Whisky review No.2 - Talisker 10 yo Scotch

There's a lot of waffle at the start of this. Something about having a blog compells you to write about details of your life that no one else is interested in. I won't be offended if you scroll down to the tasting notes right away, they're about halfway down. There's two sets of notes because I added too much water to the first glass and had quite a different experience. I thought it might be interesting to include both to compare.

 It's here at last! The promised review of Talisker 10 year old. I hope you've been looking forward to this as much as I have, I'm really enjoying writing this blog. I'm beginning to write this in a cabin in norway where i'm staying for the weekend with eight norwegian friends and a small cat. I woke up early needing to pee, but when I got up to go I found the cat was missing. She'd managed to get outside somehow and by the time I'd found her I was wide awake and the sun was about to come up so I decided to sit up for a bit and write. Right now I'm watching it rise over the snow covered mountains on the other side of the fjord, and mist beginning to form around the islands. Its really quite a beautiful scene and i can't help thinking this would be a perfect time to enjoy a drop of whisky, but drinking in the morning is a step closer to alcoholism than I'm willing to go. Unless I've just finished a night shift. Whisky at dawn and then to bed - lovely!

My nice morning view

Talisker 10 yo is a special whisky for me. It was the first single malt I ever tasted. It's not generally recommended for first time malt drinkers, but I was young and reckless and my old friend Mr. Tiffen persuaded me that it was a good idea to buy a bottle while we were on a weekend trip to Filey with my other old friend Mr. Eaton. Mr. Tiffen also believed hurdling wheelie bins and making bombs out of weedkiller were good ideas, but you live and learn. To be fair to him I usually agreed with Mr. Tiffen and there's a patch on my dad's lawn that's never fully recovered.

I remember opening the bottle and having the first smell. It was the most amazing smell I had ever smelled! I was a changed man (if that phrase can apply at eighteen years old) and I was never to return to cheap blends. At least not if I could afford better. I think if my first whisky had been something gentler like Glen Fiddich, which is more commonly thought of as a beginner's whisky, I would have found it much less interesting. I would have said "You're right, Mr. Tiffen. It is smoother than Bell's, but it's quite expensive. Let's see what happens if you deep fry an egg." Instead of "Oh,wow! Wow! That smells amazing! Are all single malt whiskies like this?", which is something like what I did say. They were magical times.

That was about fifteen years ago, and the Talisker 10 of today just isn't quite the same. I no longer recommend it to everyone I meet. I used to, and in recent years several friends immediately sprinted to the nearest offlicense or supermarket or government controlled alcohol outlet only to later remark that it was good but not as special as I'd led them to believe. I suppose I wanted them to have the same experience I did the first time I tried it and rather over-sold it, but it really isn't up to that standard any more. Don't get me wrong, it's still a great whisky, maybe 85 or 90 percent as good as it was, but for me that first bottle was the best. Anyway, on to the review...

Bit of an intro
I bought a 200 ml bottle with 20 quid I found in a birthday card I'd somehow forgotten to open. Thanks, Granny!  It cost 164 kroners from vinmonopolet (official norwegian alcohol shop), and is bottled at 45.8%. . Talisker is distilled on the Isle of Skye in western Scotland, but I hear the distilling is the only part of the process that happens there. I read that they get the malt from Glen Ord Central Maltings in the Highlands, but i don't know about the rest of it. The water used comes from springs on the island which are above the distillery and where the water flows over peat, which is supposed to add some flavour. It's piped directly from the springs to the distillery by what i imagine to be a very elaborate and shiny system of pipes going down the side of a hundred foot cliff, but that's probably not the reality. The Talisker distillery is the only one on Skye and they use that as a bit of a marketing thing. I half think maybe that's why they're the only one there, I'd feel like i was being rude if i opened another distillery there myself. I remember seeing a pub in Derbyshire that was nextdoor to another pub and thinking that whoever got there second must be a bit of an arse.

Talisker's owned by Diageo, who also own an awful lot of popular drink brands, including twenty six whisky and whiskey brands, a brandy, a cognac, three gins, three liqueurs, six rums, a schnapps brand, a tequila, three vodkas, twelve beer brands, seven wine brands and two champagnes. Oh, and Pimm's is theirs too. My goodness, they're a busy bunch of boys. (Girls too, but that would have spoiled the alliteration. Does this mean I value alliteration over gender equality? Feel free to discuss that amongst yourselves.) I'm not sure how I feel about one company controlling so much of the drinks industry, but reading the list of the brands on their website is a bit of an eye opener. I did see some very popular brands on their, including some of my own favourites (Talisker for example) so they must be getting something right. There's a bit of talk about them throwing their weight around a bit in the industry, but I don't know much about all that.Worth a look at the website if you have time - diageo.com - and the wikipedia entry.

The Talisker distillery was founded in 1830, built in 1831 after several false starts, rebuilt between 1880 and 1887, extended in 1900, rebuilt again in 1960 after burning to the ground, converted to steam heating the five stills in 1972 along with demolishing their malting floor, and converted me to single malts in 1999. Thanks to the wikipedia people for the history lesson.

The packaging

They say the first bite is with the eye. First sip in this case.

I bough a small bottle (not a miniature, just small at 200ml) so obviously the packaging isn't quite the same as a full size bottle, but it almost is. It's a nice simple cardboard box, so you know your money's gone on whisky, but it's not quite as nice as it used to be. The box used to be a bit more plain and i think it looked quite smart. I think the wave pictures on the current box are nice and everything, but i prefered the older style. This box comes with a suggestion to have A drop of Talisker 10 yo with smoked salmon and brown bread, which i will deffinitly be trying.

The bottle is clear glass and i believe the full size bottles are too. It used to come in a kind of smokey, brownish bottle, quite like the ones used for Caol Ila (also owned by Diageo) which i preferred. I hear that coloured glass bottles are used so that you can't see the colour of the whisky. The colour tells your almost nothing about the whisky, but people tend to be drawn to the nice golden caramel brown coloured ones and not the lighter ones. This could present a problem for whiskies that are light coloured and don't have any e150 caramel colouring added (like Ardbeg 10year old for example - heavy flavour, light colour), so they hide the colour in a coloured glass bottle. I don't really know if changing to clear glass means that Talisker are now using e150 (which they are) where they weren't before or what, but i preferred the coloured bottle.

I feel like i've been rather harsh now, there's really nothing wrong with the packaging at all, I just thought it used to look nicer. The miniature cork is quite cute and i'll be keeping the bottle to decant other whiskies into when full size bottles are getting low.

Opening smell
When the bottle was first opened I first smelled alcohol, then peat. Then the complex peat and spice and brine came and for a moment i was taken back to that first bottle fifteen years ago. Then it got all sweet and fruity which i don't remember it doing last time. It's generally known to be a salty whisky, which i don't remember particularly noticing before, but this time there was a definite sea smell in the bottle.

Appearance

In the glass its a golden, toffee-ish amber, but it does have caramel added. Others have called it golden orange, deep golden, rose gold, bright copper that kind of thing. It's a pretty typical whisky colour. Maybe the most helpful comment on the colour that I read while researching was "Amber -1". I guess it is a tad lighter than some whiskies. Maybe I'll get a proper colour chart and find amber one day soon.

Neat
Nose - surprisingly fruity, not as smokey as i was expecting but still smokey, sea shore smell, seaweed like the dried up seaweed you get along the tide line (maybe there's an iodine smell with that, i know seaweed contains iodine), other people have called it "fresh" which i'm not sure about. I'd agree it smells more fresh than it did the first time i opened a bottle. Maybe they're referring to the seashore smell that is quite fresh air-ish.
Arrival- oily feeling, sweet, warm, quite syrupy, lots of body
Development- warm and peppery
Aftertaste- kind of dry, bit of pepper, not as long lasting as i remember.

Pretty sure it's sweeter than it was way back in the day.

Water - 2 tsp (bit too much)
Nose - liquorice or maybe fennel, something cakey, fruit but more like fruit juice, a bit medical, TCP, after a while it developed something along the lines of toffee or fudge but not too distinct, almond or marzipan (i might be willing to call that amaretto), TCP again, after a very long time something a bit vinegary came in, but with the TCP it was like someone had thrown up in the school medical room, the acidic smell faded away very quickly and vanilla fudge came in instead
Arrival - tcp, warming alcohol, deffinitely not as sweet as it was when it was neat, cake with fruit in but not fruitcake, more like cake and dried fruit (maybe madeira cake)
Development- warm, the flavour did 't develop much at all at first but after it had been in the glass for quite a while i started getting some bitterness in the development, then road tar, black tea, more pepper (i'd say black pepper if you really pushed me but i'd hesitate to be that specific)
Aftertaste - bit peppery, bit of tea, lemon tea (tea-like tannin dryness but with a bit of a citrus aroma but not bergamot, so lemon tea rather than earl grey), bit of apple but like fresh apple peel not that cidery fermented apple taste you often seem to get in whisky - kind of sour apple (i'd say cox's if i was feeling more confident), sweet liquorice (kind of want to say pontefract cakes), vaguely sweet and salty. After it had faded away for several minutes i got a hint of strawberry sweets.

With 2 tsp of water it went a little hazy too, which is a bit odd as i thought it was chill filtered. It didn't go hazy with only one teaspoon of water so i don't know what's going on there.

Water - 1tsp (about right)
Nose - the smoke held its ground with less water, something vegetal (maybe fennel but not sure), vanilla, something grassy or hay-ish (bit closer to dry grass than hay which i'm not sure makes sense since hay is dry grass), fennel (pretty sure this time), cookies, pebbley beach (i guess that would be called minerally), powdery perfumey smell mixed with peat - you could call it fragrant peat (very nice), drier smoke, it got a bit fruity smelling just as i'd nearly finished the glass
Arrival - oily mouthfeel, peppery (not just alcohol sting), smoke getting a bit more noticable, bit of alcohol sting but not too much and quite enjoyable.
Decelopment- fruity, smokey, bit more robust with less water ( by robust i mean the flavour was a bit richer and fuller than it was with more water), something sweet and savoury at the same time, fenel/liquorice
Aftertaste- long, touch of bitterness (someone described the bitterness as "like you just drank some medicine". The only medicine i can remember having is Calpol when I was a kid which i always thought tasted lovely, but i've heard people talk about medicinal tasting whisky so i guess this is it), i thought about avocado but decided not to put it down until i saw Ralfy's review where he mentioned it, i ate an avocado to check and it kind of has it but to me it's like the sensation of having just eaten one rather than the full flavour of avocado.

With less water this whisky behaves quite differently, and i think rather better. It was much more peppery all round and had more of the punch usually associsted with Talisker.

Salmon and brown bread

The bottle says it goes well with smoked salmon and brown bread so I bought some to try. I decided not to go for the cheapest salmon which would be my normal habit, as I didn't want the quality of the salmon to detract from the whisky experience. I went for the second cheapest and didn't really look at it until I got it home. It turned out it was dry salted (as opposed to brined) and then smoked over juniper. Quite posh sounding i thought. The bread was a similar story, i just picked one I thought looked nice and bready and it turned out to be a locally baked three grain wholemeal posh loaf. It didn't say which three grains but i assume one is wheat.

A sip of whisky followed by a bite of bread and salmon was very pleasant indeed. It didn't really change the flavour of anything, but it was a really good match.

A bite of bread and salmon followed by a sip of whisky was a bit more interesting. There was just a hint of chorine in the arrival of the first sip that was more pleasant than it sounds. Think swimming pool, not toilet cleaner, and and then tone it down a bit. It seemed to bring out a nice sweet liquorice taste in the development of the whisky and then a complex toffee flavour. Not quite treacle toffee but something with a bit more depth and complexity than plain toffee.

If you get the chance give this a try. I'm only just beginning to explore pairing drinks with other things, but i think this one's a real winner. I'll be sharing this with friends in the future.

A few more comments

This has been a very interesting review for me and has brought back some very good memories. I really don't believe Talisker 10 yo is as good as it was fifteeen years ago and  I'm going to have a bit of a semi-informed guess at why: I don't remember where I heard this now, but I remember someone saying that fifteen years ago and earlier Talisker had quite a few barrels of older whisky kicking about the place which weren't quite good enough to be bottled as a separate expression but were still pretty good. These were used in the ten year old, which is all fine because the age statement always referres  to the youngest whisky in the bottle. I think some of the whiskies in it were up to 25 years old back in the day but i could be wrong. As demand has increased the quantity produced has had to step up a bit and they've had to adjust the ratio in favour of younger whisky which has affected the flavour a bit. Again that's a bit of a guess, don't take it as gospel.

I was thinking that maybe something changed when Diageo took over the distillery, but they never did take it over. I did a bit of research and the history of it all is that Talisker was being run by Distillers Company Limited who acquired it in 1925. In 1986 Guiness acquired DCL, and combined it with Arthur Bell & Sons (which they already owned) to create United Distillers the following year. Then in 1997 Guinness merged with Grand Metropolitan (who started out as a hotel company but got into the brewing industry in the seventies) and created Diageo, so Diageo has had Talisker from the start. I bought my first bottle in 1999 so there's a chance it was made before Diageo existed and had been on the shelf in the offlicense in Filey for quite a while. I remember the woman behind the counter seeming a bit surprised by us, but after we made our purchases I exclaimed "Let's flee!" and we ran out of the shop, so she could well have been more surprised by our general behaviour than by me buying the bottle of Talisker she'd been trying to sell for over two years. Maybe both. It's not important. It's possibly more likely that change simply takes time in the whisky industry, and any changes made to Talisker when Diageo came into being may not have filtered down to the consumers yet. Or maybe they just hadn't got round to making any changes at that point. Anyway, I'd be willing to believe it's been adjusted for a slightly more mass market appeal.

Another possible reason for the change in Talisker is that Talisker hasn't changed. I'm certain it has, as is most of the internet whisky community as far as i can tell, but it's true that an individual's tastes do change over time. For example, I never used to like olives, but now i love them. I like to think i have a slightly more discerning palate than I did as a teenager and it may well be a factor in my appraisal of the current standard of Talisker. For me there's also the added factor of comparing it to my first memories of it, when every smell and flavour was new and exciting and i was in the best company imaginable. It's probably impossible to recreate such moments at will, if at all.

Conclusion

I do feel like I've been rather harsh with this whisky, but as I've said over and over it has a lot to live up to, and maybe my expectations of it are unfair. It genuinely is a very nice whisky and Serge from whiskyfun.com reckons its one of the best in its price range. He's got tasting notes on there from tastings over several years so you can kind of track the changes, it's an interesting bit of reading. I agree with him about the price thing too.

I'd call Talisker 10 yo a powerful whisky that really makes its presence felt and i can understand why its not considered a beginner's whisky. However, I'd say don't be afraid to share this with a novice. Let them smell it at least. If possible let them try a couple of lighter whiskies too so that if they don't like Talisker they aren't put off whisky all together. It's very nice neat if you're feeling hardcore, and doesn't need much water if you're going for a more sensible tasting. Too much water and it loses it's peppery character a bit, but it gains something back if you let it sit in the glass long enough. I tend to go for Islay whiskies as a rule and Talisker has a similarly powerful character but is certainly different enough to be interesting.

Would i buy it again? Absolutely! Ok, it's not quite what it once was, but it's still great and i've thoroughly enjoyed tasting it again. That said, if my budget could stretch to the distiller's edition I'd choose that instead. Hopefully I'll get round to reviewing that in a month or two. I've seen people give the 10 year old between zero and five on a one to five scale, which shows the subjectivity of the whisky experience. On my standard one to ten scale I'd say try it if you get a chance. Ignore all the stuff about it going down hill and draw your own conclusions, it's a good whisky. Look out for the distiller's edition too.