IT'S 1ST OF APRIL AND YOU GUYS KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS! 

HAPPY APRIL FOOLS!

Oh wait... it's May already??

Wha..what!

April Fool's! We totally didn't forget and accidentally left this blog post in our drafts and so posted it a month late.

So turn your calendars back and picture yourself on 1st April reading this.

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April Fool’s is on us, though sometimes we all feel like a fool even though it’s not April (Pretty prescient huh?). So I guess this month it’s a little special because we get a treat to some special whiskies. That way we won’t just be fools, we’ll be drunk fools! And our friends will have videos of us doing something stupid.

This year online whisky retailers The Whisky Exchange (TWE) and Master of Malt (MOM) have something special for us.

Starting with TWE, we have us a bottle titled “Extremely Young, I Wish I Were Older”, a line no one in the history of ever says.

TWE tells us it’s a Speysider bottled at 51.7% abv, and that “this deceptive drop has been matured in first-fill ex-bourbon casks meaning that, even at the ripe old age of 30, it’s a fresh, lively and playful dram packed with vanilla and rich, fresh fruit.”

So apparently TWE’s prank is that this whisky is not actually young, it’s actually a 30 year old bottle.

What did I tell you? No one ever says they wish they were older. That label going “I Wish I Were Older” is the real joke here. 

With 869 bottles, it was gone in under an hour.

Any who, tasting notes are as follows: 

NOSE

A complex cake to start: layered lemon drizzle and Victoria sponge, filled with buttercream.

Notes of gummi bear and mint imperial float in around the sides, accompanied by growing pineapple and pear.

Spicy notes of black pepper and nutmeg build through the middle, leading to sweet, butterscotch-and-orange-studded sugar cookies.

PALATE

The lemons are back and lead the way – lemon drizzle cake topped with candied lemon slices. 

The gummi bears sit alongside the citrus, joined by spiced sponge cake and white chocolate.

Sweet cream and milk bottle sweets follow, with slowly developing mint fondant. The leafy and spicy notes round things out, with hints of aniseed and a handful of herbal lozenges.

FINISH 

Sweet and buttery to start, with aniseed and nutmeg building before fading to leave vanilla butter cookies and a hint of mint cream.

What is cool though, is that each bottle comes with a UV torch that reveals the true label. It’s something we first saw in TWE’s Whisky Show 2019 bottlings.

Moving on to the other mega online whisky retailer, MOM, in what feels like a heavier focus on Good Friday rather than April Fool’s, they’ve released some very nicely labeled whiskies that feel very holy?

I mean, the stained glass windows make us feel like it’s holy water they’re blessing us with.

But can’t complain! It looks gorgeous. If you look closely, the label depicts a pair of hands raised up to an ethereal cask y’know with the full beams of light emanating from it thing. Very choral aaaaaaaaaaaaaah if you get what I mean.

So what is this hallowed venerable cask that has us on our knees with arms up high?

Apparently MOM has finished some pretty good whiskies in casks seasoned with Tonic Wine.

You’d be forgiven if you don’t know what that is, mostly because we didn’t know what it was either. 

But for the uninitiated, us included, tonic wine is basically medicinal wine, which can come in the form of herbs and spices added to the wine, or with caffeine and vanillin added. Basically they are fortified wines that can even improve blood pressure and circulation.

I wonder if these photos were actually taken last year but they did it in monochrome for effect. Is it just me or he kinda looks like Mitchell from Modern Family? (Image Source: Buckfast Abbey)

These fortified wines were made by monks in a monastery and were basically a product extension if you will, from the core range of wines made by the monasteries. Really creative in adding new lines of revenues these monks, and what better than to make them medicinal.

In fact, it was often consumed by the monks as a pick-me-up. Call it their version of Starbucks.

“Yo Brother Arthur, you alright? You looked kinda sleepy at this morning’s recital.”

“Yeah Brother Benedict, just haven’t had my morning cup of tonic wine. I’ll be alright.”

Two famous brands of tonic wines are Buckfast, which is actually still run by monks at the Buckfast Abbey in Devon, UK, and Wincarnis, which you can find in Singapore and Malaysia.

In MOM’s latest bottle, the tonic wines from Buckfast were used for its berry-like taste. Overall it’s said to make the whisky richer and more complex. However, given this was an entirely fresh experiment, it is fairly small batch. 

This release comes in two forms.

The first is a 10 year old single malt.

Nose

Butterscotch, buttery pastries, barley, swiftly joined by vivid notes of damson, blackcurrant juice, potpourri, and menthol.

Palate

Juicy redcurrants, perfumed malt, almond butter, stewed plums, very subtly rubbery at points, a touch of Alpine herb freshness.

Finish 

Vanilla pod, dense red wine, chewy caramel.

The second part of the release is a 21 year old blended malt.

Nose

Dried citrus peels, cough syrup, peanut brittle, rye toast (just slightly burnt), fruity coffee, plum pudding.

Palate

Still quite syrupy, now with notes of shortbread, cracked black pepper, hazelnut spread, thyme, dried flower petals, prune, and Jammie Dodgers.

Finish

Lasting summer berry notes, with a dusting of cinnamon and nutmeg over the top.

Trick or treat, that’s all we got for April Fool’s 2021, see ya next year! 

UPDATE: WE GOT ONE! We'll be sure to review it for you guys!

@111hotpot