If you’ve ever asked me about my favourite whiskey, I’ve probably told you I don’t have a favourite bottle but I do have a couple of favourite distilleries; and The GlenDronach is one of them.
I have had the pleasure of reviewing a number of GlenDronach bottlings over the last couple years, with my most recent favourite being Cask #217 from their most recent release of Cask Bottling Batch #19. If you’re interested you can find that review here. So when Gabriela from their PR agency reached out to me about reviewing The GlenDronach Grandeur Batch 11 I immediately said yes.
One note of housekeeping before we can get to the whisky: these samples were provided to me by The GlenDronach and their PR firm in exchange for my honest review. The presence, or absence, of free product has no influence on my review.
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Today I’m tasting Barrell Craft Spirits’ newest Bourbon blend. Barrell Vantage is a blend of three straight Bourbon whiskeys, one finished in Japanese mizunara oak. One in a charred and toasted French oak, and the last in a toasted American oak.
Continue reading “Review: Barrell Craft Spirits Vantage”The first review to go live on my new website is a Texas Corn whiskey from the folks over at Ironroot Republic in Denison, Texas! Ironroot has been on my radar for a few years after I started hanging out online with the fine folks over at Whiskey Crusaders and then (virtually) met Josh Golladay, Ironroot’s fantastic Brand Ambassador.
Josh and I had been exchanging messages when, in early 2021a friend driving to LA from Alabama said she she was stopping in Texas. I asked Josh if he’d be kind enough to pass along some tastiness my way and he obliged. He was gracious enough to give me a couple of full sized bottles and some fun 100ml samples, one of which we’re reviewing today; Icarus. Until recently, I had forgotten all about the “downpours” as they had gotten lost in the mess that is my desk, but in a rare moment of Autistic hyper-fixation on cleaning that came about as I was swapping around cables on my gaming rig monitors, I found the Ziploc bag of samples he gave me!
“Like its namesake, this whiskey flies close to the sun. We take our 100% corn whiskey (Hubris) and finish it for an additional year in both port and peated single malt barrels. Each finish on its own is glorious, but together they are divine,” reads Ironroot website’s descriptor of this bottling.
I love anything involving peat, and I also love anything port casks so I was very excited to try this. Icarus is aged for 48 months, and clocks in at 53.6%! This is not a Bourbon, rather as the descriptor says, it’s a corn whiskey. What does that mean, you ask? Well for Ironroot it means that it’s distilled like a Bourbon but is then put into used European oak barrels to age. This is then finished separately in Ex-Islay Scotch Quarter casks and Ex-Port barrels for a year before being blended back together.
Nose: Buttered popcorn, cherry jam, burnt puff pastry, vanilla, toffee, candied pecans,
Palate: Burnt popcorn, coffee, leather, tobacco, candied pecans, almonds, butter, strawberry, fig newtons, puff pastry. The peated scotch cask is ever prevalent but isn’t overpowering, it envelops the entirety of this spirit. It’s almost as if it serves as a helping hand/backbone to bring other flavours forward.