Wooo woooo! Let’s all jump on the grain whisky train! Seems like all the whisy companies are doing it these days. If you are wondering why grain whisky is becoming so popular all of a sudden, I have a little theory about it.
As you might have noticed, single malt whisky prices have been increasing at a good rate. At the same time, whisky companies are releaseing more “No Age Statement” expressions and some are even discontinuing their age statement ranges. All these things are connected. Recent higher demands for single malt whisky coupled with lack of production during the 1980’s and 90’s and a bit in the 2000’s means that there just isn’t as much aged single malt whisky to go around. The solution seems simple for the whisky companies. Remove age statements on single malt whiskies and release single grain whiskies which are much more abundant and cheaper.
So why didn’t they do this a long time ago? Well grain whisky tends to be less flavourful than malt. It’s a cheap filler for making blends. So the type of people interested in single malt whiskies are not really the kind of people who are going to be enthusiastic about grain whisky. But hey that attitude is changing. Maybe because of marketting? Maybe because of desperation… Personally, I find it all fun and interesting as long as prices don’t get stupid.
So what we have here is pretty much the epitome of this grain whisky trend. It’s a grain whisky from an undisclosed distillery with an age statement to make it look important.
The Strathcolm 12 was released in the fall of 2015 along with the Strathcolm 8 year old and the Strathcolm NAS. Gasp! A “no age statement” grain whisky! Feels like scraping the bottom of that barrel. But hey maybe that’s where all the good stuffs gone. By the way, Angus Dundee are behind these expressions. They own Glencadam and Tomintoul.
Distillery: Undisclosed Scottish grain distillery
Type: Single Grain
Age: 12 Years Old
Cask: NA
ABV: 40%
Price: £29.09 from the Master of Malt
TheMadVatter
Nose
Dried pineapples and persimmons. Short bread. Toffee ice cream.
Taste
Intense dried fruits with this mellow dried melon or persimmon flavour. The orange fruit in trail mix. Creamy like a latte. Slight coffee notes like a latte.
Finish
Sweet and gentle toffee ice cream. Slight bitterness develops like coffee bitterness.
Rating
7.5
Afterthoughts
A surprising dram. A lot of fun fruity flavours on the nose and start of the palate. Then moves to coffee notes. It’s like having desert and coffee after supper. Reminds me of the 3 course chewing gum from Willy Wonka’s. I am actually quite impressed with this despite my rant about grain whisky. Actually grain whisky can be very nice. At least I think so. Other will definitely disagree.
Adventures in Whisky Land 
How can they call it a single grain when they state, using wheat and barley???
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Single grain just means that it is whisky from a single distillery made using column stills and some type or types of grain. Barley is considered a grain as well. If you made whisky from only malted barley but used a column still it would be called grain whisky in Scotland. Malt whisky on the other hand must be made with only malted barley and distilled in pot stills. The “single” term just refers to being made at one distillery as opposed to being a vatting of whisky from different distilleries.
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