Do you want to dip your toe into the wonderful world of Scottish single malt
whiskies, or are you already a whisky drinker but you just want to get some
surefire bangers for yourself without having to take out a second mortgage? If
so then this is the video for you! I'm gonna take you through these five great
introductory or just really good value for money Scottish malts.
There's such a huge range of styles of whisky being made all over the world
nowadays but today we are going to be concentrating on my homeland, so Xcotland
and on single malt whisky, so that is whisky that's made from 100% malted
barley and distilled at one single distillery. Traditionally Scotch had
quite distinctive regional styles but lots of things do contribute to the
flavour profile of a Scotch and actually one of the things that I look at most is
what barrels it's been aged in, but also some more technical things about how
much peat is in there (if there's any at all), things like the shape of the still,
what's called 'cut points' so essentially um when the spirit is coming off the
still how much of that or which part of that is actually kept and bottled. So
there's lots of different things playing into the flavour profiles of whiskies
we can get really geeky on it at some point but today we are really just going
to be kind of giving you some surefire bangers. Now of course, being a bartender,
i absolutely encourage you to go out and find a good whisky bar if at all
possible and to try nips of things before you commit to buying a full
bottle but these are kind of, from my experience tending bar, these all tend to
be real crowd pleasers so if you are gonna buy something blind then I do feel
that you can't really go too wrong with these as long as you like the sound of
the flavour notes that I'll be describing to you. Now, none of these guys break the
bank but at the same time there is the caveat that very very cheap whisky is
not very delicious generally speaking so we're not talking complete bargain
basement here um it is going to be something that hopefully would be a bit
of an investment for you that you can enjoy over a long period of time.
So we are going to go from sort of lightest and brightest and easiest going
whiskies through to our sort of heaviest one here so the Dalwhinnie 15 year old is
what I like to call a breakfast whisky, it's really kind of light in body. The
distillery is in the highlands it's kind of it's very it's right on the edge of
Speyside which is a very kind of famous whisky
region. This one sits around 80 Australian dollars about 40 pounds or
around 65 us dollars and as it is owned by diageo it's fairly widely available
which is why it's a good one to include
So it's really a bright and fresh quite citrusy nose actually with lots of just
really lovely kind of honeyed malt
coming through as well
and the reason that this one has a much lighter flavor is it is aged in ex-bourbon
barrels as opposed to ex sherry which you see a lot in scotch and that just
means that you get kind of more uh notes like vanilla and so on but also it just
doesn't honestly have as much of an impact on the spirit um so that kind of
shines through and you get all those real fruity notes that are part of the
spirit itself. As i said absolute breakfast dram you could drink that first
thing in the morning there's not really any alcohol burn.
Definitely a great great introduction to Scottish whisky
Now next up we're sort of going a little bit step up in terms of richness but
still really bright and fresh and fruity we've got Aberfeldy 12 year old so
this one is actually owned by bacardi and most of it goes into Dewars which is
obviously their really famous blend but they do now bottle um some of it as
a single malt which is really good to see
a lot of people think this is a Speyside malt it's actually in Perthshire so
sort of at the foot of the Highlands and it was put there because it was built
specifically to provide whisky for Dewars, it's really kind of easily
connected to everywhere else. So definitely a step up there from the
Dalwhinnie in terms of body so really fruity lots of green apple but has a
nice ah a little bit more kind of sherry character there so a little bit of kind
of raisiny dried fruit just makes it quite nice and smooth
You can probably feel the alcohol on that one a little bit more but I think
that it does have the body to carry it so yeah definitely something that you
can you can justify treating yourself to.
now on to the Glendronach 12 year old so as much as Aberfeldy had that little
hint of sherry character this is what you would call a sherry bomb so it's
aged entirely in all Oloroso and PX casks so if anyone's ever seen PX it's real
kind of syrupy and thick and kind of christmas cake spicy so hopefully you're
going to get plenty of that coming through here.
So yeah, a really big sweet nose quite a lot of kind of woody spices like a bit of
cinnamon and a bit of nutmeg and a little bit of ginger even
really rich chewy almost kind of toffee-ish if you're a sweet tooth and
you're looking for a way into whisky then I would definitely
recommend this as a really good starting point. It's definitely one that I fell in
love with when i first started drinking whisky because it's just such a big and
kind of chewy thing to get your um to get stuck into, another excellent
introduction.
Next up we have Kilkerran this is a Campbeltown malt. So actually
Campbeltown used to be the biggest whisky producing region in Scotland but
just with sort of economic downturn and so on a lot of well basically all of its
distilleries closed and it ended up only having two left. One of the other
distilleries though there is Springbank and those guys decided to buy one of
those old distilleries and reboot it so Kilkerran's actually only kind of been
around I think they restarted it in 2004 and this is their first core
sort of core range release so this one's also it's a bit of a
mixture it's um 70% ex bourbon with also 30% of sherry and it does have a little
bit of peat in there too. What's really fun about all of them
these malts are it's actually got like quite like an oily almost waxy kind of
character to it and a bit of a salty savory sort of thing.
I'm honestly not 100% sure what it is that contributes to that but um it does
seem to be that they just have a bit more of an old-school approach to it so
rather than really trying to refine things they sort of
let it sort of stay in and be a bit more rustic and flavourful.
But also nice lemon and sort of like creamy flavours coming through as well so
it's not a whack in the face um in any way it's as much as it's rustic it's
still got a kind of delicateness to it as well with actually some nice floral
notes too. If you like kind of bold and really interesting flavours then I think
this is going to be the one for you.
Now i couldn't run you through an introduction to some Scottish whiskies
without taking you to Islay, it's probably the most famous whisky region and known
for its big peat monsters so things like Ardbeg and Laphroaig. Those can be a little
bit much especially if you're just starting out and that kind of real
iodine flavour isn't for everyone so i would like to introduce you to Caol Ila
it is a little bit sweeter and lighter in body than a lot of other malts from
Islay and that kind of comes from a few of those technical things that I was
touching on earlier because they have taller stills and longer ferments.
It's a lovely delicate peat on the nose uh whereas the Kilkerran does almost
got a bit of a funkiness to it with that peat this is real kind of sweet fresh
peat and still a little bit salty
lovely sweet um stone fruits so sort of a bit of peach and sort of more tropical
fruit even coming in there um but just still with that lovely kind of smoky
backbone. So there we have five delicious whiskies which are a really good
introduction to some of the different styles and flavour profiles that you can
expect to find in Scottish single malt whisky. If you guys have a gateway
whisky which got you started on your journey then please do let me know in
the comments below and if you plan on popping into your local bar to try one
of these then you should definitely check out our video on how to order
whiskey like a boss. An introduction to Scottish single malt whisky - so now you
know.