensive, but you are really paying for the history and small batch blending craftsmanship that no other Crown Royal has.

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