Cragganmore 12 yr old - 2 recipes?

[Torodd]

I bought a liter of White Horse for £ 15 at Tesco yesterday. I gather that this is a special offer. It is a superb blend, and more than worthy the price.
White Horse is based on Lagavulin. Which is obvious from the smell, the bouquet and the aftertaste. But there is also a lot of smoke and malt in this dram. It simply taste as a good whisky.
I would put White Horse among the best blends on the market. Along Johnnie Walkers Red & Black, Chivas Regal, Teachers and Black Bottle.

A brilliant blend for the black, winter nights. I am a fan.

[Mallime]

After 2 years without drinking Cragganmore, I was recently offered some in Australia by a friend who had bought some on my recommendation. It had a distinct smoky aftertaste that I did not like and that I had never tasted in Cragganmore 12 yr old before. The Australian friend's bottle mentioned the smoky taste but I'm sure I never would have come to like anything with a smoky flavour (following a drunken experience in my youth, smoky-flavoured food makes me want to throw up). Are there 2 Cragganmore 12 yr olds out there or is there a new, smoky-only recipe? I note from the Michael Jackson whisky guide that the Connoisseurs Choice versions of Cragganmore are supposed to be smoky.

[skywalker]

I have a similar experience with Cragganmore, I think it depends on the daily performance of the tastebuds. On some days the smoky aftertaste is very clear, on other days not.

Torsten

[Admiral]

As an Australian who's been drinking Cragganmore downunder for quite a while, I believe the bottlings here have been fairly consistent over the last 3 or 4 years. Certainly the label and packaging has remained unchanged.

I believe Cragganmore is a unique malt in that one's appreciation of it is very much affected by what is or was already on the palate. Try a Cragganmore after dinner one night, and then the next night, have a dram before dinner. I have done this frequently, and found the "post-dinner" dram to be much more smooth, balanced, and "relaxed". Drunk before dinner, I notice more sharp elements (possibly the smoke or peat) that seem to be less obvious after a meal.

This has also been my experience with the Cragganmore Distiller's Edition. However, I haven't tried any independant bottlings to test my theory on!

I would be very surprised if UDV were shipping different bottlings of Cragganmore to different countries around the globe?

[Ize]

Skywalker has a point. Some days it just useless to taste whisky, Johannes van den Heuvel ( www.maltmadness.com ) calls it "bad nose day". When I have new whisky to be tasted and tested, I usually start with a reference whisky to make sure my tastebuds are functioning. For heavy whiskies, like Islay whiskies, I use at the moment Longmorn as a reference. For lighter whiskies I currently use Springbank.

Kippis,
Ize

[Scooter]

If you're a fan of what Chivas Regal USED to taste like, rather than this blend they have going now, try out The Pinch 15YR. Here in NY it's about $29 for a 750ml (I think...close anyway) For me the age (15Yrs) blows Chivas out of the water (at least the current blend). I know plenty of Former Chivas drinkers who used to swear by nothing but, but as soon as the blend changed, they found it lacking and switched to Pinch 15 as a equally priced but better blend. Don't get me wrong on Chivas. I'm still a fan but my taste buds appearantly have good memories and found a recent sampling of Chivas 12yr a tad dissapointing to what it used to taste like. Either way, it's still great stuff. I just like trying different stuff w/o going broke as does anybody else. Check out The Pinch 15YR.