Hollow you multi-meandering mulch skaters I'm Rafi and welcome to the boathy somewhere in the
middle of the Irish sea and welcome to Ralphie review 983 and a big thank you to Timothy H for
The Malt mention because all these reviews in-depth whiskey reviews in particular bit
also quality Spirit reviews they always start with a mock mention
um and thereafter are followed with poor no I'm sometimes have
a whiskey already poured and usually it's from an older bottle which needs an older bottling
right with a bigger age statement an older age statement and it just simply needs more
time in the glass to open up but when you've got young whiskeys particularly the new generation of
non-age statement better quality whiskeys the more or less ready to go within five to ten minutes so
this happens to be a version of Puna habit which is pitted it's Peter Berner Haven
so when you go out looking for Buna Harbins in the market the first one you'll probably come
across is the standard Benchmark 12 year old but along with other many other most other single malt
distilleries in the year 2000 to 2023 you get all these permutations on the theme of a single mold
so one Distillery can produce up to about two dozen Different official bottlings
of the same still signature and what they do is they adjust a little bit the experience that
is by using X wine casks or a particular um type of bourbon Cask first fill or they might
use triple distillation as Ben rear does and has done in the past or they might decide to
have a pitted version which people aren't so familiar with particularly if we're much more
acquainted with the non-peated version now the Standard 12 year old Bernard is unpeated
um just as the standard broclario is unpeated and they both come from isle is the home of
heavily pitted whiskeys so they are the exceptions to the rule on that island
uh but you'll also find elsewhere in in Scotland for example um good example the the standard
whiskey single malt is relatively unpeated um but they do have more pitted versions and they have a
peach smoke version which is distinctly pity and of course you have other single marks like McAllen
who have just died just enough of a hint of Pete uh to give their Whiskey on a good day that little
bit more depth and substance of character so here we have the pitted Buna Harbin you will find this
cropping up regularly amongst the independent bottlers it will be either called pitted Buna
haben or alternatively the other name for Peter Bruner having is stoicia
so if you see the name stoicher on Independent bottlings that is pitted it is as young and as
feisty at an early age as lecheck so if you know your pitted whiskeys and you're wanting a point
of reference I would say that lecheck is is a good point of reference or even Ben Nevis but
there are very very few pitted heavily pitted Ben nevises out there they're far and few between so
I would say that the most familiar that you'd come across is some lecheck which is the pitted
version of Tober Mori because pitted Tober Mori called lecheck is it's very different it's a whole
different experience from The unpeated Malt October Mori yeah I think I explained that it
eventually explained that one and um I recommend it this is the official version as I mentioned
independent bottlings are out there they're usually very interesting and there's no
shortage of character but here with the official bottling you're getting a young
six seven year old very phenolic heavy whiskey but also a lot of fresh Cask involvement both
Sherry and bourbon by the taste that I'm getting and so when you come to the nose
there's a lot going on it's kind of fruitcake
that's been hung over a barbecue barbecued fruitcake can I say that or smoked Christmas cake
you'll find it's more on the Smoky side of PT rather than the vegetal pity side of pity so
it's more like like a villain than it is like arbeg or kulila so the smoke is quite prominent
and that young
particularly in the nose that young phenolic
gravity it travels well simply because they've used decent casks to kind of Bring It Forward
and that the the despite its young Year young years and I don't know how many years exactly
but I'd say no more than six seven possibly eight what you have is the active casks bringing on the
maturation quite successfully now that's just the noise what happens or when we have a taste
oh
medicinal very medicinal rich sweet cough mixture medicinal
so I can tell all you peat heads are really interested in this so let's go a little bit deeper
into what's in the label here uh this is choicada It's the Gaelic name for it probably probably
meant mispronounced it I don't care 46.3 and it says little gold lettering on the label where it
matters natural color and non-chill filtered so we're dealing with an Integrity presented
single malt which is giving you a far Fuller experience than something at 40 chill filtered
and then coated in artificial colorant now fine for the Blends not a problem in the Blends because
most Blends are mixed or you have it with ice so you're really not bothered about the flavor
there anyway and that's the fact of it it's not so much an opinion it's a fact it's an empirical
fact that's what kind of fact it is so we're going to add some water now and I'm going to be generous
10 milliliters already two teaspoons and that's that's just getting started and then
I've added another three teaspoons of water why to cut through this congealed
Cask rich heavily phenolic concentrate of a malt to bring the dilution level down
to access the flavors which in a few hours time if I did this yesterday
it would be a very very simple whiskey now because these dislodged flavors have just floated off
but because I'm doing it at point of tasting at point of smelling it takes time for them to lift
off after the dilution after the weakening of the ethanol within the beverage and as a result of
which you get this cavalcade on the nose and on the taste buds for the next hour or so of
some really far greater complex whiskey than you would do if it had been made conveniently dilute
for you a point of bottling and this represents a new generation of awareness in some of the whiskey
industry that people are looking to buy quality and that particularly when you're dealing with
a global recession you've got it marketing people did the decision makers have got to look at who's
actually still buying our whiskey and why how do we meet the needs of this new revised Market which
reflects socio-economic circumstances in all of our Global markets it's not rocket science mock
mates it's practical business are well ahead of the Kim in the past they've occasionally had a
bad bottling uh not so much recently I think they have picked up on the online conversation and are
sorting out unlike some other brands out there who are already seeing their sales suffering simply
because their bottles spend more time on the shelves of shops not selling instead of selling
it's real life supply and demand and particularly in the age of the internet demand for quality is
far more articulate understood and shared than it ever used to be let's go back to the nose
ah now we've got dry syrup loads of barley sugar slightly gingery
slightly minty as well because you get that barley sugar and phenolics create
mince and slight methanols and slate um not methanol uh
mint and euthanol all right that's better euthanol which is a kind of minty flavor
and wintergreens and Angelica these kind of green sort of Tangy herbaceous notes
I've added a lot of water and by the way we're only a few minutes into this this
review you can see the Scotch whiskey scotch mist right the scotch mist in the Scotch whiskey
starting to manifest always a sign of genuine delivered integrity always doesn't matter what
the quality of the casks were really it does tell you that whatever was bottled is better
a lot better than it would have been if it had been bottled at 40 chill filtered end off test
fresh young zesty phenolic oily licorice mint toffee
cinnamon almost chili cinnamon
clove absolutely definitely burnt licorice yeah a little bit in the background the bonding of the
heavy petinus with proactive Cask maturation is absolutely virtually Pitch Perfect here
it is it's it's an excellent young non-age statement single malt which is putting some
age statement single months which used to have a reputation into the shade the experience will be
Spirit driven it will be fresh quote quote unquote wet Cask influence driven so you're not going to
have a prolonged arrival an extended development and a nice long finish this is short intense and
to the point that's the form of this whiskey and this gets Amplified within the sensation range of
this whiskey the sweet the salt the sour are very prompt there's a nice Marine slate slight Marine
note to this but it kind of had tucked away in the background behind the sweet and sour the
sweet subsidized subdues because of the presence of the Umami of the phenolics in the pitiness
of it so what you're getting is a really great affordable accessible zesty fresh young Fireside
malt particularly for winter months in northern Europe and I think that just about sums it up
this is what you start with
before you go out and buy an independent bottling of stoysia or pitted bunahabin
those bottlings are variable right because they're all dependent in The Cask
however don't underestimate for one minute that when you're dealing with a heavy phenolic whiskey
you only need enough influence from The Cask to tone it down and just round It Off to make
it very palatable and acceptable as a single malt scotch whiskey so the casks don't have to do much
with phenolic whiskeys in a short space of time to be effective so bear that in mind this is all
part of the knowledge of navigating single monks so what am I going to give this oh let me see now
um I'm gonna give this a very well earned actually because I'm really into I have I
have been enjoying this single malt from the moment open the bottle
and initially I'm thinking it's a bit young it's a bit young it really is
quite a bit young but then as my senses grew a climatized to it um it started to just settle down
and particularly and mark my words about this this is quite important now so please pay attention I
know you are anyway but please pay attention if you if you're slightly distracted see this
whiskey if you leave it in the glass with a decent amount of water but not too much and you come
back an hour later it will have transformed into something actually magnificent really magnificent
but I'm going to be practical about this I can be too sentimental in my marks I'm going to give it
I was going to give it 83 but do you know C for now I'm just
reminding myself of how good that prolonged
open glass is giving it in fact pour two glasses put a glass add them water leave
it an hour an hour later put a second glass add a drop of water and go between them backwards and
forwards and see how different they are it will it's remarkable 84 out of 100 it's a mock mark
that's what it is malt Integrity malt Mark and if you want to pop it back again
for Alfie review 983 extras I'm going to talk about understanding oxidization when you open
your bottle I'm going to give you context because I know from recent conversations in my patreon
channel uh bralfi rlfy that one of the discussions has been about well once you've opened the bottle
how long can you actually really leave it because I've been introducing some of my stash bottlings
and although a lot of my bottlings in my stash which is to Future proof my access to good quality
single malt the rest of my life that's what a stash is about uh well um many bottles are sealed
unopened but others have been opened six years ago six years ago and is as beautifully
flavored characterful and dynamic as the day I opened and reviewed it six years ago in 2016.
really August 2016. it was a bin rennis uh Ben reeks sorry it's a binary single cask 1998.
why is it kept so long so intact have I put this inner gas in it have I got some secret
formula have I been wrapping it around with with sealing tape that you can get on on eBay
not none of that I just left it in a cool dry Place away from direct sunlight and I'm going
to go into that and tell you more about it and then once I've done that I'm going to provide
even further context as to why you should not be afraid of oxidization happening in your bottle of
whiskey hope you'll join me for that because that video will be along fairly soon bye-bye