Master of Malt, April Fools, Buckfisn't & Macallain't

 

Tonic Wine Cask Finish

10yo Single Malt Whisky

Master of Malt/Bourbon & Booze Project

46% abv

£45

It's been too long. Dinosaur alert, this whole Blogger tool has changed and, to be honest, I'm lost. Maybe I'll fuck up the layout. Maybe this won't even post. I should just Clubhouse.

But no. 

It's been too long. Deal with it. I have. 

Or if I haven't, we should probably visit a whisky we cannot name from a country we cannot name that spent time in a cask that held 5 cases of a tonic wine that we cannot name.

So let's

TASTING NOTES:

Florida beaches, suntan lotion, moisturiser, and the cheapest Terri's chocolate orange ripoff, like plastic, American chocolate.Sheila's perfume and tree bark remind you one sniff is often enough.

Luscious spirit, meaty, turning confectionery but maintaining savoury pangs. What the hell is th... oh right. Right. Daring to venture in again is rewarded swiftly with overripe apples, banana bread, and herbaceous notes of toni... oh right. Right. 

SUMMARY:

It's just a drink, isn't it? And as a drink, it's pretty yummy, but it can be grippy. Water helps dilute the "additive" allowing it to flatter the fat, juicy spirit underneath with pine, peony, and wild strawberry. Really fucking tasty. Let's never do it again though, ok? ... or, what? .... we put 21yo Nobermory and Ben Nevisn't in one, too, didn't we? Sigh. 

April fools

Or April's fool?

Malt Mission HOME

Malt Mission 2011 #405

St. Isidore
Blended Scotch Whisky
41.4% abv
£50


I am sure if you are reading this then you are likely familiar with the back story, but...


Master of Malt, clever 21st century spirits merchants and genuinely lovely people, came up with the idea to get a group of bloggers to take part in creating a blended whisky. Simple as that, really. And thus the work-in-progress formerly known as THE BLOGGERS BLEND was born. 


Read Jason's backstory HERE.


TASTING NOTES:


Complex, deep and fruity with wood, wood smoke, and all the promise of the industrial revolution. 


Wow. Thick. Hearty. Real vanilla, spice and fruit again all swoddled in a blanket of fragrant wood smoke, finishing with a toasty, buttery and popcorn-y character and a resurgence of fruit, now more dried or even burnt. Lovely. 


SUMMARY:


Chewy and hearty with an Islay heart, not unlike a bowl of coal soup. While admittedly not the most elegant drop on the block, this beauty matches the complexity of some of the world's favourite malts, most premium blends, and reminds of the old-school blending stylings of mid-20th century Johnnie Walker Black and White Horse all for a fraction of the cost. What's more is that in the spirit of Christmas, all proceeds go to cover MoM's admirable investment in such a brilliant project. 


Think you could have done better? Now you can try to prove it. Master of Malt have assembled a Home Blending Kit fit for exactly what it says on the tin. 

Malt Mission #401

Malt Mission #402
Malt Mission #403
Malt Mission #404


Malt Mission Home

The Master of Malt Bloggers Blend

In the 21th century, where having a whisky blog can get you friends in 7 continents, samples in the post, interviewed for "real" publications, on a judging panel, or even lead to a job in the whisky industry (!), you wouldn't be on crack if you decided to start one yourself. And I can observe that the world wide whisk-e-verse has exploded since I began in 2006, when Dr. Whisky had only 4 English language "blogs" to link to and NONE that offered what I thought I could share: a dram a day, distillery descriptions, stories from books I had trawled, distilleries I had visited, and people I had met, an international persepctive, irrational and heated opinions, and of course some colourful tasting notes. Today, after some deletion and MANY additions, there are nearly 25 times as many links on my "Get informed by others" sidebar as there was when this Malt Mission began January 1, 2007. Of course, all of the others involved in this project are listed among many other amazing online resources. The world of whisky is the warmest community I am fortunate to be part of outside of a Saturday morning in bed with my wife and daughter, and if you are reading this, I raise a glass to you for loving Scotland's greatest gift to the world.

As a very 21st century retailer, Master of Malt invited 10 leading blogs to participate in creating their own blends by sending them kits of the constituent liquids, beakers, pipettes, and an excel doc for recording recipes.

Recipes were submitted, blends assembled to spec and then offered up as a sample pack on the MoM website for £30. With the purchase, of course, came the responsibility to vote on your favourites by assigning them 1st place to 10th place. The kits are now completely sold out.

In creating my recipe, I trialled 10 vattings and let them marry for many days in bottle before re-sampling and deciding which one to submit. And it was a hard decision! Depending on the percentages of each part (highland, grain, old grain, old highland, etc.), the value/cost of the liquid would change, so we each had to weigh between whether to make a blend built around desired cost or to make a blend based on taste. Somewhere in between? When deciding which to submit I was torn. Do I go with the cheap and cheerful blend? The expensive one? The quaffable one? The smoky demon? The sweet grainy one? The one I could spread on toast?

Likewise, selecting a favourite of all the submitted blends was a real challenge and a reminder of how with the flavour palate a commercial blender has at their disposal, the room for variation, and indeed, error, is vast. So creating a good, consistent blend is a skill for which I continue to have the utmost respect and that art and skill is, after all, what allows the whisky world to be what it is today.

Others involved have reported their experiences (Whisky For Everyone for example). Did you buy one? I'd love to hear your thoughts on the whole thing.

Whatever the result, all the blends were highly drinkable with a few being truly stellar, and while each blender deserves kudos, the good people at Master of Malt deserve respect for not just dreaming up, but for actually executing such a project. Nice work, and until the results are announced and I press "confirm order", cheers!

Breakfast Whisky, Master of Malt 8yo

Not only have the good people of Master of Malt created a beautiful blended whisky for under £20 (to be tasted as a part of the malt mission at a later date) but they have asked some online whisky geeks to share their ideas for ways in which to consume it.

They invited Dr. Whisky to create a cocktail with their perfectly-lovely-as-is blended whisky. I told them, "I am not a mixologist." They said that was exactly why they were asking me. "But I am not a medical doctor!" Their response, "thank god."

So here it goes.

The "cocktail" is called Breakfast Whisky. Let's begin with what you will need to make it:

You will need NONE of the above items to make this cocktail.

But, you will need ALL of the below

I want to create something to balance the care, cost, and quality of this whisky. The whisky is full of cream soda, vanilla and grape juice. Really juicy whisky. I need to ride that wave. First I thought Ribena, but then the Aha! moment: Vimto! If equivalent in size, the Fizzy Vimto would cost £1.17 to the whisky's £20. Wow, the critics are right. Whisky IS expensive! Fizzy Vimto comes in this nice small bottle for only 39 pence. And for something so tiny and cheap, they sure pack a lot of ingredients in there! The whisky only has water, yeast, wheat and barley. Rip-off!

THE BREAKFAST WHISKY *
1 part Master of Malt 8yo Blended Scotch Whisky
2-4 parts Fizzy Vimto (depending what kind of morning* you desire)
Some ice
1 mint sprig
Toast
Jam (of your choosing)

Put your toast in the toaster. Mix the liquid ingredients together over ice (ice optional). Remove toast and apply jam. In turn, take gentle sips of the drink and slap yourslef in the face with mint sprig.

Good morning and enjoy!

* I am not actually suggesting that you drink alcohol for breakfast. However, if you do, I recommend it with vimto and a mint sprig slap to the face.