Thursday 10 November 2011

High Spirits Mesquite Smoked Single Malt

A single malt from Flagstaff, Arizona. Yup, I too was not aware of a whisky distillery in Arizona. This is apparently 7,000 feet above sea level. You obviously need oxygen masks at that altitude.
I assume that they use mesquite because they don't have any peat locally.
The bottle was brought to the Advanced Whisky class by one of the students, Jim Coleman of www.whiskyboys.com and I tasted it on the night he brought it a couple of weeks ago, but tasted it again today more clinically.
It's not my cup of tea, the mesquite smoke is characterful to say the least.
The nose is quite full-bodied, with vanilla, leather and mesquite (I assume, never having experienced mesquite) smoke; with water, the smoke becomes cigar smoke and fruit characters of melon and possibly mango are masked by the smoke.
The palate is full-bodied, quite rich and medium-dry with obvious mesquite (I hope) flavour, burnt paper, a nice, spicy touch and slightly medicinal and it finishes of medium length (surprisingly) with notes of bandages, hospital wards and, overpoweringly, mesquite smoke.
As a curiosity, it is well made, but its flavours are too over the top for me.

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