Thanks! 🥃

I recently also had a G&M hermitage Ledaig expression (2008 12 year old) and in comparison this OB Bordeaux 9 year old is bolder and more flavourful. I enjoyed the G&M but it was a little too soft and thin for my liking and I preferred this.

Hah nice. Hope you can find it for a fair price. Ive heard it's over €100 in some markets. Ouch! 🥃

@@Gwhisky Yeah that's too much. But if I find it for around 60 euro ish, that's alright. Cheers my friend 🥃🥃

No shame, Jeff. Men of culture, we are. Never let anyone tell you otherwise. 🥃

I've heard a lot about Starward. Sadly not sold here. Thanks for watching and for the kind words, Jim! 🥃

Hah glad you got one for yourself. Cheers Matthew. Thanks for watching! 🥃

Glad to hear you got a chance to try it. I don't think it should be priced anywhere the 18, though. This one is big and fun and the CS helps, but for me it's behind the 18. Still excellent and still ahead of the 10 and the Rioja. Really fun stuff! 🥃

Excellent comment and I felt the same and reached the same confusion.

Thanks for watching! 🥃

Hah thanks! 🥃

Hah cheers. 🥃

Hah glad to hear it got better, my friend. Personally I like the level of "wineyness" we get here, but yeah it does stop short of being a full-on bomb. Perhaps a lot of people would be expecting that with the full maturation. For me, it's quite nicely integrated with the peat, but I suppose that's all perspective. Cheers and thanks for watching, as always! 🥃

Yeah I remember I had a few questions about wine casks when I first started noticing them become more common and the guy wasn't especially helpful. Heh. 🥃

Oh that 18 will make a great 50th gift. Absolute stunner. In the meantime, hope you can track this one down! 🥃

Cheers buddy. Hope you get it for a decent price. I heard it's expensive in the UK. 🥃

Ouch! Great stuff, but over $100 is too much. The 10 is like USD $40 here. Chicago prices don't seem too friendly! 😬🥃

The video you just did on it was great. Clearly a favourite of yours! 🥃

@@Gwhisky It was just great timing that our videos were so close where people watched the unbiased version and then the overenthusiastic one 😅

Thanks, man! Yeah it seems this stuff is pretty pricey in most markets. Hopefully yours is an exception. Cheers! 🥃

Yeah that Deanston was a beauty! Hah nice to know I've got a plan B occupation to fall back on. 🥃😂

That’s about right, with emphasis on first syllable. LEH-chig

Yes, in Scottish Gaelic “d” is pronounced like “tch” when it is between two vowels in the middle of a word and “g” is sounded as “k” when it is the last letter of a word. The “ai” diphthong is mid way between “e” and “i”. The closest English approximation is “LETCH-IK” or “LETCH-EK” with the emphasis very slightly on the first syllable. The last letter is absolutely not pronounced as “g”.

@@cascode1192 Thank you, I wish we had a pronunciation key for Scottish and Irish language just for pronouncing Whisky names. I toured 18 distilleries recently and I got most of the names wrong because I got my pronunciation from KZfaq. Even when you have Scottish KZfaqrs (Ralphy) he will mispronounce things on purpose because he says they're using Gaelic names to confuse people. He even said "they say le-check but I'm going to call it ledjaig because that's what it looks like." Very frustrating. Anyway, thanks for the lesson in Scottish Gaelic.

Appreciate the info, I'll try to remember that for the next Ledaig video. There's a long tradition on this channel of unintentionally slaughtering Gaelic names. 😂

@@Gwhisky In your defense it's almost impossible to get them right unless you've heard them pronounced. I even got Aberlour wrong, how hard is that? They told me at the distillery that it's like Aber-Flower but without the F. Glenmorangie is like Glen Orangie but with an M. After being there it all makes sense as everything is orange. Kilchoman is *mispronounced* even by Scottish people in the whisky industry on the mainland and I'm sure others are as well so even believing a Scottish person may not be safe. I guess in Scottish Gaelic the ch is a strong H sound like a J in Spanish - Kil-HO-mun is what they said at the distillery. I talked to a lady working at a Whisky store in Speyside who pronounce it Kil-kom-un so naturally I mispronounced it until I got to Islay. I just try to go by what the distillery says. I am starting to notice some patterns though that help like bh is pronounced v so with Bunnahabhain it's boon-uh-hawv-in or something similar. Anyway, carry on. Clearly you're willing to make adjustments when you become aware, that puts you head and shoulders over a lot of people making videos.

Hi Kevin. Glad to hear you're getting along with Ledaig/Tobermory. Their stuff is incredibly unique! And yes the Huddart is on my radar. Thanks for watching! 🥃

Cheers Jon. Hope to hear your take on it soon! 🥃

Yeah I've been hearing that this is way overpriced in a lot of European markets. Shame... really good stuff. At least the Rioja offers a beautiful alternative at a better price. Thanks for watching, buddy! 🥃

That was the right call! 🥃

Ah damn. Hope it pops up for you at some point. 🥃

Yeah the CS thing really helps it along. Hope you got it for a fair price. I hear it gets quite expensive in some central Europe markets... Enjoy my friend! 🥃

Cheers buddy! 🥃

Haven't tried it but sounds interesting! 🥃

Ouch! Great stuff but that's too much! 🥃 As for the closet? I'll never tell. I have a reputation to maintain. 😉

😂😂😂

Not quite as sophisticated or complex as the Cask Exploration line. 🥃

I also love bombastic whiskies.

+1 on the bombastic whiskies.

Stay tuned. A doll-focused review channel is in the works. 😂

Hah maybe I should avoid wine terminology. I don't know/drink wine except on the rarest of occasions, so forgive my ignorance. I just meant the heavy drying and bitter notes that I get in wines. As for the good/bad thing. Sure, that's all whiskies. I have more faith in profiles that are peat-forward or sherry-forward than I do wine-forward profiles. It's a matter of consistency. Sherry, for example, is a more consistent and reliable cask in my opinion.

Relax, Geoff, it's a pretty small--yet I think also quite interesting--thing. I'd say it's less about avoiding wine (or any other particular) terminology, and more about clarity regarding our senses. Part of the beauty of the human brain is our ability to transition from one thing to "associated" other things, which opens the door to wonderful ideas like metaphor, synecdoche, and others. That's very creative/powerful, but it can also muddy things when, for example, we're using our senses. For example, can we actually smell "sweet", or does our brain offer some tricksy transubstantiation-like games to confuzzle us so that we think sweet when we smell, say, peach? Associations due to our past experience of most peaches being eaten when they tasted sweet? Also our physical form, our noses and mouths, mess with our brains because much of what we think of as "taste" is actually aroma, including what is sensed via our retronasal passage. So wine--or any other including whisky--tasting requires considerable discipline and clarity of focus. What are we *actually* smelling? What are we *actually* tasting? Tannins are certainly drying, but I'm less confident that they're actually heavy or bitter, necessarily. Could there perhaps be other factors in the wine/whisky/food giving us those additional senses/taste associations? Quinine is highly bitter but not necessarily heavy or drying. Grapefruit can be all of sweet, sour, and bitter all at once. We often encounter tannins in red wines that may also be heavy and/or bitter, but there can also be some tannins in (often, not always) much "lighter" white wines such as Riesling, etc., and those tannins may or may not also be "bitter". (Yes, OK, Riesling is arguably taking it to extremes, but I'm kind of borrowing from Dr Neil McCallum, founder of Dry River wines, amongst others.) Our senses provide a huge part of the enjoyment of the experience of life, which is why potentially losing them (age, covid, other reasons, etc.) would be such a horrible prospect.

Lol oops!

I mean... it's got loads of peat and it's CS... 😉

@@Gwhisky Correct ... Such a shame they put it in ex grape stuff casks 😢😢😢

Lol cheers. Thanks for watching! 🥃

Yes I'm very lucky. Much more expensive elsewhere. 🥃

Ouch! This isn't as good as the 18, and I'd recommend the 18 first. £85 might be pushing it for this one. Not an absurd price, but a bit too high imo. To Ledaig's credit, though, the 18 is very well priced. So yeah... get the 18 first. 🥃

Thanks for the reply was edging towards the 18 so that has decided it for me cheers

Ouch! 🥃

Eesh. It's about double the price of the Rioja for me. Triple? Ouch! 🥃

It’s quite a bit better than the Rioja.

To be fair the ones where it stood out as unpleasant were all budget malts, often with weak specs. We have a Jura special release in Taiwan that pops to mind, but there have also been Tullibardines, Tomintouls, and even Kilchomans that I didn't got on with. I also associate red wine with a lot of "overcasked" whiskies where it's used in conjunction with loads of sherry. Funny how the more the whisky costs the more I seem to enjoy wine cask matured whisky, though. 😂

@@Gwhisky Ha, yeah that tends to happen. Personally I don't categorize Fortified Wines along with Traditional Wines; there's just too many differences to do that IMO. Traditional Wines tend to work really well, especially when it's Full Maturation, with Peated Malt. Bruichladdich and Port Charlotte (and probably Octomore?) all use a portion of Wine Cask matured spirit for part of their batches, and Longrow RED is usually good stuff. As for Unpeated Malts, you don't see very many fully-matured ex-wine malts, I'm not sure I can name any? But as a finish, it can work. Oddly (or not?), Aberfeldy has been successful with this; several of their 18yo wine-finished bottles have been very good (one was Whisky Advocate's WOTY a few years ago), and their 15yo Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon finished bottle is a super value and deserves a review. Sure it's 43%, chillfiltered & coloured, but it's also $55 and interestingly good. It is hard to understand why Aberfeldy's sister-distillery Craigellachie presents its whiskies with full-integrity, and Aberfeldy does not?

That's a benchmark. The whisky gets a check if it's 46% or higher. 🥃

I see. I'll be looking for that Ledaig. :)@@Gwhisky

It's a beauty. Hope you can find it! 🥃

Yeah... too much! 🥃