hello you multi minstrels of moderation I'm Ralphie and welcome to the bothy welcome to
a Ralphie Whiskey Review here in the body somewhere in Irish seeing a great
big thank you for that malt mention goes to Tim huskera or hoxtra that's better timah Hoekstra
I knew he'd get there eventually so um this is Ralphie review 962 and I am reviewing a
number of whiskeys which are winners on the online Scotch whiskey awards from 2022. so
these are recent winners because the awards were presented in the live stream on Saturday November
the 5th and 2022 and this video is going live in January 2023. so it's really just my perspective
my opinion going through the actual winners in each of the nine categories or a representative
of the winners in each of the nine categories so I've got best Distillery best independent modeler
so I'll be picking something from them to review for you but in the category of best Blended malt
which tends to be really quite good value at the moment in terms of Scotch whiskey
because it's not a traditional blended whiskey because it doesn't have columns still green in
it it's single malts combined together from various distilleries so it's all malt whiskey
and but it's called Blended malt or malt blend so it's not to be confused with blend whiskey but
it's still confusing but you know that's up to the decision makers in the Scotch whiskey industry to
try and make things clearer so moving on so here in Ralphie review 962 I'm reviewing the winner in
that category and I think that all the nominations in that category um were pretty good um the one
nomination I had my doubt about which is competent whiskey but it's not that great it's Johnny Walker
Green Label it used to be a great great Blended malt now it's really it's kind of homogenized
it's kind of lost its single its identity and my recommendation to you if you're buying Johnny
Walker Green Label is buy to auction if you can and buy a bottling from a few years ago when in
my opinion the quality was better significantly better but at the moment significantly better
than Johnny Walker Green Label is this Blended milk called Orchard House from Compass box
independent bottling whiskey company they call themselves whiskey makers and what they do is
they generally take a number of single malts from their quite considerable stash of casks and they
blend them together to create something which is essentially a non-age statement but is arguably
an improvement on the whiskey if it remained as simply single monks a collection of single monks
so it's quite an art quite a skill to blending whiskeys together but with mulch you see when
you're blending them on their own it's even trickier because you're not just trying to
balance out flavors you're trying to balance out Sensations Styles and forms of whiskey because a
lighter whiskey can get overwhelmed by a heavier whiskey for example Ben rennis is a light whiskey
and it could be overwhelmed by something like mortlock which is a much heavier whiskey much
weightier whiskey in terms of flavor profile but in this instance or or um Orchard House
can give us a bit of an advantage if we buy a bottle
because apart from the fact that it's bottled at 46 percent and this unchill filtered and natural
color and it states on the label and when you look at the bottle particularly when you've got
your mobile device behind it with a late on you'll see that slight haziness which shows
that the mouth feel is more intact it's not been subjected to that chill filtration thing which
dumbs down the delivery of the whiskey this is very much an Integrity whiskey although it's
non-age statement I would put it about between anything between 7 and 11 maybe even 14 years old
so relatively young and foreign Compass box and this is unusual
want to help us they want to meet us in the middle they're not a company that just bombs you with
take it or leave it marketing conventional marketing fairly boring marketing they communicate
through their website and bear in mind a lot of Distillery websites aren't that helpful they
really aren't but Compass box is it gives you a downloadable file that gives you a profile of the
different batches of Orchard House Orchard House is more than one batch and it starts by saying
fruit forward and spirit driven so they're immediately telling you don't expect a whole
load of age here it's Spirit driven so you've got the signature the characteristics of the
pot stills of the whiskeys involved in this mix and um it's fruit forward so that the dominant
personality coming from the collection of the contributing single malts is a fruit
and then it goes on to State almost and quite the all-rounder Orchard House features some of
Scotland's fruitiest whiskeys a fragrance zipper with light oak influence perfect for the home but
then they give you quite a reasonable flavor profile and then a few serving recommendations
the only one of which I feel is is useful as to serve it before the meal is an imperative
um instead of a vermouth or even you could mix it with a vermouth and it would work quite well
so on this label and it's quite a theatrical label so the money that they're not spending
in fancy boxes they put into the label because it's significantly cheaper and they use it to
actually give you a pictograph of what the whiskey is going to taste like and again
this is something that so many distilleries they don't even think about so Compass boxes
are way ahead of the most of the most of the competitors and I'm talking about official
modelings as well which are so too many of them are so much style over substance
um and destructive in in the presentation but here you have green a little bit of yellow so you're
talking fresh fruit here green fruit fresh fruit pears apples bit of lemon some um different types
of apples some Rose some black currants a little bit of rosehip there and something that looks a
bit like a strawberry but I'm not quite sure but on the back of the bottle it gives you some useful
descriptions uh which you find useful as a point of reference but also importantly a nice clear
and ambiguous unambiguous batch number and that's that's significant when the majority of distillers
are trying to hide their batch numbers by printing them in tiny little virtually invisible letterings
onto the glass where there's no way you can see it unless you've got a steampunker foreign
but nowadays we want to know about batches because batches vary some batches be very significantly
and occasionally some batches are just rank rotten and very poor ambassadors for
the single malt distilleries they claim to be representing it and we need to be aware of that
because we need to avoid them now there's two primary batches of this I think they're on to
a third note but this batch is 18 122 which is the date that I suspect that they signed
off in this batch 18th of January in 19 2020 to that would make it some age if it was 1922
so definitely 2022. so what I do is I look at the download from 2022 with the batch number
and you get a profile wheel now I'm going to come back to this profile wheel in a minute right
because it's really time to pour a whiskey
not a lot don't need a lot it's all about quality not quantity
a gentle raw around the glass to increase the surface area of liquid
all right get the chase the alcohol out I don't cup it like a brandy balloon but I
do have a couple of fingers around the side of the glass just to warm it slightly and
moderately then I'll put my nose to it noticing from here right into the center of the glass
back out again so what do I get something that's virtually unpeated now I know there's
a touch of Peter Just a Touch because the profile wheel that The Distillery
provide through the website the compassboxwhiskey.com tells me so
I'm getting useful information here's a point of reference
but fundamentally this is a fresh fruit virtually unpeated whiskey
it's quite heavy flavored there's some kind of toffee and multi notes in there
but it's primarily kind of I would call it fresh fruit apples and pears very much apples and pears
mixed apples and pears some fresh some lightly poached
some kind serve notes so we've got the flavor range in there taste
stringent it's not sweet
it's a little bit of fructose Sweetness in there but it's the sour and bitter that first meets you
sensation bitter so this needs just a little better time to settle down and in the meantime
complex light energetic light fragrant fresh fruity and aromatic zingy and
zesty I would call it as well so a little bit of rained Citrus in there
I'm adding just a drop of water a quarter of a teaspoon so to say two just under two milliliters
no shaky shakies you see what I'm doing there I'm just rolling it around the glass that's all it
needs when you start shaking it like you would a glass of wine you over chase the flavors and when
you nose it too much is actually coming out to meet you at once so don't don't shake your glass
you will see experts do it at Whiskey tasting events and master classes as they go through
the drama of racing the glass above their head and staring through the Amber nectar and looking
all kind of philosophical and thoughtful going ah Liquid Gold it's pure theater nothing more than
that don't read too much into it it they're putting on a show for you and not expats and
that's all you need to know and hopefully you'll get some genuinely useful information
um the price of tickets now for whiskey master classes particularly in the UK you've really got
to be careful that you're getting value for money unfortunately they're just fashionable to be seen
at this whole part that it's all part of the the passion project of modern whiskey worship that's
what it is we're known that now in the age of whiskey worship and as you can imagine here in the
bathy I'm not that impressed because ultimately the the distillers want you to worship them and
not just appreciate the product which frankly when you know what you're doing isn't that hard to make
back to Orchard House added some water
oh a little bit more fruit phenolic on the nose so there's something a
little bit more energetic coming out there that's not actually a flavor
foreign
the moment to sip it the astringent sensations of sour and bitter with a little bit of oakiness
coming in through the back suddenly hits your palate when you're not used to it
can be a bit of a shock and it takes a little bit of getting used to in fact for some folk will take
a lot to get getting used to if you have a sweet palette so if you first arrive at this whiskey
and you're not particularly enjoying it just give it time stick the cork back on won't do any harm
put it in your safe safe bottle space away from direct sunlight in excessive Heat and the bottle
will look after itself will settle down open up and when you come back to it your palate will
be more ready because your palettes simply had more experience and pallets need time to adjust
but this is a robust of energetic fresh fruit primarily apple with a little bit of toffee and
malty and pear and in fact when you look at the profile wheel that Compass box have given you
it's very simple to read and it's enormously illustrative the the largest Cask presence
is from a cleanlish uh First full Bourbon Barrel almost 30 percent then the next comes Linkwood and
next comes more liquid from different first fill bourbon casks giving a different same
flavor from a different profile because that's what casks do then you've got some benignus
then muscle more cleanlish so quite cleanlish dominant and a a quote unquote Distillery near
the town of aberlauer so it could be ever lower or Glen glenvarkless I suspect Glenn farkless
and then you've got we drop a coleela in it making up only 2.4 percent and then finally you've got a
a pre-blended malt from a French Oak Cask which is providing chocolate cinnamon and ginger notes
which don't come across prominently they tend to be very much background notes Because the actual
volume in the blend is so small and this is what you get you get something which is genuinely very
good for Value particularly if you're buying in Britain and paying 42 maybe 5 45 pounds a bottle
the quality of information you're getting from the producers really a standout
that there is no reason why every Distillery couldn't do this no reason at all it's not
rocket science it's not hugely complicated simple presentation here are the battles
here are the single malts that make our blend This Is Us explaining from our end from the
blending room what you're tasting in the glass now I ask you more Miss how useful is that answer
very useful because it's two-way communication it isn't an imposition of marketing bombing you with
their message not interested in your message it's a two-way process it's what we want mark
84.
out of 100.
not Blended mark Blended malt I'm Ralph I hope you've enjoyed this if you pop back for Ralphie
review 962 I will be talking about the way distilleries do communicate and how we read
into it and in terms of proper disclosure proper engagement proper involvement with the active
customer instead of this vague Bland imposed passivity of marketing which we all we all at some
point get subjected to and at times it becomes quite patronizing I'm laughing grabbing me clay
the clicker because this is the end of this review hope you've enjoyed it if you have subscribe click
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