Last Night's Tipple

Given that JMR's The Rich Spicy One that I bought on Saturday and wrote about on Sunday has the stated goal of being a rich, spicy malt like Macallan, I thought that it would be appropriate to have a pour of the one Macallan bottling that I currently own: The Macallan Fine Oak 10 year old. Recall that Macallan is known for aging all of its whisky in seasoned sherry barrels made to its specifications out of Quercus robur, or European oak. A few years ago, they decided to introduce the Fine Oak line, which, instead of being aged exclusively in ex-sherry Quercus robur casks, was aged in a combination of ex-sherry Quercus robur casks, ex-sherry Quercus alba (American oak) casks, and ex-Bourbon Quercus alba barrels. The result is a malt that has fewer sherry overtones than the standard Macallan but is still very sherry-influenced.

As I have written before, this is a pleasant whisky. I like it. I would never turn down the gift of a bottle. I would probably even buy it again. But it doesn't really bowl me over. To me, it's one dimensional -- light sherry, and that's it. It doesn't evolve in the glass. My perceptions of it don't change from sip to sip. It is what it appears to be, and that is all. It's also nothing like The Rich Spicy One. Not one bit. The Rich Spicy One is BIG and heavy and Scotch-y. The Macallan Fine Oak 10 is slim and elegant and demure. We'll repeat this experiment when I get around to buying another bottle of regular old Macallan 12.