This video caught me eye and I wanted to hear what you had to say about independent bottlers I have been drinking these for about 3 years now from various sources and have to say I have had the opposite experience than you. The worst are from The Old Malt Cask series . One of out large distributors here in California is K&L wines. They have Old Malt Cask put "Bottles exclusively for K&L Wines" on the label but I believe they do this for all their clients to make the product appear "exclusive". Out of the 5 bottles of various distilleries as high as 27 year age statement the only one that is good for my palate is the 27 year old Cameronbrige "Grain" whisky . The 21 Glengoyne @54.7 % ABV and the 19 Tamdhu @ 50.3 ABV are both a solid C- with my rating system and both now open for 16 months. I have been tasting them consistently hoping for a better taste but now realise these are completely disappointing. I do have some signatory Vintage Edradour sherried whiskies that are OK but not amazing. I have another Tomintoul 23 SV in their beautiful decanter bottle that you show in the video. I paid apr. $150 US dollars from Europe and bottle now has been opened for 4 months and @ this time and at 1/2 bottle I also give this a C. The alcohol burn even watered to 86 is totally unacceptable for a 23 year old whisky in my opinion. I'm hoping in another few months it settles down and gets better. I do have a bottle of Bunnahabhain 2009 11 year SV @ 67.3 and a bottle of Strathmill 13 Year Old 2006 (Cask #6) - Signatory Cask Strength I haven't opened yet and hoping for the best. My conclusion at this point is that a lot of distilleries are selling or "getting rid of casks" that they feel are inferior for their branded product line and off sell these to the independent bottlers. Horst @ wkisky.com stated in one of his You Tube reviews that when the distilleries sell these casks to the independent bottler they are not allowed to taste or cherry pick their own casks. This would explain the concept of selling off their inferior casks. I would warn your viewers here to be very careful as its almost impossible to know if your getting a good bottling . Its a sort of Russian Roulette buying these independent bottling s as their is no incentive from the distillery for quality control and their is also an issue with the independent bottlers especially if they are not allowed to taste the juice inside the cask before purchase. It would be awesome if the independents would sell dram samples of all their offerings buy I believe they would be afraid to do that based on my experience. What I do now is if I am interested in buying an independent bottling "I must" find a positive review on sites like www.whiskybase.com/ This is the problem I have personally experienced and my opinion only.
OK first of all please accept my heartfelt condolences on such a long shitty run like this. I've heard of a few but it seems you're being targeted by the universe! So, in principle, I would agree on most of your points. One thing I doubt, though, is the fact that reputed Independent Bottlers are picking up casks without tasting. Reason I say this with a degree of certainty is because I run a whisky club and we do our own single cask bottlings and even we demand and receive samples for tasting. Note that I said REPUTED Independent bottlers. There might be some that are doing what you just said. So here's what I do to try and avoid this trap. I've picked a few distilleries that I am confident about and choose to stick to those. Bruichladdich. Bunnahabhain. Laphroaig. Glenlivet. Glenallachie. These are just some examples. I have more, obviously. The second thing I do is kinda stick to my type of maturation. For me it's first fill bourbons served at cask strength. Hence, my IB's tend to favor this type of maturation. I avoid big fat sherry bombs because I'm really sensitive to sulfur and there are more than a few duds floating around. I will buy sherry matured IB's under very rare circumstances. And when I do it's almost always after trying it with a friend first. If that's good then I can trust that distillery with it's sherry matured expressions (but I am always tentative). Finding good reviews on WhiskyBase is also not good enough for me especially because of the sulfur issue. Some people are sensitive and some are not so I tend not to rely on WhiskyBase reviews. I'll stick by my statement of finding great whiskies in the IB universe. I've had my share of duds but I think I've figured out my own little method to navigate them. Of course, at the end of the day it's just luck. And you seem to have had a lot of bad.
@@MaltActivist The only real way would be able to by a tasting sample and we know that will never happen. It all comes down to a leap of faith! I wish there was a company here in United States that sold samples. Thats the only true solution!
