Waiheke Whisky #2

 Morena all, second tasting set from Waiheke whisky. the first set was reviewed here and overall I liked them. This time it was the Dog Years Tasting Set - available here.

Here's the tasting notes:

New spirit
Nose rubber, astringent, paint stripping
Palte rubber, not much flavour,
Finish short, hot
3/10 Didn't like this as much as last time, although the last one was the peated new spirit

Sweet water
Nose pva, blue cheese, lollies, sweet,
Palate sweet, honey, ash, no complexity
Finish short, but of heat at end
5-5.5/10 Nose was good, but it seemed a bit one dimensional after that

Dyad
Nose sweet perfumed vanilla pods, Chardonnay, cut grass
Palate bourbon creamy Chardonnay spritzed, apple
Finish med hot

6.5-7 /10 Liked this more, interesting flavours coming through.

Cantankerous
Nose dark choc, sweet, watermelon , caramel,
Palate bourbon, choc, honey, maple, sweet
finish med long warming

7.5/10 (5.5) Divided the audience a bit, but I liked it. Interesting, if sweet, whisk which grew nicely on the finish.

Overall, similar scores to tasting set 1, there's some interesting things happening in their casks, and it looks like the complexity is growing nicely. Will continue to keep an eye on them.

Slainte

Divergence Whisky (NZ) tasting

 While down in Christchurch I was tasting some curiosity gin from The Spirits Workshop, and noticed they did whisky. So tried some of that too, admittedly with some trepidation as NZ whisky is very hit and miss - more miss for me. In theory we should be making stunning drams, but alas not so much. But signs are positive with some excellent stuff starting to pop up.

I liked it. Enough that I bought the tasting set here (I also got some gin, but none of you care about that, I can tell you it disappeared very quickly which is a good sign). 

I don't seem to have taken a picture of the tasting, so I'll stolen this from their website (soz!)

Virgin French Oak

• Nose: coke cola, vanilla, caramel, Benadryl, aniseed
• Palate: aniseed, caramel, Coca-Cola lollies, orange,   
• Finish: smooth med _ long aniseed

Very easy drinking, nice
7.5

Px Sherry Wood

• Nose: caramel, chocolate, oak, aniseed, peaches/nectarines, marshmallow, vanilla
• Palate: tingly, choc, aniseed, nectarine preserved oranges, ginger
• Finish: med long v warming dram

7/10 nose is great, palate good. This is the one I tried at the Riverside market...

Port Wood

• Nose: black berry, cinnamon nutmeg, apple  
• Palate: cinnamon spicy smokers lollies port soft 
• Finish: med sweet peppers

8 soft and interesting

All in all, I liked them. The Port wood was my favourite, but all good. I still have some left (200ml tasting sets are the best) so will be revisiting.

Last.FM 2022 summary

 Hi all, last.fm is a helpful wee site that collates (via an app) all the music you listen to. They then helpfully, summarise that each year for you. 

For those of you with addictive personalities, this can become an issue, I couldn't possibly comment, but some people have been known to replicate their vinyl playing on an mp3 player, just so the tracks are added to the last.fm site... 

No real surprises this year, I listened to fewer new artists, the top 10 artists is rather predictable (although note, they are not huge numbers...as there's a lot of diversity in the list). The most music was on Thursdays (huzzah, Thurs Night Music Night), and, err, I quite like the new Marillion album.