The Solist sherry casks are actually only around 5 years old. You can find the age of your particular bottle by deciphering the cask number and looking at the bottling date, which is stamped on the back of the bottle. With a bit of math you then have the exact age. The cask number starts off by a letter specifying the type of cask (W = Wine, B = Bourbon, S = Sherry). This is followed by nine numbers, where the distilled date is given by the first six (YYMMDD). So if the cask number S100303011A is a sherry cask, filled on March 3, 2010. That said, even at only 5 years, this is excellent whisky indeed.
Excellent info. Applying that to my bottle this is revealed to be a cask filled in 2009, and mine has an export sticker with a production date of 2016. So about 7 years old in our case, and as you say, quite astounding for a whisky superior to many 30 year olds.
Thats interesting. 7 years is quite a lot for Kavalan. Most are in that 5 year range, or even younger. My bottle of the vinho barrique is only three and a half years old, but it is fantastic never the less. I find it even better than my sherry cask. The bourbon cask is also fantastic, it seems you can almost taste that it was matured in a sub-tropical climate, with loads of tropical fruit and fresh tobacco. It might be my personal favorite, That being said, these are all single casks, and so they all taste different. I had a solist sherry cask at whisky festival that was over matured and quite out of balance, where the oak influence dominated the palate with bitterness and an overly drying feeling you often get with really old first fill sherry casks. But that seems to be the exception that proves the rule with Kavalan. They are almost always exceptional whiskies.
The fact that they are all single casks was the one misgiving I had about putting this one to review. Unless you end up with one of the 522 bottles that our cask came from then you've actually got a slightly different product and some of our tasting notes and scores may not apply. In hindsight I should have made that more explicit in the video.
@@TheSingleMaltReview this is the data from Taiwan Kavalan, the Solist Oloroso sherry single cask is aged the most as 10 years and 9 months. The angel share rate in Taiwan is 8% a year, and Scotch is around 2%. Roughly you could treat the Solist Oloroso is about 40 years old scotch. Japan is at 4% and India is at 16%. By the way Solist Fino is kick ass too lol enjoy
Lovely review chaps, I actually just brought this bottle about a week or so ago. With the leather tube and lovely colour, had to import it from Germany to the UK tho. Really can't wait to try! Thank you for the first decent review on the Sherry Solist
This brand has really skyrocketed in price. As you guys mentioned in the comments below, as it is single cask, quality can vary. It seems as though you got one of the more exceptional examples. What a treat to have gotten that bottle at such a reasonable price!
I've passed this expression up on numerous occasions not having a taste profile or opinion from others on it. Your comments and rating really surprised me. I've had the fortunate opportunity of trying and owning some very very good whisky. You rate this at what I rate some Farclas Family Casks, Older Highland Park 25 to 30 year old, 70's Macallan 18's among others. I'm going to have to source a bottle of this. Thanks fella's
Cask number is: S090123070 I bought it in April this year at Changi duty free, so there might be a few of that cask still in circulation. From the sounds of things this one is slightly older than the average, and so it might be particularly good.
Funnily enough I have a 1989 Glenfarclas Family cask which is a not too dissimmilar whisky to this one (very dark first fill sherry). Tve Kavalan comfortably tops it though.
I love your reviews. Ignore all the idiots making stupid comments. I have a large collection of bourbon and scotch and your reviews are excellent and accurate. I think too many people want reviewers to make very professional reviews with all the fancy terms that mean nothing to the rest of us all over the world. All we want is a frank review telling us if its good or not so we can make an educated decision whether to buy it or not. Good whiskeys are becoming very expensive these days and I hate spending a lot of money on lousy whiskey. Unluckily I had to buy this bottle of kavalan on the secondary market but still got a decent price so looking forward to opening the bottle very soon. I have one comment about age. The only way to tell age is to know when the bottle was filled which is difficult. The codes only tell when the barrel was filled. I did not know that they had reached 10 years already. Keep up the good work and drink as much as you like during your reviews. I hate all the snotty reviewers nosing and smelling and sipping for ever. Just taste the damn whiskey.
Thanks for the support Bruce, we appreciate it. As you say we're not professional reviewers (otherwise our scoring system would start at 86 and end at 96 :) we just call it like we see it. But I believe there's value in that, especially in a world where professional reviewers scores are so homogenised and so uniformly high that it's difficult to derive much meaning from them.
*Right on, Dave: 96.* Generally, once someone has one or two decades of experience (not me, BTW) and has never encountered anything much better, then it's time to dish out those ratings closer and closer to a 100. I have no respect for ratings which never on principle go much beyond a 90. See my profile on Cellar Tracker on that matter ("Soteriologist"). Some day I will probably come out with a video about why I rate the way I do since all the wines and spirits I like to drink are rated by me between 87 and 100. The original 80 of the wine rating inventors was to designate a wine that is good purely by industrial criteria, because they are not contaminated, rotten, contain additives etc., not necessarily on the grounds of taste. Most of the mass produced, characterless, boring and even yucky wines in the supermarket would still be clearly above an 80 of the original scale-inventors.
I have not tried that particular Amrut, but based on the quality of other Amrut bottlings I can safely say this one is far superior. Not that Amrut is terrible, but Kavalan is in a different league (with a different price point).
Serge gave this and the Amrut Sherry a 91/100. I have rarely seen any review of Amrut Intermediate Sherry scored under a 90. Unfortunately the Kavalan is hard to come by but I will keep my hopes up to get a bottle. Cheers
You definitely enjoyed that one. I've been thinking of getting this. Serge rates it highly but he got a bad bottle too (73 points) so there's some batch variety. Amrut Intermediate Sherry is very fine by the way. Your tasting notes tell me that you guys would love a good armagnac. Oh, that's Taiwan Tim. Taiwan. Great review guys. Cheers.
$USD I'll assume? That's a hard call. Kavalan whisky across the board has jumped up majorly in price in the last year and a bit (brought on by a slew of awards). The Kavalan Solist remains an exceptionally good, unique dram. But on the other hand, when you're up into that price range there is a lot of very good Scotch alternatives. I think if you are specifically seeking out of sherry matured whisky then the Solist is genuinely one of the best examples, even at that (high) price. But if you enjoy Bourbon matured whisky just as much, you'll get a lot more bang for your buck by sticking to a Scotch option.
