I think I moved the phone at the last second so the focus wasn't great, but I was about to be run down by a car coming from behind. It was much nicer to see it for real; brooding clouds over distant crags and quaint wooden houses. The Sun beginning to illuminate the horizon. Some birds nearby squawking a bit. Very idyllic. Perfect for a wee dram, but not today. Today I need to keep a clear head so I can write a sensible and informative review of the cask strength 12 year old Springbank I've been investigating since Tuesday. And here it is...
Bit of an intro
Springbank is possibly the most traditional scotch whisky distillery there is, and of all the distilleries I've read about (which is very few indeed) it certainly seems like the nicest. It's in Campbeltown and they use local ingredients as far as possible, employ local people, donate bottles to local charity fund raising events and local community projects and produce some very nice whisky as well. It seems that if Springbank do well, the whole of Campbeltown benefits. Springbank do the whole process on site, from barley to bottle, which I don't think any other distilleries do anymore. They're probably the very definition of "craft presentation" of whisky. Ralfy the hero genius of ralfy.com filmed a brilliant tour of the distillery which is available on youtube. Very interesting and informative, but in seven parts because it was filmed back in the days when youtube had a ten minute time limit on the length of videos. Have a watch here, but finish reading my review first:
Did you notice where Peter said that they could automate the bottling and save money, but they keep it going by hand so they can keep employ more local people? You shouldn't have done yet, I said to read the rest of the review, but that's what I mean when I say they're a nice company. Very much a craft distillery too, not an industrial one. The crafted nature of their product means that each batch is a little different. I call that "interesting", to a big company like Diageo (who I talked about in my review of Talisker 10 yo) it would probably be called "inconsistent". More about that later.
Craft presentations of whisky would usually be bottled at a minimum of 46%, be their natural colour and would not be chill filtered. The extra alcohol holds extra flavour compounds. Not adding colouring shows you the natural colour of the whisky and doesn't taint the flavour. Apparently some people can taste the caramel colourant, but I can't honestly say I've ever noticed it. It's supposed to be something in the aftertaste. One day I'll find a really caramelly whisky and see if I can taste it.
The lack of chill filtering is quite interesting. It's a process used to remove tiny particles of proteins and oils and things from the whisky to make sure it's nice a clear, however the oils and proteins and things affect the mouthfeel of the whisky as well as the flavour, and removing them removes a dimension of the whisky's character. Without chill filtering it's all still there, but when water is added they begin to come out of the whisky and it turns slightly cloudy. Something often called "Scotch Mist". I took some pictures. It's much easier to see it in real life though.
Here it is with no water added. Lovely and clear.
This is the exact same glass of whisky with a bit of water added. What's that rolling in across the glen? It's the slightly out of focus scotch mist! The picture didn't come out particularly well, but you can see that it's become a bit murky looking.
Springbank also use a unique two and a half times distillation process. The more times a spirit is distilled, the more refined it becomes. Or the more character it loses if you prefer to think of it that way. As far as I know most scotch distilleries use double distillation, but most Irish and American distilleries use triple. I think lowland scotch distilleries use triple distillation as well and that's what gives them the lighter quality. I hear that occasionally bottles of single distilled whisky can be found. I've never seen one, but then I've never seen a narwhal so that doesn't tell us anything.
The direct fired stills are very nice and it's kind of a surprise that more distilleries don't have them. The direct firing causes sugars to caramelise and all that kind of thing in the bottom of the still. Like when you brown the meat before making a delicious pot of stew and deglaze the pan you used with wine or something. The burnt bits in the bottom of the pan are full of flavour and you want that in your stew. Same idea with direct fired stills. It's probably at least partly the maillard reaction, which is where proteins and sugars react under heat and form a whole range of flavour compounds. Why wouldn't you want that going on in your whisky? Possibly consistency, I think it would be very difficult to gain much control over the flavours produced. There's a bit of an explanation of the desire for consistency in whisky below, or at least my thoughts about it.
The particular expression of Springbank I'm reviewing here is 12 years old and bottled at its cask strength of 50.3% ABV. It turns out this is batch number six. When I was ordering it at the government run bottle shop there were two cask strength Springbanks available. I spent ages trying to work out the difference, but there almost isn't one. The only differences I could see were the alcohol volume, (the one I didn't buy was 53.1% ABV and I believe it's batch number five), the price, and there were some very slight differences in the taste profiles they provided. The description of how it's made really threw me, they described the same process in different words and in Norwegian. I kept thinking I'd worked it out and then realizing I hadn't. The one I didn't buy was the exact same thing, just a different batch and therefore slightly different in flavour and colour. Not sure why the price should be more though, maybe they reckon it tastes better. The batch number is not written on the bottle, which I assume is because you're supposed to understand that the nature of cask strength craft whiskies is such that there will inevitably be differences in batches. I reckon they could label it with the batch number and charge a little more for it and even make it a bit collectible, but it seems like they're not really into that kind of thing at Springbank.
I wanted to try Springbank for it's authenticity and honesty and because my old friend Mr. Tiffen rates it pretty highly. I was considering it and doing a bit of research and heard that they get their peat from a different source to most distilleries and that there's a slight difference in taste. They dry the malted barley over the peat smoke for six hours, but at the same distillery they also produce Longrow, where the malted barley gets 48 hours in the smoke. That's on my wish list. I chose cask strength for the extra flavours that the extra alcohol can hold. I enjoy complex flavours, and Springbank's not generally recommended for beginners on account of it's complexity, so a cask strength expression promises to have an awful lot of taste going on.
Oh yeh, they're probably the last independent distillery in Scotland too. Thanks to my old friend Mr. Tiffen for reminding me to put that in. Time to actually review something.
Packaging
Kindly observe this lovely picture:
I really like the packaging. Nothing too fancy like metal tins, wooden cases, cut crystal bottle, magic label or whatever. Just a cardboard box with a hole in so you can see the bottle. If I was going to pick a fault I'd say it's not the sturdiest of boxes, so if you're traveling with a bottle be a bit careful. The design is beautiful. I'm a sucker for the olde worlde celtic style designs and this one really appeals to me. The S logo reminds me of my Dad's old copy of Lord of the Rings. S for Springbank or S for Saruman? For me it communicates something of mystery and even intimidation. It's dark, mainly black with a little red and white which really stand out. Almost gothic. Like there's something forbidden about it that makes you want to try it. I might even keep the bottle in it's box on the little shelf over the fire as an ornament, it's that good. At the moment I have a small log with a beaver's teeth marks at the ends.
There is almost no writing on the box or bottle. "Springbank" is literally the only word on the box, printed over and over. The bottle has a bit of a blurb on the back that says how the whisky goes from barley to bottle on site at the distillery, with no caramel added and no chill filtration. It also says not to worry about the scotch mist. Nothing else, no romantic imagery of heather and bagpipes and kilt wearing stags. The reason to buy is that it's very good whisky, not because they've got you all misty eyed about haggis.
Smell in the Bottle
Opening - Immediately baked apple, then caramelly syrupy (almost golden syrup), cinnamon, fudge and a tangy, fruity berryish smell
Later - After a few days the apple note became more like fermented apple (like in cider), sweet caramel, vanilla
Appearance
You've already seen this picture, but here it is again. I took a couple more but they were rubbish.
Pretty much the colour of golden syrup, although it doesn't quite look it in this picture. I'd say amber +1 or maybe +2. It can look more brown depending on the light. Everything is so subjective.
Neat
Nose - apple, slightly old apple, apple brandy, nutmeg (I think), vanilla, sweets a bit like a rock shop (fruity sweets and minty sweets together), fresh smell like a fast flowing river in the Derbyshire peak district - kind of mossy and rocky and faintly peaty (I eventually broke that down into fresh earthy peat, minerally smell like gritstone, and a fresh clean rain smell), faintly smokey peat, touch of silage, faint vinegar (I'll call it cider vinegar because there's fair bit of apple smells), soft caramel, angelica, chives, shrimp, dry dusty cereal, milk chocolate caramel, maybe lichen
Arrival - sweet, briney
Development - Gentle smoke, quite appley then the alcohol sting ambushes you
Aftertaste - Apple brandy (maybe apple eau-de-vie, same thing really), eventually became a bit cakey like apple cake
Water - 4 Teaspoons give or take
With water you get the scotch mist developing as I mentioned earlier, but you can also see the swirly lines really well. Probably because if the strength and colour. The swirly lines are called viscimetric lines, or viscimetric whorls and occur because the water and whisky have different densities, viscosities and refractive indices. I tried to make a video but it was sideways. I'll learn how to do it right soon. The qualities not great but you can see the swirlies ok, especially about halfway through. Here it is:
It wasn't sideways after all.
Unfortunately I didn't realize the mike in my phone was picking up the sound of my breathing, and you can hear me huffing away like a moose in the wilderness.
Nose - rain on gritstone with mossy peat (peak district in the rain), faintest hint of chlorine (not bad, just interesting), gentle smokey peat, piney resinous smoke, fudge, apple and caraway, fresh ripe apple, sticky toffee (like sticky toffee pudding but without the pudding), butterscotch, Werther's originals, cedar, slight citrus with pva glue, apple brandy, fresher apples, bit herbal, faint aniseed, fragrant black pepper, angelica, maybe brazil nuts but not sure, cider vinegar (vinegar note with the apple smells), maybe wine vinegar (vinegar note but a bit more fruity) , resinous piney type wood, oak, cork, wood smoke, leather, meaty (maybe porky, a bit like a slightly smokey Norwegian sausage), tropical fruit (not mango but close), heady aromatic fruit like cooked banana with a touch of lai chi (is that gorse?), dry sherry, hint of sulphur (not strong like a sulphur candle's been used, think it's just naturally there from the distillation), earthy mineral smell like a gritty earth in the peak district, blackboard chalk or gypsum like plasterboard (same thing!), maybe sack cloth, a kind of herby oaty biscuit, boiled sweets, kind of buttery
Arrival - gentle, sweet toffeeish flavour, faint mossy peat, minerally rainy peak district taste, sweet biscuits, brine, oak, smoother oak, toffee like a toffee apple, barley sugar sweets, buttery a bit like shortbread but not so sweet, boiled sweets (maybe rhubarb and custard) but suddenly turning dry like black tea
Development - oak, mineral (like a rocky river), more wet mossy peat, fennel or caraway, herbal, slightly bitter herbs (maybe coriander but not so soapy), hay, hint of pepper (maybe black pepper but a fairly general pepper with a bit of a warming glow to it), bit pithy (maybe orange pith), black tea, coppery electrical taste, tannins, earthy oak, dry cereal grain (barley I reckon), very drying like strong black tea
Aftertaste - fudge, angelica, maybe madeira cake, possibly tobacco, sherry, oak, autumnal like dead leaves int he rain, dusty, earthy, musty (a bit like under a house, dampish wood and earth but minerally earth with a hind of cement), apple peel but not tangy, fragrant peat, dry and nutty like the inside of a hazelnut shell, dry herbal taste (very dry, almost astringent,maybe green tea?), black tea, something quite savoury, maybe melon but not sure, Very dry at the end and a little oaky with it
Experiment
I've heard that the ideal strength of alcohol for tasting whisky is about 35% ABV, so I thought I'd try to get exactly that. I used this online calculator dealy to work out that in order to dilute 25ml of whisky at 50.3% ABV to 35% ABV I should add 11ml of water. Here's a link to the calculator in case you want to have a go at something this nerdy: diluting calculator thingy.
I measured the whisky exactly with a syringe and then added the water quite slowly and gently with the same syringe. I was quite surprised to find the whisky kind of floating on the top of the water.
Fascinating, if you like that sort of thing.
I was able to pick out a few flavours with this precise dilution that I didn't get before. These notes are just the new things, I haven't bothered all the other stuff:
Nose - vanilla sugar, vanilla fudge, a new vegetal note that I think was nettle, sponge cake, raisin, toasted marshmallow, faintly sagey
Arrival - slight nutmeg, rum and raisin
Development - faint nutmeg, custardy like bread and butter pudding, becoming more like a custard tart (faint egg custard taste from the naturally occurring sulphur I assume), A different mineral note (maybe flinty but not sure), rockpools (rocky, salty mineral note)
Aftertaste - cereal (tasted it before but not in the aftertaste), kind of rotten apple
Quite an interesting thing to try. Mostly it was the same, but there was just a little bit extra. I wouldn't do this with every glass even though it's the kind of ritual I could enjoy. (I like making espresso and go as far as to weigh the beans on a microscale, which is unnecessary but enjoyable to me.) It just didn't feel like having a whisky. A teaspoon is about as much measuring as I can be bothered with I think, although I might do it once with each whisky I review just to see if I get the extra stuff. Don't worry, I won't write about it every time. These reviews are plenty long enough. Probably too long actually. At least you got videos this time.
A few more comments
Springbank is not generally considered a beginner's whisky because of it's complexity. It is indeed an incredibly complex whisky and the cask strength expressions will be even more complex because of the extra flavour held by the extra alcohol. Tasting it is quite hard work if you're trying to pick out all the different flavours and aromas, but it'd be very enjoyable to just sit and drink if you weren't particularly on a flavour spotting expedition. Unless you're the kind of person who'd be distracted from your relaxation by the wonderful complex flavours and go chasing after them. The flavours and smells are quite obscure too. Some are easily recognizable, like apple for example, but the mineral notes are much harder to pin down and I'm still not that great at identifying the herbal elements. The whole time I was tasting I felt like there were flavours and aromas that were just out of reach. It was a real brain teaser, and I started feeling like this whisky was a lot cleverer than me.
Smell and taste are more connected to memory than the other senses, particularly smell. I identified a lot of the aromas by nosing the whisky and then exploring the memories that it brought up. One of the most interesting for me was the first glass where I was reminded of standing by a river in the Derbyshire peak district that was in spate because of heavy rain. I remembered the water being brown. There was a definite rainy quality to the smell of the whisky which is very hard to describe other than rainy. I remembered the brown water quite vividly and realized it was so brown because it carries a lot of peat, which you can smell. It's more wet and vegetal smelling than the smokey fragrant peat you often get, and fresher too which I think might be the different peat that Springbank use. Not sure about that though. The rocky mineral note I decided was grit stone because that's the rock at the place I was standing in the memory evoked by the smell.
Part of the reason for the subjectivity of the tasting experience is that the memories brought up by the smells are unique to each individual. Some tastes and smells are just there and everyone recognizes them, like you couldn't say that Ardbeg doesn't smell of smoke, but to a large extent what a particular smell is (and particularly whether it's considered pleasant or not) is very subjective indeed. Another reviewer noticed tequila flavours in a cask strength springbank (it didn't say which batch) but I've never tasted tequila so I couldn't possibly recognize that. I might get the same taste sensations but I couldn't possibly call it tequila. It's interesting to watch whisky review videos of the same whisky from a Brit and an American. They each have different reference points for flavour and so recognize different flavours in the whisky. Try these:
Same whisky, not the same review. Interesting.
Local Craft Vs Big Business
I wanted to contrast Springbank with a big corporate giant like Diageo and show how great Springbank is by comparison, but it isn't that simple. Diageo employ tens of thousands of people all over the world, source raw ingredients and materials locally, employ locally, invest in local communities and charities across the globe etc. They also have the advantage of truck loads of money that means they can do things like create a huge, continent wide responsible drinking campaigns, and they have enough influence in the industry to set a standard for marketing codes of practice that avoid marketing to underage people and that kind of thing. Springbank and Diageo operate in the same industry, but in such radically different ways it's very difficult to compare. Springbank do good things locally, Diageo have the potential to do good things globally and are committed to doing so according to their website. I know it's kind of cool to dislike big corporate things, but I'm feeling reluctant to bash them now. I remember a conversation I had with a guy who runs an ethical coffee company about ten years ago when some people were boycotting Starbucks for not using fair trade coffee. It turned out that almost all Starbucks coffee was fairly traded, but they couldn't call it "fair trade" because that phrase was the registered trademark of another company. Not only that but apparently Starbucks were really setting the standard for ethical trading in Africa at that time, they just didn't use it as a marketing gimmick and so hardly anyone knew, so I wouldn't want to knock Diageo for something I don't really know much about. My only real complaint is that they aim for mass market appeal, instead of the more obscure which I personally find more appealing. If you want an evil corporation look up the private prisons in America.
Big companies like Starbucks and Diageo aim for consistency across the whole company because that's what their customers expect. It seems people want to be able to go into any Starbucks and know how the coffee will taste. If Starbucks can deliver that they can build brand loyalty and have a business that is more sustainable long term. Part of how Starbucks achieve it is to roast their coffee incredibly dark. They can then buy beans from loads of different farms and have it all taste the same, even though it will have grown in different soil at different altitudes and levels of shade and all the other factors that affect the flavour of the beans. Essentially, they burn all the unique flavours out so it just tastes of roasted coffee with no fruitiness, berry flavours, nutty notes or winy quality that can be found in more speciality coffees like those offered by Tim Wendelboe. (timwendelboe.com Give it a try, he knows what he's doing!)
Diageo do things like chill filtering and adding caramel colouring to achieve consistency, even though their single malts would be more interesting without it. (Still nice though.) Looking at their other brands it's easier to understand the need for consistency. I confess to having had a whinge if the Guiness didn't taste quite right. People (including me) expect Guiness to taste like Guiness, Baileys to taste like Bailey's, and Smirnoff to taste like paint thinner. It's just a different market to the one targeted by independent distilleries, breweries, coffee roasteries etc. Corporate isn't necessarily bad, it's just a different way of doing business. Business is about making money and there's nothing wrong with that. The more money a company makes the bigger it gets and the more people it can employ. The more people employed, the more families fed, the more children educated, the more money going into the local economy. The problems come when people love money more than people. That's when people get exploited for the sake of money. That's what I reckon today anyway.
Conclusion
Well, it's been an experience. This is a great whisky, but it really isn't for beginners. The very first tasting was almost frustrating for me (in a good way), there was so much going on that I couldn't quite catch hold of. It's like a difficult puzzle, but a lot of fun. Just in case you were wondering I didn't get all the tastes and smell in one sitting, I made a fresh set of tasting notes for each glass and then merged them together for a full picture. Would I buy it again? Yes, but I think I'll go for batch number five next time just to see the difference. I'm also very keen to try Longrow which is made at the same distillery but with a lot more peat. This distillery has definitely impressed me. The only other review I've seen of this whisky is from Serge at whiskyfun.com and he gave it 88 out of 100. There seem to be plenty of reviews of other batches which all seem to be a higher alcohol content. Maybe I'm only second person to give this one a proper review. Here's how it scores on the standard one to ten scale: Very nice indeed but quite challenging and not a whisky for beginners and probably not one to relax with either. There's just so much to explore, particularly on the nose. More of an adventure quest than a quiet sunday afternoon ramble. Anyone looking for an interesting and challenging whisky should give this a go.
Next up is probably going to be Laphroig 10 yo. The second scotch I ever tasted and another bottle bought with an unexpected windfall.
No comments:
Post a Comment