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Going Natural Wine Club - December 2021

Posted on January 19, 2022

by Abi

Champagne Marie Courtin Resonance 2017

Cote de Bar, Champagne, France

100% Pinot Noir

Let’s celebrate the final month of 2021 in style!!

For this month’s GNC, you’ll be enjoying the fantastic Champagne Marie Courtin Resonance Extra Brut 2017. This 100% Pinot Noir Champagne is coming from one of the most influential grower-producers within Champagne.

Dominique Moreau took over a small vineyard of mostly 40 to 50-year-old Pinot Noir, with a vision of producing single-vineyard, single varietal, single vintage Champagnes from biodynamically grown grapes- farmed with meticulous care, and vinified au naturel. Not only has she become one of the leading figures for small-production Champagne, she has also put Cote de Bar back on the Champagne map. Cote de bar had always been seen as the grower region for the big champagne houses, where the farmers would grow the fruit only to sell to Moet et Chadon, Veuve Cliquot amongst others. A few maverick farmers saw the unique potential within Cote de Bar, and decided to make their own Champagne. Since then, we have seen people like Dominique taking over the Champagne scene.

Her vineyards are located just outside the town of Polisot, where they sit on east/south-east facing slopes and their roots diving deep within the clay-limestone- kimmeridigan soils. Each vine produces low-yields, resulting in high complexity within the wines. All of these attributes, plus Dominique’s desire for zero-dosage, these wines have a fierce minerality within the core.

Dominique believes in a spiritual approach in her vineyards, using pendulums to aid in evaluating the evolution of the growing grapes, as well as other moments within the winemaking process. She believes that “the pendulum changes its natural rhythm and swing based on the energy emitted from a living being, whether person, vineyards or wine.” All of her wines are wild-ferments, with native yeast being included within both fermentations.

“Résonance” refers to the balancing energies of earth and sky that affect the creation of a wine from its surrounding terroir.

Having Dominique’s wines as exclusives at the store was an inspiration for our Going Natural Club. We waiting until December to share this wine with you in hope that you’ll be able to share with your loved ones over the Christmas season, sparking joy for all! We hope you all enjoy the holiday season and we cannot wait to see what the New Year brings!

Pip pip, cheerio,
Abi
abigail@kensingtonwinemarket.com

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KWM 2021 Whisky Calendar Day 15: Inchmurrin 12 Year Old

Posted on December 15, 2021

by Evan

Door number 15 reveals another treat from Loch Lomond Distillery for us to delve into. This time we will be tasting the Inchmurrin 12-Year-Old!

We talked about Loch Lomond Distillery when we tasted the Loch Lomond Original back on Day 6 of our 2021 KWM Whisky Calendar. In that post, I mentioned how this mad scientist's laboratory of a distillery creates a plethora of different styles. Well, Inchmurrin is one of those styles!

Loch Lomond makes and has made many styles of whisky over the years and many are given different names. This can all be confusing for the consumer. What are you buying if you purchase a Croftengea? Or an Old Rhosdhu? Or an Inchfad? How about a Craiglodge? All of these names have been used for different Loch Lomond styles over the years, but the company behind the distillery has worked on streamlining the Loch Lomond brand to three main releases.

These three types of Loch Lomond show differently from one another and are given different names and descriptors on the bottle. The main style is named after Loch Lomond itself. It shows light to moderate peat along with fruit and spice.

The other two styles are in what the company calls The Island Collection, as they take their names from islands within the Loch.

One is Inchmoan, which amps up the peat and spice.

The other, which we will be tasting today is Inchmurrin, which is unpeated and shows a lighter, more floral and fruity character.

There are a total of thirteen stills within the Loch Lomond Distillery, however, they are not all the same. Included in this number are your typical swan-neck style pot stills: the type you see at most Scottish distilleries that make single malt whisky. Beyond that though, things get weird. There are also three pairs of straight-neck pot stills, which are sometimes called Lomond stills. One of these pairs has a water cooling system installed on the top of the still that the heated vapour hits before going through the narrowing neck/pipe for collection. This results in much more reflux and leads to a lighter, softer, fruitier spirit being produced.

The Inchmurrin style is produced using one of these straight neck "Lomond" Stills, as shown below.

Image taken found on the @LochLomondMalts Twitter feed

Sometimes called the 'Grassy Isle' the Island of Inchmurrin that this style takes its name from is the largest island within the Loch itself. At 120 hectares in size, it is the largest freshwater island in the British Isles. The Isle of Inchmurrin - or Mirin's Island - is named after St Mirin. A monastery built on the island in the seventh century held a chapel dedicated to the Saint, though only ruins now remain.

Loch Lomond Inchmurrin 12-Year-Old - 46%

Made from using straight necked "Lomond" stills. ...

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KWM 2021 Whisky Calendar Day 14: Glen Scotia Double Cask

Posted on December 14, 2021

by Evan

Door Fourteen is upon us, so let's hop on board a transcontinental flight and head from yesterday's stop in Louisville, Kentucky and return to Scotland. This time we are heading to Campbeltown for the Glen Scotia Double Cask!

As I have said half in jest at a few Scotch Malt Whisky Society Tastings previously: Glen Scotia is easily one of the top three operating distilleries in Campbeltown. When it comes to The Wee Toon, it is typically Springbank Distillery that gets all of the love from whisky aficionados. It is easy to see why - Springbank is a grungy Victorian throwback in look and feel. It is an anachronism - a distillery out of time and out of step with modern life - just as some say Campbeltown itself is. Springbank is rustic, dilapidated, inconsistent, and often impossible to find bottles from nowadays. And it is all the more loved because of that.

To make matters worse, Springbank whisky is getting impossible to keep on the shelves right now due to very little stock reaching our province, which is creating a perpetual FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) around the brand.

It can be easy to forget that Campbeltown is home to three operating distilleries. Besides Springbank, there is also Glengyle. More important than that though is Glen Scotia Distillery. Like its Campbeltown cohort Springbank, the Glen Scotia Distillery itself is chock-full of grimy, Victorian, and industrial character in all of the right ways.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, back when Campbeltown was a more busy, industry-driven place with a bustling fishing port, Glen Scotia had much closer neighbouring distilleries. They abutted Glen Scotia Distillery itself - sitting just on the other sides of the walls that encase its lot. At this time, the story goes, Campbeltown had more distilleries than churches which themselves numbered more than thirty. Boom times eventually went bust, and for quite a while only two distilleries remained in the town, though that could have been considered one and a half for how little Glen Scotia operated in the early 2000s.

Thankfully Glen Scotia has risen from the ashes over the past decade and a half thanks to investment by the owners and excellent management by the head of production Iain McAlister and the awesome team working with him. Like the distillery itself, Glen Scotia as a brand has been getting a lot more deserved love and acclaim from critics and consumers alike. I fall into this category as well, as Glen Scotia's whisky has made up some of my favourite drams over the past three or four years.

Glen Scotia Distillery just so happens to be owned by the Loch Lomond Group, who has also managed to create a resurgence in that distillery and brand as of late. Glen Scotia itself has a fairly robust lineup of five core releases at the moment, ...

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KWM 2021 Whisky Calendar Day 13: Old Forester Bourbon

Posted on December 13, 2021

by Evan

We are diving into Door Thirteen and grabbing another Kentucky Straight Bourbon today, this time it is the Old Forester 86 Proof!

This marks the second Bourbon we have pulled out of the 2021 KWM Whisky Calendar, the first was in our hands back on Day Four.

There are plenty of resurrected American Whiskey brands out there claiming to be liquid-based on some pre-prohibition recipe that their great-granddaddy used to make their whiskey. Some of these stories have a remote bit of credence to them. Some of them are no more than marketing BS. As a Bourbon lover, I honestly don't care much about the history of the distillery that makes the whiskey. I do like to know where it comes from and what the mash bill consists of but more for discussion and talking points than any real need for the information. That being said, it is a lot of fun when you get to talk about brand new distilleries making great whiskey like New Riff and also the older long-running distilleries like we have today with Old Forester.

Old Forester Distillery and its owners Brown-Forman are one of a handful of makers of Bourbon and Whiskey in the United States that have a legitimate and continuous distilling history going back more than a century. Back in 1870, Old Forester Bourbon launched and was the first to be sold exclusively in glass bottles with a sealed top. This was a savvy move made by creator and pharmaceutical salesman Goerge Garvin Brown to market the authenticity and consistency of Old Forester in a market flooded with questionable and often adulterated whiskey.

In the beginning, there was no Old Forester Distillery - instead, the Bourbon was blended from three different distilleries and bottled at 90 proof or 45% ABV. Just over 30 years after launching Old Forester Bourbon, George Garvin Brown purchased one of the three distilleries he used for blending: The B.F. Mattingly Distillery gave him direct control over the whisky supply used for the Old Forester brand.

American Prohibition kicked off in 2020 with the ratification and enforcement of the Volstead Act. Prohibition lasted until 1933, and it is the primary reason that we see a lot of fanciful stories about those whiskey recipes that that great-granddaddy used and revived brands talking about their by-gone history that has an 80-year gap where they didn't exist. Prohibition destroyed many companies in the whisky, beer, wine and spirits game and made a large majority of operating distilleries shut down, never to reopen. Old Forester managed to survive and continue operation during Prohibition by receiving one of only 6 Federal licences within the state of Kentucky to continue making whiskey for 'medicinal purposes.

As mentioned earlier, Old Forester is owned by a company named Brown-Forman. Named after George Garvin Bown ...

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KWM 2021 Whisky Calendar Day 12: Glenmorangie 10 Year Old

Posted on December 12, 2021

by Evan

For Day Twelve, we have a tried-and-true dram in our Whisky Calendar. Perhaps it will be your first time having it. Possibly it is an old friend and you have a bottle on your whisky shelf already. Or maybe you are like me and it has been a long time since you have tasted the Glenmorangie 10 Year Old Original.

Glenmorangie Distillery resides in the Highlands in Tain near the mouth of the Dornoch Firth, just before it meets with the North Sea. Its nearest neighbours include the small and very young Dornoch Distillery which is a 12-minute drive to the north across the Dornoch Firth Bridge and the Balblair Distillery which is around a 10-minute drive west. The Dalmore and Teaninich Distilleries are a 25-minute drive to the south and west along the A9.

Known for its taller than usual stills, Glenmorangie Distillery was legally founded in 1843, though there are records of distilling on the property dating back to at least the mid-1700s. Compared to many other Scottish distilleries, Glenmorangie has been relatively stable production-wise over its history: There was a five-year period of silence from 1931 to 1936, but since then Glenmorangie was been consistently operating except for the usual equipment placement and off months.

Glenmorangie's unusually tall stills. Traditional Scottish Highland Band used to show scale. Photo taken from Glenrmorangie's Facebook page.

Its ownership history is similar as it has only changed hands a few times over the past century and a half. The most recent change happened in 2004 when the Macdonald family which owned Glenmorangie PLC sold the company to luxury goods producer LVMH. The Ardbeg and Glen Moray distilleries also came with Glenmorangie in the sale to the conglomerate. LVMH stands for Louis Vuitton Moet-Hennessy and owns many different brands both in apparel and spirits. Apparel brands include Tag-Heuer, Sephora, Givenchy, Marc Jacobs, Christian Dior, and many more. On the spirits side, LVMH owns Belvedere Vodka, Dom Perignon, Krug, Veuve Clicquot, Chateau d'Yquem, Chateau Chevel Blanc, Cloudy Bay and much more as well.

Being owned by a company with that kind of brand power has allowed Glenmorangie (and Ardbeg as well) to not have to worry about enticing outside investors or justify upgrades to production for quite a while. It has also guaranteed worldwide distribution of its whisky, which is part of the reason for Glenmorangie currently being the 5th best-selling single malt Scotch brand globally.

What has gotten sales to that point is Glenmorangie's core range, which includes the 10-Year-Old Original we will be tasting today as well as a series of three different cask finishes. These are the Lasanta (Sherry cask finish), the Quinta Rubin (finished in port casks), and the Nectar D'Or (Sau...

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