It’s time for the big friday post! (‘Wait, what? Is there such a thing? I don’t think I’ve ever heard you mention this?’ There is now. Why? Because I just invented it, that’s why.)

Aaaaanyway, this friday it’s a three-in-one homeblend review. The style of blend is a recovery and the whisky I’ll be trying to improve is Deanston Virgin Oak. Now, this is not by any shot a bad whisky in the sense that it is undrinkable, it just a little simple for my taste: the finish in new oak casks has overpowered any other tastes, leaving the taster with an (unsurprisingly) oaky, vannilla-y taste with just faint hints of fruit and other more delicate flavours. The good thing is that it is the cheapest single malt whisky I’ve ever seen.

After tasting it, the blender in me immediately saw potential: wouldn’t it be possible to use this strong cask-influence to enhance other whiskies (or, in this case, to serve as a solid base to add more complexity to)? As it turns out, it works surprisingly well. After a bit of experimentation a 70/30 split between the Deanston and the other whiskies seemed to work best. Below are three blends all of whom are fresh, meaning they have been tasted within about 30 minutes of blending. I’ll pick a winner at the end which I will marry for a few weeks and review for you again to show what happens when the whiskies interact in the bottle. The first to try and tame the oak is the Clynelish 14yo:

The nose gets off to a good start, it is quite a bit more complex than the Deanston is on its own with mainly sweet vanilla and slight summer flowers showing through. The taste is decidedly oaky, but acquires the waxy taste of the Clynelish. The mouth feel is more warming than either of the single malts is on its own and after a little bit honey comes to the fore, as well as a slight sour note. The finish has liquorice root, a tiny bit of salt and again wax. All in all, a definite improvement!

The second challenger is one that has made several appearrances on this blog already: Laphroaig 10yo. The nose is interesting: oranges (a taste I didn’t get from either of the malts on their own) and some contributions from the Laphroaig: almond paste and smoky peat. On the pallet, this one really sings. A delightful combination of oaky vanilla, smoke, brine, oranges and peaches lead to a finish that is (again) faintly woody, a bit salty and contains traces of lemon, salty liquorice (salmiac), peat and aniseed. And just like the first blend, this lifts the Virgin Oak from simple mediocrity onto a rather complex and frankly very tasty new level.

I can just hear you muttering: ‘really? again with the Elijah Craig?’. Ya, rly. And I would desperately want to tell you this is as big a success as the above, but alas, ’tis not to be. It’s the nose that lets this one down. It is saturated with a smell I associate with old leather seats that have been sat on by slightly sweaty people. It comes round a bit in the taste, which is like a mellowed, sweeter version of the bourbon and continues uninterrupted into the finish. But I just can forget that nose. It’s icky.

Looks like we have two winners then! The Deanfrog looks best by a small margin at this point in time, but I suspect the Dealish, already being quite good, will improve by marrying for a few weeks. So that’s what I’m doing, I’ll be letting the whiskies in both blends get acquainted over a week or two and will review them both again (and score them) in 2012!

I’d like to wish all of you a very merry christmas, may there be awesome whiskies there!

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