hello malty martinets of marvelous magnetism and thank you to michael gorman for providing
that malt mention to the ralphie.com channel for the small moment and guests and this is ralphie
review 907 extras extras is a video where i'm not talking about a specific good quality spirit in my
spirits reviews but i'm talking about generalized i kept giving a wider landscape view which is
gonna hopefully fingers crossed help you in making your selections and spending your money
so that when you do you have better experiences rather than worse experiences and unfortunately
there are worse experiences out there that you've got to be aware of
mindful of we've got to negotiate the complexities of the um the spirits international
spirits industry where they are producing a product in which the quality is an opinion
right and because of this producers can actually get away with a lot
because if you just have competent professionally made potable consumable ethanol based spirit
that's you fulfilled your legal obligation
um if it happens to taste worse than it used to um that is really down to the perception
of the customer and it's very difficult to prove unless you go in for some very expensive chemical
spectral analysis anyway what i'm going to do in this video is i'm going to introduce
some whiskeys and another spirit which i've come across in the year 2021
which i'm going to recommend you look for look out for in the year 2022
because it's going to be a difficult year for many companies as they struggle to establish themselves
and sell their product and the ones that succeed are the ones that are focusing on originality of
and quality of smell and taste and the integrity of the presentation of that smell and taste
and the honesty of their productivity the honesty of their brand whether they are being
even-handed with the customers or whether they're being a little bit greedy and it starts to show
now and again we i tend to avoid these sort of brands myself occasionally i buy from them but
it's just the way it is customer beware customer take care which is why of course you're going
online you're doing your research and you're discovering what some jaded old hack thinks
of various brands and why he's recommending them let's kick off we have the bag of beautiful things
i'm going to start off with one that you would probably expect me to be introducing to you it's
distillery and at this point i would add that
arden american has featured prominently in the us was the online scotch whisky awards which
kicked off in 2021 malt mates you will find a link down below go and check it out all the whiskies
mentioned are the collective opinion of online video commentators as then voted for by
the online whiskey community the wide diverse international community and it's literally a
who's who list of the sort of whiskies that you should be looking at buying if you want to invest
in the quality of smell and taste and the reason i've mentioned a mentioning arden merkin
is because this is an offshoot of adelphi independent bottlers and the thing about
adelphi and i've known adelphi as a company going back decades they've always focused on
decent bottling decent stuff sure the prices have jumped up in the last few years but hey
if the quality is there then they can they can do that so i'm not judging them for that i'm
delighted for the success and i wish them well although having said that i don't buy so many
adelphi bottles these bottlings these days because of the price but that's my decision
but artnamarkin is the most westerly mainland distillery in scotland now it's a small distillery
and the people who own it and have set it up have considerable experience and very good contacts
in the whiskey industry which means that when they hit the ground they're hitting the ground running
and they're getting it right from the very start they're not having to find their way for a few
years and make a few mistakes before they start to produce some good liquor art and american are
focusing on integrity bottlings 46 and it says in the label non-chill filtered unchilled filtered
sorry natural color i have haven't opened this bottle yet because i've got another bottle open
the one thing i would say is that i like good clear unambiguous age statements i like
open transparency it all credit card and working they're using
um qr codes and all the rest of it to provide transparency it's a very communicative distillery
so should you contact them you will get a response from someone who knows for what they're talking
about um and i recommend that you look out for urban american in 2022 they they are producing
now a more heavily repeated version which is going to be also very very good and importantly having
done my homework i'm aware that they are sourcing good quality casks good quality casks only ever
without exception produce good quality whiskey the next distillery i want to flag up to you
is niconian nickname single malt scotch whiskey organic and very small distillery 46
small batch
an intriguing little distillery i think they could provide just a little bit extra in terms
of information non-chill filtered that's helpful but i'm looking around the label for natural color
and frankly even though i'm rechecking having already checked i'm not seeing it
what's important with this bottling here this is organic and this is something which
is considered a bit of a novelty with scotch whiskey is why bother producing organic whiskey
and the simple reason is that organic cereal this in this instance malted barley
tends to be slow growing it's not a generic macro crop which is influenced by
fertilizers pesticides herbicides and all the rest of it
which is just real life so i'm not particularly criticizing that but when you've got an organic
version of a whiskey it's not using generic barley strains as such the yield of flavor
is likely to be higher and the yield of alcohol is likely to be slightly lower
this is not always the case however i have done some research i've spoken to a a biochemist and
that is generally the case there's nothing about nickname small distillery very small distillery
with people who have a very clear vision about what they want to do and how they go about it
this is one of these little contemporary distilleries that they're quite bold in
their presentation they're standing out as a result of it i haven't heard a bad word
said yet about their whiskey although i have heard it say that's a little bit in the young side
fair play that can only improve with time but particularly those who are looking at the family
of small distilleries which are appearing in the scotch whiskey scene the diversity and character
of these distilleries is something which is quite important and nickname has bags of that next is
not a new distillery but it is an old distillery which is in the process of refreshing itself
i'm going to give vladnik a mention here because
my experience is that as a young whiskey 8 9 10 years old when it's spirit driven there's
a savory side to it which is quite herbaceous and very very distinctive this is when bladnick
is actually becoming irish in style and given bladnick's close proximity to ireland this is
geographically easily attained so have a look on your google maps or whatever you want to use
and look at the location of a distillery to give you an idea of what it does and what it
can do all blood necks are often overlooked and underrated simply because lowland whiskey tends to
get very complex with age but there's not a lot of old lowland whiskies about you got them from
sin magdlin good example you got them occasionally from ochentoshen and some really old ones from
glen kimchi that's the one and they're all really good whiskeys actually really really good with
because the delicate lawn style is delicate and that delicacy becomes far more expressive
over time with under active casks it goes goes the distance wonderfully well
so this is a a an old distillery which is under new ownership it's reinventing itself
and therefore you should kind of re-examine it another example would be let's see what
happens with rose bank rose bank is still very much work in progress but we are keeping an eye
on it i don't know if much is going to happen in 2022 it will be a few years time before we
see much there but my final bottle i want to bring out to you is not a scotch whiskey it's
rum uh it's four square room from barbados the rum scene is really opening up more confidently
for what is a very conservative industry even amongst the spirit makers rum is so conservative
you know you get it one way and that's it as a result of which you know when
you see yet another fine rum just bottled it 48 40 or even worse 38
in an overblown fancy bottle and it just tastes like raisin juice or prune juice with alcohol
because it's simply too old you quickly get bored so it's very
it's very good to see a particular distillery one distill is all we need to form the benchmark which
is breaking the set and actually producing and bottling rum for a scotch whiskey drinker for the
international spirits drinker who is spoiled for choice and are looking for one or two bottles in
their collection which are different from the rest so different they're actually made from different
ingredients it's as simple as that now i would conclude by saying there's other distilleries that
i can't show you a bottle because i've not bought a bottle yet and i wasn't able to buy a bottle yet
isle of rasi still relatively young it's had its first bottling now but it's still quite young but
give it just a couple of years it's going to be very very tasty indeed exciting little distillery
great energy about it and it's got frankly one of the most stunning locations of any distillery
in the whole of scotland also look out for clyde's side right in the heart of glasgow a
lot of experience behind that distillery they've just brought out their first bottling recently
and i'm still in the lookout for it but i'm in no rush because the first bottlings
i want to see how they bed down i don't want to be the first just to be the first so you won't see me
reviewing whiskies that are only just released because everybody's reviewing them at that point
i tend to give it a few months even a year or two and then i'll say right now i'll turn my attention
to this distillery because what they're bottling will be older i'm looking for the age statement
i don't care what anybody thinks i don't care that it's not necessary yes for me when it's
my money it's my money that's buying this stuff it matters to me it's an intrinsic it's a very
important part of integrity it's disclosure tell us what's in the bottle share let me
understand what i'm tasting here give me an h statement that will tell me all about the casks
46 percent unchill filtered natural color do you know it doesn't matter any spirit in the world
those are the first four things i'm looking at before i even start to make a purchase decision
and frankly you should do if it's bourbon yeah two years four years six years eight years yeah why
not have an age statement the straight sure you know what right age it is but at the same time you
still gotta do calculations and try and work it out at this time we just want simple transparency
if it's mescal sure it's you know three three months rested that's fine it's something to go on
and and white spirit improves so much for being rested prior to bottling whether it
been stainless steel tanks or in glass large glass vessels it makes a huge difference ask the people
who make it i'm ralphie i hope you found this useful final word before i go if you're finding
foursquare too expensive or difficult to find in this particular version cask strength um
what they call it private cask selection private class that's what it's the private cask selection
spread your net a little bit because four square all also bottle is duralis and durley's exo and
14 year old lower bottling strength but very good rums also never forget the independent bottlers
the independent bottlers tend to be overlooked because it takes more work to disturb discover
the hidden gems that can be found from independent bottlers you've got to do your homework because
it's more risky because the quality of what the bottle varies understand that the skill
is to take the time and make the time to do your private detective work before you commit
the money you spend on whatever you're going to buy i would conclude now by saying that
i'm showing some exciting distilleries that i'm looking at for 2022 but there will be bottling
suddenly appear from out the blue and i know that i better move fast if i want to buy a bottle
but i can't tell you about them because i'll only know about them myself
when they happen and this is what you might want to do yourself it's just use the internet to set
up and follow certain sites and certain shops and build up a report get onto your reddit group
and find out what's being talked about what's the conversation because often you find with the group
is people are looking one direction and suddenly a whiskey or a rum or a brandy
or a cognac will pop up completely unannounced and it gets missed and it
gets overlooked and you can be the first to jump in and get a bottle at a reasonable price
i'm ralphie i hope you find this helpful and join me again uh shortly where i'll
be reviewing something not quite sure what not even thought about it but hey we're on to it bye