Penny for Your Thoughts - Elmer T. Lee, Ardbeg An Oa, Highland Park Valkyrie, Bowmore 15
OK, let's take a quick detour from the London trip recaps for a few short-form reviews. Two of these are sample exchanges with friends, while the other two were single servings that we purchased on our vacation.
Elmer T. Lee (45% ABV) - Bourbon’s exploding popularity has created a radically unequal distribution of interest and demand. In the bourbon world, the rich got richer, and then even richer, and the gap between the most coveted brands (Pappy, for instance) and other high-quality bourbons has grown into a chasm. Elmer T. Lee is one of the minor robber barons of this era — putatively a $40 bottle, I’ve only seen it at one liquor store in Miami for a whopping $200 a bottle. Is it worth the hype? It’s a good bourbon, but $40-50 is about right. The nose unveils pronounced caramel, vanilla, and Werther’s candies, but with a bit more ethanol than expected. In contrast, the palate is smooth and mellow, with sweet notes of corn and caramel dominant. The finish is not particularly short or long and tastes like buttered, charred corn and caramel. This bourbon does not have much fruitiness or oak, those sweet corn and dessert notes really dominate here, which reminds me of Russell’s Reserve. In other words, it’s good, but hasn’t quite earned the vaunted status that it currently enjoys. B
Ardbeg An Oa (46.6%) - Here’s a brand new scotch, the first permanent addition to the Ardbeg lineup in five years or more. An Oa (pronounced “an oh”) slots between Ardbeg 10 and Uigeadail in terms of price, ABV, and finishing techniques — it costs a little more than 10, has an extra point of proof, and marries a lot of different barrel and cask types, including sherry and ex-bourbon. The result is . . . something that smells and tastes a lot like Ardbeg 10: smoke, peat, hay, citrus, seasalt, gravel, and some faint sherry. It finishes with a really nice coda of peat and malt. The resemblance was so strong that I poured a glass of Ardbeg 10 to compare them head-to-head. An Oa has an oilier nose and is moderately richer on the palate and finish. I’m a little unnerved — the fact that this product is so similar to 10 suggests that Ardbeg may get out of the age statement game altogether and just have An Oa, Uigeadail, and Corryvreckan as their unpronounceable, triple-threat permanent range. Perhaps that's not the worst thing in the world. An Oa is a respectable substitute for 10, albeit a more expensive one. I hope that, if the distillery gets rid of 10, they drop the price of this expression just a little bit to make up for it. But, since Ardbeg presumably is run by capitalists, that is not going to happen. A-
Highland Park Valkyrie (49.5%) - Speaking of distilleries getting out of the age statement game, no brand seems to have more enthusiasm for NAS, strangely named whiskies than Highland Park. Pretty soon, the distillery will exhaust the canon of Norse mythology and have to move onto Hindu deities, where they will not run out of new names for young scotch anytime soon. Valkyrie is a good, peaty, young scotch, kind of in line with a young Benromach I recently tried. Apple, smoke, a distinct boozy edge, and buttered toast defined the nose for me. It tastes like a classic Highland Park, with a well-balanced mixture of sweet, spicy, and salty, with more sherry expressed in the palate and finish. A Highland peat, pine-like smoke complements these flavors at the end. For an $80 single malt, it’s too young for my tastes and isn’t as good as Highland Park 12 or 15. B
Bowmore 15 (43%) - This scotch is billed as Bowmore 15 The Darkest, and it does possess a rich, mahogany color. But there’s color added, so what does that name even mean? I suspect “Most Artificial Colorant Added” did not score highly in the marketing focus groups. All jokes aside, this scotch has a cool and striking note: chocolate covered pretzel. It noticed it immediately on the nose and on the palate, it’s that sensation when you crack open a pretzel (yeasty, dry, salty). Other than that, I get musk, corn oil, plenty of peat, mildly sweet malt, and cherry candy. The finish is not smoky but rather expresses its sherry finish in the form of some berry or tart fruit and some chewy, woody tannins. At around $75-80, I’d peg this as the best value and best whisky in Bowmore’s main lineup. B+