hello you multi magnificent malt mixologists and thank you to john mcmunn
for providing the introduction malt mention to ralphie review 915 here in the bothy with
a single malt um just to let you know i'm doing an extended run of official bottlings
reviews over the next two months so we're really kind of halfway through february 2022
and for the next two months right up to in fact about april i'm going to be focusing on official
bottlings and giving you my perception and opinion on them and i started last week very good start in
ralphie review 914 with the surprisingly good and absolutely delightful 10 year old porch charlotte
painted broccoli distillery offering nicely presented very flavoursome i didn't have the
tin of course you'll notice the packaging's going uh for environmental reasons as simple as that
and so you'll no longer see containers presented in the barrel it'll just be the bottle
and i will only go with information in the bottle and i know that some of you say oh ralphie you're
not you're not still chanting on about that but there's a very legitimate reason for this
which you will hear about later in the year i'm doing this for a for a reason anyway at the moment
i have a slightly hazy can you see the haze in that it's lovely lovely haze to matin
2006 distilled limited edition they say well many bottles see that fino sherry cask
matured 13 year old um bottled at 46 to mutton single malt to matin distillery
big distillery one of scotland's biggest actually which has spent most of its life producing um
contributing malts to established blends like for example antiquity good blend
in fact i'm thinking of buying a bottle soon to review for you
i i wouldn't add water juice yet this is just to put into perspective
bottled exclusively for the uk market but don't worry about it if you're not in the uk
because to be honest you're not missing that much and you'd be better going for the cask
strength bottling of tomatin if you want a decent one one that represents good value for money
now to martin distillery big massive distillery just south of inverness on
the left-hand side of the a9 highway that runs up the trunk road trunk road that runs up the
center of the highlands of scotland and it's very much a jobbing distillery very friendly staff
and plenty of variety of their bottlings both painted and unpainted in the distillery shop
but and here it comes but tomatin for many years was really only available
through independent bottles like caden heads and gordon macphail for the simple reason
it was a blend filler malt it's never been noted for outstanding characteristics
the characteristics that it does have is a bit of barley green cereal note appleish and sour and
so you've got this sourness within the new make distillate and it's this has been matured in a
pheno sherry cask which in itself is quite sour in its influence so you've got a sour note in
the distillate when it comes off the still going into a cast which is a sour note from previous
content being a fairly acidic phenol sharing you'll notice this when you get to the nose
the nose is quite sharp if you want to be kind you would say it's tangy initially it seems quite
promising because that tanginess is quite inviting it's spicy there's a little bit of barley sugar
going on in there um but when you notice a little bit further there's something slightly vinegar
about it malt vinegar a light malt or you call it cider vinegar i'm going to be fair i'm going to
be fair into mutton it's a cider vinegar note and then when you have your first taste this happens
barley sugar infused with a huge sensation of sour
bitter a hint of salt in the background but it's the sensation of bitterness and
sourness particularly the sourness which overwhelms the whole arrival
you could be kind and call it citrus but no no no no it's this is not getting away with that
um as i said exclusive to the uk market i'm going to add a full spatial spoonful
of water by the way i'll probably add a second shortly um and unlucky for uk
it's not a bad whiskey it's just a very intense whiskey which would probably discourage you from
pouring a second glass but you'll come back to it later on once it's considerably oxidized
and settled down as much as it possibly can um because it's certainly different
unbalanced absolutely unbalanced this is i mean i've had some sour whiskey in the past
but this this is pretty intensive stuff so as i mentioned earlier if you're not in the uk don't
you worry um there are better versions of tomatino out there and i would refer you and point you
to the cask strength version it's a much more traditional style
with a balance between sherry and bourbon casks it's a simple old-school presentation at full
strength to give the best presentation of a fairly generalized genetic blend tuned malt
i would say that if they're wanting to take the brand anywhere now is
that they have to start experimenting with different yeasts and different uh
different still settings to try and boost the profile a little bit and make it a little bit more
exciting but this is a perspective an opinion i've added some water now given a couple of minutes
let's come back to it the water should help if you're drinking this neat you're a masochist
a lot better than the nose the apples coming through a little bit of grapes
a little bit of summer fruit ripe summer fruit coming through
soft barley sugar a bit of sultana vanilla
still sour
but it's torn down with the water thank goodness
there's a more sweetness in the background coming through to counterbalance the intense sourness
which has been delivered by the cask you see the problem is
when you have sherry casks particularly in a hot place and they've been emptied the
bacteria start to multiply as they feed off the sugars and they produce acids as a by-product
and the casks acetify and what can happen is if you simply use a cask or a series of casks um
and it only takes one or two casks out of several dozen to be super to be con acidified
to to throw the whole lot out and this is why cask management is so damn important and what
you would do if you've got a particularly acidic cask you mix up some bicarbonate soda with water
and you pour it into the cask and you slosh it about or you fill the cask right up to the brim
with water and you just temper it down and you partially neutralize the acidity in the cask
using an alkali an alkali solution you then empty it out rinse it completely so
it now becomes an empty cask again job done it's not rocket science it's what you do
let's come back to this again give you a bit more detail
um
it says in the back of the label natural color so good on them
good on to matin the integrity of presentation is is encouraging
i'm looking for where it says where's my steampunker it's always useful to have that around
i use it more and more these days it's because of the writing and labels
not so much because of my site i'm looking for unchill filtered but
please enjoy responsibly well i certainly wouldn't one i wouldn't be rushing put it that way
from the slight light haze this is unchilled filtered but if you're going to honestly distill
us if you're going to put natural color in the label what you've got enough space for
just saying until filtered just say it stop trying to hide hide information or we'll tell you if you
email us at the distillery maybe it's not exactly service is it it's not exactly customer service
i i to be honest i think increasingly i'm observing that whiskey fans dedicated whiskey
fans are increasingly too tolerant of certain bottlings coming from the scotch whisky industry
too tolerant too accommodating too polite
too accepting particularly with the way the prices are going opinion
the nose is starting to subdue a little it's getting more barley sugar
cereal notes a little bit bigger more generalized but fresh fruit palette
much better quite a a nice delicate toffee note and fudge note toffee and fudge coming through
with something where the acidity is has been modified considerably by the additional water so
if you're out there saying ralphie we never add water you should never add water blah blah
blah it's not traditional you know give me a break mates give me a break if we add water there's very
good reason for the scientific reasons for it so let's just throw that at that that ridiculous old
chestnut out in the basket that you never add water to whiskey it's just [ __ ]
it's also personal taste
um a little bit of scotch mist appearing in the glass i'm going to give it one more taste
because even after 5-10 minutes of adding water the sensation is so dominating that it actually
suppresses the other flavors that are coming from the spirit itself because they've been swamped
and they're still swamped and one of the reason is because your sensation
sensor in your tongue has been stung by the intensity that sensation of so much acidity
coming through in the flavor of this malt and so much vinegar in the cider vinegar notes a result
of which you you're just not getting an accurate reading um you the sensitivity of palette of your
palette has been disrupted because of the high level of acidity but hey uk market only possibly
because um in germany and france they just wouldn't accept it they just would not accept it
that's a lot better
but
there's a kind of heat now in the finish
gingery it's not too bad but it's masking the subtleties that you get from tomatin
they've been just knocked off the radar the register of the experience because of the
the influence of these final shari casks what will i give this um you're kind of curious now
i've not been hugely sympathetic to it but once you add water and once you give it time it is a
competent malt and furthermore if you were to buy a bottle of the cask strength to matt and
you had this bottle and you weren't touching it what you do is you add some of the cast strength
into this to to round off and it would remain a single mop um and the you wouldn't be wasting
your money in the cast strength version um frankly in my opinion it's about the best option out there
82 out of 100 and that is probably a really quite generous small mark
i'm pretty sure this is an integrity bottling uh it really needs to be to actually work and to
register any interest from the serious whiskey drinkers
but hey good on them um it's been interesting but i don't feel a good value for money here
i really don't there you go i'm rafi join me shortly for my ralphie review 915 extras
in which i'll be talking about the signs of a good distillery briefly because in a recent
live stream that i did for my patreon supporters and my ralphie channel and patreon
i did a two-hour live stream uh going into some detail and responding to comments um
and i want to give you a kind of summary and resume really of what i was talking
about a shorthand version that will cover about 10 minutes and i'll see you then bye