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New iteration of the unpeated living bottle:

• 5 mL Glendronach 15 sherry cask
• 10 mL Aberlour a’bunadh, euro bottling (heavily sherried)
• 15 mL Glenturret ‘80/’00 (Blackadder)
• 20 mL Glen Moray 12 Chenin Blanc finish
• 25 mL Glen Moray 16
• 30 mL Glen Garioch 8
• 35 mL Aberlour 100
• 40 mL Aberlour 10, bourbon casked, Duncan Taylor bottling for Trader Joe’s
• 45 mL Balvenie Doublewood (aged in bourbon and finished in sherry)
• 50 mL Macallan 10, bourbon casked, for Trader Joe’s

Nose: Oiled leather, sherry, honey, sweet, soft, white rum

Palate: Leather, strong honey, very sweet, almost raisiny (but in a good way), lychee

Finish:  Leather, perfume, oak.  Enticingly sweet.

Notes:  Really a charmer.  92/100

This is the best it’s been so far.

This will cover two incarnations of the bottle.  A couple weeks ago, I tried the next iteration of the living bottle.

1. 6 mL Glendronach 15 sherry cask
2. 13 mL Aberlour a’bunadh, euro bottling (heavily sherried)
3. 19 mL Glenturret ‘80/’00 (Blackadder)
4. 25 mL Glen Moray 12 Chenin Blanc finish
5. 31 mL Glen Moray 16
6. 38 mL Glen Garioch 8
7. 44 mL Aberlour 100
8. 50 mL Aberlour 10, bourbon casked, Duncan Taylor bottling for Trader Joe’s

It’s not very good.

Nose: Light sherry, cherry sours.  Spirity, fruity.

Palate: Simple.  Tastes spread out and vatted.

Finish: Undistinguished.  Slight fruit.  Grainy.

Finish: I hope this improves on subsequent iterations, as it’s not very good right now.

Score: 80/100

Tonight I’m tasting the next iteration, after adding Balvenie Doublewood a couple of weeks ago:

1. 6 mL Glendronach 15 sherry cask
2. 11 mL Aberlour a’bunadh, euro bottling (heavily sherried)
3. 17 mL Glenturret ‘80/’00 (Blackadder)
4. 22 mL Glen Moray 12 Chenin Blanc finish
5. 28 mL Glen Moray 16
6. 33 mL Glen Garioch 8
7. 39 mL Aberlour 100
8. 44 mL Aberlour 10, bourbon casked, Duncan Taylor bottling for Trader Joe’s
9. 50 mL Balvenie Doublewood (aged in bourbon and finished in sherry)

I’m writing the notes as I taste.

Nose:  Much improved.  Oiled leather, sherry.  A bit spirity.  Cherries.

Palate:  Maraschino cherry, book leather

Finish:  Still getting a lot of cherry and leather.  Vintage port.

Notes:  Really very nice.  I’m glad I didn’t give up on the bottle.  I wouldn’t have pegged it for a vatted malt.  I might have even guessed it as port casked Speysider.  Now the question is, how much of this change is the composition, and how much is variance in my tasting apparatus from week to week?  Could adding 20% Balvenie Doublewood really swing the profile this far?  I think it’s possible.  It certainly is responsible for emphasizing the leather.  In any case, I would buy a bottle of this.

Score: 91/100

I’m adding another whisky.  I’ll bring another installment in a week or so.

My pours haven’t been precise up to this point in my unpeated living bottle.  The figures I gave last time about the relative volumes of the constituent whiskies were close but not perfect.  They summed to 175 mL (but I did not measure it) before I poured off a tasting sample.  My sample was probably about 25 ml, then I found another bottle to add (allegedly) 50 mL of to it, then poured off two tasting samples on two nights.  Now I’ve measured the volume, and it’s, as far as I can tell, exactly 200 mL.  I’ve made a measurement error.  Assuming my errors were constant up until now (a significant assumption, but reasonable since I’ve been doing the same equipment), I’ve been off by about 25% in my pours.  But I have calibrated my equipment now, and now we can begin newly calibrated.

What we need to do is to pour off enough of the existing bottle so that it matches the series as we want to continue.  Currently our formula for the total volume before the pouring should be ((7*8)/(2*7))*X=250, where X is the size of the pours I’ve actually been making.  Solving for X, we get X = 250/4, or 62.5mL.  I measured the amount I think I’ve been pouring, and it’s very close to this number.  We’ve already poured off 50 mL of this, or 20%, so we have therefore poured out 20% of our largest pour, 62.5 mL, leaving us at (ta da) 50 mL.  So what’s the amount we have to pour out to make this fit our series?  The hard way to do this is with division, but since we now have a bottle with 50 mL of the largest contributor in place and everything else in line, we can intuitively see that we just need to pour off a standard tasting sample, 25 mL, and our bottle will be ready for the next contribution.  Seen another way, (1/7 + 2/7 + … + 6/7 + 7/7) * 50 is (56/7)/2 * 50, or 4 * 50 is our current volume before the pour  (200 mL).  So hold on while I go pour one.

The whisky I added was Aberlour 100, a nice, Christmasy, sherried malt.

To run down the contributions so far, it’s:

• 7 mL Glendronach 15 sherry cask
• 14 mL Aberlour a’bunadh, euro bottling (heavily sherried)
• 21 mL Glenturret ‘80/’00 (Blackadder)
• 29 mL Glen Moray 12 Chenin Blanc finish
• 35 mL Glen Moray 16
• 43 mL Glen Garioch 8
• 50 mL Aberlour 100

Nose: Candied fruits, spiced apple cider, raspberry fudge truffles, rye crackers.

Palate:  Prickly, warm, reminiscent of a young sherried Glenfarclas, cinnamon imperials.

Finish:  Somewhat muddled at first, then resolving into licorice and hints of cherry sours.

Notes:  As you can see, the sherry casks are back, making up 36% of the volume, letting the worse whiskies take on filler roles.

Score: 86/100

I’ve added one more sample to the bottle, which I’ll leave to marry for a week and have another installment of the series.

Click “living bottle” below (grey metadata box on the site itself) for the other entries in the series.

Inspired by a friend, I’ve begun two “living bottles” of scotch whisky, to populate as I finish bottles.  This is doubly cool: it allows me to have living bottles, of course, but it also gives me an excuse to finish off bottles, which I otherwise would leave with two pours left in them for all eternity.

It’s essentially a solera system.  Every time I get close to finishing a bottle, I’ll pour 50 mL from the bottom into a living bottle.  Then I’ll shake it up, let it settle, and pour off 25 mL as a tasting sample.  I worked out the math, and the solution for concentrations is really elegant.  To wit: count the number of generations; let’s say there have been six generations.  Then, the oldest contribution will have 1/6 of its original contribution, the second-oldest 2/6, and so on, until the newest, which has 6/6, or one times the original contribution, namely 50 mL.  I’ll leave the proof as an exercise to the reader.  If you need help send me an email.

I started two bottles.  No grand theme.  One is “peated”.  One is “unpeated”.  I did this because a little peat (for non-afficionados, that’s the phenolic flavors generated by burning peat moss to dry the grain) goes a long way.  (It’s a good way to stretch your peated whiskies, actually: mix a splash of peated stuff in with a bunch of cheap “carrier”.  Your detection of phenol concentrations is not in any way linear, so you’ll get the peaty enjoyment without the cost of the peaty whisky.)

I added the sixth generation to my unpeated bottle tonight.  I’m going to post tasting notes.  I’ll maybe make this a regular feature depending on the reception.

It contains, roughly:

1. 8 mL Glendronach 15 sherry cask
2. 17 mL Aberlour a’bunadh, euro bottling (heavily sherried)
3. 25 mL Glenturret ‘80/’00 (Blackadder)
4. 33 mL Glen Moray 12 Chenin Blanc finish
5. 42 mL Glen Moray 16
6. 50 mL Glen Garioch 8

Nose: The sherry monsters are in low concentration, and it shows.  No discernable sherry note.  Malty, mellow highland grain, with a hint of marshmallowy lowland character.  Golden raisins, Malt-O-Meal, American oak.

Palate: Sharp at first, then cabbage soup, malt, leaves.

Finish: Toasty, marshmallowy, malty, slightly briney (odd).

Notes: Not showing the best right now, as it is more than half really mediocre whiskies (Glen Garioch 8 and Glen Moray 16, both of which are good cooking whiskies.)

Score: 79/100