Springbank 21 Year Old

A whisky I bought ages ago, and the level just kept creeping down. So I drank it up quickly. I’d tasted it before buying, so the flavour was a sure thing. The balance of a classic style with a subtle peat note was perfect. I paid a lot for it — storing whisky is no easy business.

Littlemill 21 Year Old

Littlemill, a distillery that no longer exists. A touch of fruit plus a bit of peat made it lovely to drink.

Laphroaig cask beer

It really does taste of Laphroaig. In a way it feels like a stout with Laphroaig mixed into it… It isn’t cheap, but the flavour is such a novelty that it’s worth drinking once just for the experience.

Caribbean Rum Cask

This one is a bit sweet — like a stout with honey stirred into it. If you like that style I’d recommend it. There are other varieties as well, but those were just so-so.

Crystal brandy glass

A glass Daiso sells for 2,000 won. I hunted for it all over the place and finally met one in the flesh over in Hapjeong. They really aren’t easy to find.

Compared with a Glencairn glass…

They look a little different on the outside, but when you actually taste from them it’s hard to feel any difference. The quality is decent. I’d happily stock up on them for guests, except they’re still not easy to get hold of…

Linkwood whisky

I’ve taken the photo, but I haven’t drunk this one yet… I’ll post a review when I finally get to it…

Limerick

Another one I photographed meaning to drink it, and then never did…

Càrn Mòr Celebration of the Cask, Aultmore 1982, 29 years old, 59%

A whisky I bought back when nobody cared about whisky, in that good era when you could pick up well-aged bottles at a reasonable price. I remember it being around 20,000 yen at the time. I wonder what a spec like this would cost now… It’s a bottle I treasured, but the cork was starting to look iffy, so I opened it.

The moment I opened it, a sweet barley aroma came bursting out, and at 59% the power was immense. There’s no sense of deterioration from the years at all — it’s soft the way an Aultmore should be, yet the peat rises strongly on the finish… For me, this taste is the standard for whisky. Even back when I bought this bottle, 1970s vintages were expensive and thin on the ground, so there was a sense of settling for the 80s — but looking at it now, this whisky is 41 years old itself… You really do feel the time that has passed, and a whisky that still shows you the same flavour despite all of it is a genuinely charming drink. And 1982 is a special year, so I bought it to mark that, though enough time has gone by now that the meaning has faded. There’s no going back to that day, after all. I should open the bottles I haven’t got to yet, one at a time, whenever I get the chance.

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