The big "event" over the past couple weeks was having a good friend over and opening up the Port Charlotte CC:01. With its all around bold peat accompanied by stone fruits on the nose and palate, these one was easily the best of this group. For a whisky at 57.8% it is incredibly smooth and adding a few drops of water makes it even smoother and allows the fruits and peat to jump out even more. When I happened across this lone bottle sitting in a out of the way duty-free shop I felt like I hit the jackpot. This whisky is #3 in my all time rankings based on one good sample and I was a bit worried it wouldn't live up to the $100 for 70cl... but it did.
My next favorite is a (pre-Gordon) MacPhails Bunnahabhain distilled in 1997 and bottled in 2010. This has a great nose of baked oatmeal with pears. I know this because we made some oatmeal and I smelled the bowl of hot, sweet, fruity, cerealy, creamy baked oatmeal right next to this dram. The dram's nose was actually better with more fruit notes. Considering the nose, the taste was surprisingly disappointingly bland, but then breathing out through the nose during the finish brought the goodness back again.
Larceny is really growing on me as I move through the handle. Both it and Evan Williams Single Barrel are solid bourbons but Larceny gets the edge because it has a thicker and smoother mouth feel, richer cereal notes (I did dig a Wheat Chex taste in the EVSB), and additional complexity with some walnut on the nose. The bottle of Russell's Reserve 6 Year Rye was opened this past summer in celebration of my daughter's 6th birthday. It's a solid rye with the expected rye-spice characteristics and smoother than most ryes. That said, it wasn't as smooth or as complex as the Larceny or EVSB, so it unfortuntately comes in last in this particular tasting.
After this tasting, here's how these five rank overall and their relative change. No real surprises that the Port Charlotte didn't move up, it will be hard to unseat the top two. The Bunnahabhain is up there as well and due to the loss to the PC flipped with Oban 14. As expected, Larceny moved up a few more places. Interestingly, EVSB has an overall rank lower than the Russell's Reserve, despite RR's large drop due to this poor showing. Looking back on my tastings I don't really see any clear reason why this would be (or vice versa). In the end, any of these bottles would make great gifts. Cheers!
| Rank | Name | R-Rating | SOS Rank | Change | ||||||
| 3 | Port Charlotte CC:01 | 1.0498 | 27 | 0 | ||||||
| 15 | Bunnahabhain 1997 | 0.8995 | 112 | -1 | ||||||
| 143 | Larceny | 0.5071 | 72 | 8 | ||||||
| 185 | Evan Williams Vintage Single Barrel | 0.4179 | 123 | 1 | ||||||
| 177 | Russell's Reserve 6 Yr Rye | 0.4327 | 127 | -20 | ||||||
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