Balvenie 21 Madeira Cask, 40% abv.

This is a bottle revisit. Travel retail bottling.

Nose: light hints of apple cider, burnt wood, some less spicey type of spices, backend of coconut, background of chemicals. After awhile there are burnt vegetation, fruit rinds, toffee, burnt caramel. Nothing suggests madeira.

Palate: smooth, like water with a hint of sugar and tea, maybe some elements akin to bread, mid palate has some burnt coconut, back palate has burnt sweet wood (young tree branches that don't seem to break off, green internally, and have white sap leaking). Everything is pretty light. Again, where is madeira?

Finish: slight smoke, burnt vanilla and burnt coconut, cooking spices but not hot.

I revisited this because I thought the original bar I tried it at in Seoul sold me perhaps a watered down fake bottle (found out some bars in Seoul do this... getting pricey whisky into South Korea is hard business), but it appears they did not. It is still tooooo similar to water, nothing to do with maderia and not much in terms of taste, maybe the low abv has a part in that, but it seems something is wrong with this bottle... should have known once it hit LAX duty free, they don't sell the good stuff (I found out this is also not true later... but ~90% true as LAX DFS picked up selection the past year, but then went backwards again). Or maybe this bottle is also bad? No idea, but still a disappointing experience.

Grade: C-

Whiskyanalysis.com, 8.52 ± 0.22 on 9 reviews
Scotchwhisky, Dave Broom, 78 points
Whisky advocate, Dave Broom, 82 points

Image courtesy of Eric Yee.

Eric Yee

🇭🇰 🇺🇸(LA, SF) -> 🇯🇵 (京都, 東京) -> 🇰🇷 (서울, 부산)