Auchentoshan Sauvignon Blanc Finish
Limited Edition | 47% ABV
It doesn’t have to be this way
I’ve just finished listening to the Dramface podcast and I couldn’t have picked a better dram to align with one of the topics posed.
I’m sure you know the podcast, right? Perhaps you’re a reader not a listener, but I implore you to give it a listen. For me it’s not only helped me rediscover podcasts, but also multi-tasking. Listening as I do other things, it turns out, is possible. Who’d have thought?
The Dramface podcast is hosted by our charming shepherd Gregor McWee, and that isn’t his alias. It was decided with a name as fine as that, a Dramface alias wasn’t needed. Alongside Gregor each week are a mix of core guests made up of Dramface team members Roy, Scott, Rob and Gordon. The latter three skip in and out as availability and spots allow, making room for occasional guests from inside and outside the Dramface space.
Gregor’s skill, regardless of who’s in attendance, is maintaining order and focus while letting the sheep wander. It’s based on a conversational format and this inevitably means occasional meandering from the field of topics, but Gregor somehow manages to tighten the fences and tie-shut the gates to keep things corralled. He has a rare ability to listen and hear at the same time, all the while predicting the direction of the informal chat and politely drawing the wandering guests back from their off-topic corner of the field. This helps hugely with the flow of the thing. I’m enjoying muchly.
Anyway, he doesn’t share the topics in advance, and the ‘surprise’ topic for this latest episode Twenty Three is “Almost a distillery”. Coincidentally, it was released the same week that Roy hosted another vPub based on his “Ignored” theme; whiskies widely available and globally recognised yet somehow potentially ignored, either in his environment or perhaps the wider space of whisky botherers. This brand I have in hand and glass today, is a perfect fit for either discussion. I need to consider why.
What was remarkable about all of the brands put forward across both broadcasts, was the familiarity of the names; these were not small, struggling or hidden distilleries. On the whole they were global brands; huge and familiar whisky perennials, yet with very little interest coming from the enthusiast camp.
I know what you’re thinking, they’re so successful, they don’t need it. They are global and recognised and doing quite well without the geeks. Maybe. But I’ll argue that it’s the branding that’s successful, and in so many cases the whisky poured from the bottles bare little resemblance to the whisky that’s actually made at the respective distilleries. How it’s put together and presented is often so utterly profit-driven and clumsy that they render it insipid. Sometimes horrible.
I often wonder how these releases are selected. Have these really been made by a competent blender? Some of these producers don’t even mention a blender or blending team. Regardless, with heavy dilution, even heavier use of caramel colouring and aggressive chill-filtering rendering things pallid, it seems abusive, it’s betrayed in the end product and therefor easy to walk past.
That’s frustrating. Because while I rail for my natural and more intact expressions I understand the need to have entry level products, I really do. My frustrations lie in the question; why can’t it be both?
If we accept not all producers have the will to do a Springbank, why can’t more of them do a Glencadam, a Loch Lomond or a Tomatin? Just as examples, they have fairly inexpensive entry level offering at lower ABV and lower price-points, yet both are capable of bringing much more natural and truer-to-spirit releases further up their range. If natural whisky truly is where the future is at, then the ability to have entries in both lanes seems to just make sense.
Auchentoshan is a place I’m desperate to champion. It’s a local distillery to me, I’ve visited on many occasions and it’s a pretty place. In recent times there has been much investment in keeping the walls white and the flowers bright. Sitting up the hill from Glasgow’s mighty river with glimpses of the Erskine Bridge and the estuary beyond, on a bright, clear day it’s a great distraction.
More than that, it is utterly unique, not just as a Lowlander but as the only surviving traditional, purely triple-distilled malt in Scotland. This is akin to Irish whiskey in the central belt of scotch, and there’s nothing like it. The range is extensive and there are many affordable expressions that sit alongside the gilded and the rare. The branding is smart and identifiable, and despite a huge array of limited editions and travel retail expressions, the core range I recognise from 20 years ago seems to be, more or less, still intact. Yet I can’t find a single one that hooks me.
Dramface is coming up for 20 months old at this point, and I think I’m correct in saying, this is our first Auchentoshan review. It’s a big brand, it says something that not one of a twenty-plus strong team have chosen to write about it.
It has many defenders in the whisky world who have enjoyed real epiphanies sipping a glass of its elegant and clean liquid, and I am one of them. However upon every single visit I wonder why it’s the independent releases that are stunning while the official releases remain dull. It may or may not be due to their choices of how it’s presented, but with no care or focus for anything a little more natural, for me, it’s an easy malt to dismiss.
We have to turn our attention towards the parent company; Beam Suntory. Great work at Glen Garioch and a mixed bag at Laphroaig don’t make up for the abuse at Bowmore or Auchie. You only have to look at the utterly resplendent reviews for independent Ardmore and then sip the official Legacy release to see where things can go wrong. However we hear, with different folks in charge in recent times, that things may be improving. Great noises coming from Glen Garioch, certainly, with a determined drive to move towards the old-school style, with direct-fired wash stills, the return of their in-house maltings and increased fermentation capacity. Could that philosophy spread to stablemates? We can hope.
So, can Auchentoshan give me something interesting from the official canon to allow me to get closer to that unique malt from the outskirts of Clydebank?
Enter their Sauvignon Blanc Finish release.
Review
Auchentoshan Sauvignon Blanc Finish, Limited Release, 47% ABV
£52. Available in some markets, Amazon in the UK.
Is it weird I was drawn to this? I should be able to spot something amiss here from fifty paces. A £50+ NAS labelled as a malt that is crafted to be enjoyed chilled should sound klaxons . Yet, my bargepole remained stowed, my curiosity was piqued and I pulled the trigger of optimism. For a couple of reasons.
Firstly, I’m serious, it’s an Auchentoshan and I want to find a good one. Secondly, while I’m reluctant when it comes to my try-before-I-buy red wine matured or finished malt, I seem to quite enjoy the acidic zesty burst of fruit that can come from a white wine cask. Finally, this one is bottled much paler than your typical Auchentoshans and at a respectable 47%, despite no mention whatsoever about chill-filtration or natural colour, these aspects drew me.
In the UK, it seems to be an Amazon exclusive, indeed the Auchentoshan website directs you there.
Nose
Green apples, lemon curd, floral; like lilies, sweet cider vinegar, grape juice, a a little tinned peach and white pepper
Palate
A sweeter arrival than expected, the dominant apple note is a sweet Golden Delicious rather than a tart Granny Smith as the nose suggested. Custard too, with that lemon curd note, lemon drizzle cake, salted caramel, some drying nuttiness and an acidic sharp, fracturing layer of dryness that’s really quite jarring.
The finish is bizarrely sweet and drying at the same time. It’s like two malts are delivered from the same glass and they’re not keen to merge.
Still, this is interesting, I happily go in for more.
The Dregs
So what of that throw away line up there - crafted to be enjoyed chilled?
Well, you can’t talk if you don’t do, so I threw a tumbler of this in the freezer while I wrote this. Sit down for what’s about to follow.
I can get behind this.
It’s not how I want to enjoy malt whisky and it renders a single malt into something a little different; an easy drink rather than an absorbing flavour spectrum.
I’ll be honest though, I tore through it remarkably quickly, this happens when I sip whisky over ice too. Or meddle with those dangerously easy to quaff whisky cocktails. Boof! Lovely. And they’re gone. It makes it too easy to ‘put it away’. Same with this glass here. Yet, it works as a pleasurable experience; it’s nice. As you may expect, the flavour definition is lost and the mouthfeel changes somewhat, but with the lack of ice in the frosty glass it’s thick and soothing. Just don’t expect to make useful tasting notes from your freezer pour.
So this works as intended. Or, did they try it and then realise it’s better when it’s freezing cold and therefor pretend it was designed as such? I’ll lean towards this being deliberate. If you visit Auchentoshan they do push the cocktail angle and flexibility of whisky thing and there’s no doubt there’s a place for chilled whisky. Not everyone takes flavour notes, right? Ironically, this drive has also produced the one other Auchentoshan I would consider buying; their Bartender’s Malt, also a 47% ‘Limited Release’.
All in all, I have here a whisky that I’m not upset about, it’s actually pretty good. It could have done with a little something to help the marriage of bourbon and sauvignon blanc casks, and I think by that I mean time. It’s a little fractured and I think a touch rushed. Perhaps, after finishing, some resting time might’ve helped but I’m shooting in the dark.
It’s a positive step. It brings me closer to Auchentoshan as it’s the first official bottle on my shelf in years. And I may place their Bartender’s Malt alongside it too, if for no other reason to learn how they’d like me to drink that one.
Anyway, to do a Gregor McWee and ‘circle back’ to the original point of this. With the huge variety of releases coming from Auchentoshan, why not release one (or two) that are fully natural and true to the pure and clean malt being made there? Don’t leave it to the indies. Don’t be tempted to chill-filter it or colour it. Dilute it, sure, but to a point where there’s still a profit to be had yet the spirit is still intact. Your 47% seems reasonable, but I’m flexible.
Finally, encourage us to chill and mix our whiskies by all means, but the messaging, and arguably experience, behind this release suggests it may only be good for that. Once more, why can’t it be both?
Because there’s someone in Scotland’s Dear Green Place who is desperate to have an Auchentoshan to really shout about. It’s in there, let’s have it.
Score: 5/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. WMc
Other opinions on this:
Got a link to a reliable review? Tell us.