2021 Release | 51.6% ABV

Score: 8/10

**Something special.**
***TL;DR***
*Predictably excellent*

Methodology

Drinking whisky for enjoyment’s sake is frequently a mood and environment mediated activity, much the same as food and entertainment in general. Perhaps a sherry bomb whisky after dinner as a substitute for dessert, something funky and loud to stand up to a cigar or an old and refined dram for a special occasion. For a more analytical approach though, what methodologies should we consider?

Some time ago, I wrote an article on some of the considerations that surround how we taste whisky from a physical and psychological perspective. Given my proclivity for deep-dive style writing, it covered a handful of subtopics with some attempted comprehensibility. What that article didn’t really cover though was the practical circumstances under which we taste whisky on a day to day basis. While we can’t control much of our biology or the biological nature of our organoleptics, we can make adjustments to the situational conditions of our tasting.

Please note this article is definitely not intended as anything like an authoritative view of how people should analyse their drinks, it’s merely an opportunity to explore some factors worth considering when deciding how to do so for yourselves. I’ll give personal anecdotes as examples, but these are not intended as anything like an instructional manual for others.

So let’s dig into some of the factors we might consider before dissecting our glasses of amber.

What to taste

This can depend a lot on the when, and vice versa, but overall the what is quite situational. If you’re at a hosted tasting or similar then “the what” has already been decided for you. Usually you’ll be tasting multiple whiskies, either subsequently or concurrently, and the approach will be very different between the two. If the order has been decided for you in a subsequent lineup, then short of not drinking anything until all of the whiskies have been presented (something I’ve been known to do at tastings) the what is entirely out of your hands.

If the whiskies are served concurrently at least you can decide the order in which they’re nosed and tasted. Generally in this setting, I’ll nose through the drams from lowest intensity to highest intensity. Each person’s definitions of an intense whisky will be different depending on their particular sensitivities and blind spots, but generally my rough theoretical calculation for this looks something like the table below.

After nosing through each whisky carefully, going back and forth to compare glasses multiple times, I’ll taste them in the same order as initial nosing, then add varying amounts of water to each and repeat the process. It’s not a perfect process, but it works well enough for a public tasting format.

If you’re sitting at home, a bar or some other setting where you’re fully in control of what you’ll be drinking, then the discussion fleshes out significantly. Generally, when looking at my home collection trying to decide which bottle I'd like to review next for Dramface, I usually let my mood decide what I feel like drinking more than anything else. That said, it’s important to keep track of your nose and palate as much as possible; be self aware. If you’ve been drinking a lot of peated whisky, there’s a good chance your sensitivity to phenols and other peat derived compounds is going to be lower than usual. Likewise if you’ve been hitting fortified/wine cask heavy whiskies, your sensitivities to cask fruit notes, tannins and sweetness are all likely to be more diminished. The effect might not be huge, but the devil is in the details, and details are what give reviews their value.

When to taste

First, we should think about when to taste throughout the day. The general consensus is it’s best to taste whisky in the morning as it’s generally when people are the most alert. While I do plenty of tasting in the morning, I’m generally a night owl and find my mental acuity seems to sharpen from roughly 6-10pm most days with a gradual fade until I fall asleep. This aligns well with tastings at my whisky club, as well as for writing reviews when I get home from work.

I also hate mornings as a result of my late bedtimes, so morning tasting normally doesn’t happen until at least a couple of hours after I wake up. Most mornings I wake with a mild degree of nasal congestion (one of the aforementioned biological factors) so my routine also helps to manage this issue. Usually first thing after getting up, I make a triple shot long black coffee and this pairs with a light, fairly bland breakfast; buttered toast, muesli, porridge or similar. The coffee helps boost cognitive function and wakefulness, however the other main benefits which make it essential for my routine are vasoconstriction (reducing swelling/pressure in the nasal passages) and reduction in mucosal secretions; apparently caffeine inhibits mucin production.

After breakfast, I floss and brush my teeth, scrub my tongue, gums, cheeks and soft palate to strip off as much of the coffee and food as possible. Next, I take a shower to help steam my sinuses out and freshen up; this is the last step before I start to feel like I’m properly waking up. While showering, I don’t use any scented products for obvious reasons, though I do make use of the high-pressure water streams to scrub my tongue again.

Since saliva is full of enzymes and other proteinaceous compounds, it’s poorly to moderately miscible with aqueous solutions (depending on how hydrated you are) so the mechanical action of the jets help to blast away the toothpaste-saliva emulsion which stubbornly fills the spaces between and around the papillae. I tend to know when my tongue is properly clean because I can clearly taste the water; we have shockingly hard mains water in most of Adelaide, unless it’s a day where the desalination plant is providing the bulk of supply, and this hardness gives a discernible flavour and mouthfeel. The usual chloride/chloramines can be tasted retronasally too. Afterwards, I make a deliberate effort to drink plenty of filtered tap or low mineral bottled water to rinse the very back palate and ensure I’m well hydrated after sleeping, and that the diuretic effects of coffee are countered; salted butter on toast for breakfast helps to balance this.

As an aside, to weigh in on the Dramface podcast debate on the subject; freshly-baked sourdough bread cut between 1-1.5cm thickness, medium to medium-dark toasting level otherwise it’s not really toast is it? About 20 seconds out of the toaster, I use high quality/high fat salted butter fresh out of the fridge, spread on at between 3-5mm thickness and cut into two mirrored trapeziums with parallel edges at an approximate 3:1 length ratio. If anyone cares to debate this, I’ll explain the errors of your ways in the comment section. I have experimental data and prepared arguments- come at me.

By the time I’ve had at least half a litre of water and got the synapses firing properly, it’s about two hours from waking up. This extra time is also beneficial as it allows me to settle into my tasting environment and become desensitised to the background aromas of a familiar room; usually the study. The extra time also helps to make sure that any residual garlic derived compounds or similar from dinner the previous evening have been broken down and flushed from my bloodstream; according to this study, most allyl mercaptans/sulfides and other allicin metabolic products need over eight hours from ingestion to be cleared from the system. I generally don’t favour foods which use a lot of garlic, but given that I tend to eat late and don’t usually get eight hours of sleep, this extra buffer time doesn’t hurt. If I’m tasting at night after work, I generally make an effort to avoid overly strong flavoured foods throughout the day, particularly garlic and other alliums. I also tend to go through the same routine of brushing my teeth, showering and drinking water to reset my palate as much as possible. Generally speaking, I like to have done at least one morning and one evening tasting among the multiple tastings of the same whisky to give added perspective to my notes.

Where to taste

As mentioned above, my preferred location is usually the study at home. It’s an area filled with mild smells which I’m so used to that they fade quickly into the background. Regardless of where one tastes, I believe it’s best it’s an area with as little extraneous stimuli as possible, that the area is familiar and ideally that same area is used consistently for as much tasting as possible. Any change in setting or distracting external stimuli introduces a significant uncontrolled variable in tasting which may unpredictably alter the outcome.

Lab settings are the golden standard; the air pumped into the room is run through fine carbon and/or other neutralising filters to eliminate external odours, and the air temperature and humidity is controlled to optimise organoleptic potential. There are generally certain minimum standards in these labs to keep them clean and eliminate as many odours from being introduced to the room as possible; no perfume or aftershave, no eating, samples kept covered when not in use etc.

While most of us will never have the luxury of using such rooms, this is the default for many larger companies’ sensory panels. What a job.

Review

Springbank Local Barley 2011, 10yo, 2021 Release, 51.6% ABV
AUD$350 online retail (AUD$210 paid, ~ €125)

Everyone’s used to these prefaces now; too expensive, hype, crushing anxiety, seven stages of grief etc. I’m skipping all that this time around as myself and every commentator worth their salt has done it all to death.

This series is apparently more interesting to some because of the single origin, non-hyper-commercial nature of the barley used. I’m not going to stir up the excremental whirlwind that is the terroir debate any more than necessary, but it’s pretty safe to say I don’t care.

Unless the barley produces a malt demonstrably higher in protein/nitrogen, carbohydrates, enzyme potential and/or some other actually useful metric compared to the more mainstream malt supplies, it literally isn’t worth my time to consider it beyond these sentences. Even if it does, it would only register a mild curiosity; it’s of little meaning without significant proof of impact to the final product. Horses for courses.

What does interest me immensely is a small batch, all bourbon cask matured bottling of Springbank at a moderately high ABV. The age statement makes it ripe for comparison to the regular 10 year old, and the ABV and maturation makes it a fair analogue for comparison to the 12 year old cask strength batch 23.

Nose

Elegant, close to the bone Springbank; the casks are indeed a bit softer than the core 10 (and perhaps there’s a touch of ethyl acetate solvent quality) but this just leaves more room for the distillate. Big gristy malt, crushed sea shells, newly ripened peaches, candied pineapple, a hint of foam bananas, fresh yeast slurry, sweet horse dung, some lemon furniture oil, soft lanolin and recently mown green grass (that’s hexanal and other GLVs to our dear Dallas 😉) with a hint of damp/mossy soil. It doesn’t nose at all as immature, but there’s a lovely air of freshness and youth.

Palate

Delicious, more fruity esters apparent than the nose- adds some mango, melon rinds and juicy pineapple to the banana and peaches. More grists, lemon oil, some unexpected juniper-like piney terpenes, coastal bits, certainly more GLVs and sprinkles of subtle white pepper and understated cask lactones; further evidence of good maturity. There’s plenty of fermentary delight with more yeasts and lanolin, but the overall “funk” factor is fairly low, probably from the lack of sherry. Through the mid-palate to finish we even get a lick of some ashy, coal dust and potting mix geared peat.

The Dregs

This ticks many boxes for me, both on paper and in the glass. It’s a hell of a dram, something I’m very grateful to have acquired at a comparatively bargain price thanks to my line of work. Now, that’s not to say this still was particularly well valued, but tasting the bottle I’d pay the price tag for it again happily. On that logic alone, I’m not docking a point for pricing. That said, if you’re paying whatever the gouged prices are at retail in the rest of the world or worse, secondary market prices, then this absolutely loses a point. Self adjust as needed for your market and personal preferences, but I love it. Certainly some similarities to the 12 CS batch 23, but in an even more distillate lead framing. It’s fascinating that their distillate can acquire such tropicality at such tender ages; normally that sort of thing needs until late teens or older in decent wood before appearing. Goes to show, it’s all just chemistry; esterification is esterification.

Score: 8/10

Bonus Review

Springbank 10yo, 2022 Release, 22/03/2022, 46% ABV
€90 (AUD$140 paid, ~ €85)

This is a classic and has already been reviewed on Dramface. My perspective is generally inconsequential, however I do feel it’s a useful gauge for how I feel about the local barley.

Score: 8/10

**Something special.**
***TL;DR***
*A classic. Another excellent Springbank.*

Nose

Completely typical of this Campbeltown giant. Silage, muddy farmyards, a touch more of the overall “funk” with indeed yeasts and various gently smoked fish, plasters, some fermenting oranges, steaming fresh draff plus chocolate malt loaf and mild cask spices, mainly vanilla and caramel. There’s nice distillate esters again with ripe orchard and tropical fruits, but they’re less immediately obvious than in the Local Barley.

Palate

Again, these styles really sing on the palate. All of the fermentary delight from the nose with more of the sweet citruses and tropicality (mango and papaya this time) propelled along by that unwavering connection to the malt, plus some well integrated berry coulis and walnut (presumably the sherry casks) overlaid with a little vanilla fudge. The peat is still present with more smoked fish, crustaceans and chimney smoke, but it’s a smaller fraction of the palate experience than the Local Barley, particularly through the finish.

The Dregs

This is excellent. I get the feeling this may have been a slightly more sherry prominent bottling than my last one, but Whiskybase didn’t have any specifics to offer. I hope the comparison highlights some of the individualistic virtues of the local barley though. It’s not that it’s just another excellent Springbank, it’s that it cuts its own path and ticks boxes specific to my preferences. Two great bottlings, two unique presentations. Love it.

Score: 8/10

Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. TK

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