Budget Buddies - Wine That Won't Hurt Your Bottom Line
Posted on February 14, 2020
by BriCongratulations Calgary! We survived the week of frozen tundra and now we can reward ourselves. Since the holiday season has just passed, certainly I'm not the only one with a tight budget. Therefore, welcome to my Budget Buddies tasting blog! I have chosen six wines that aren't only delicious but new products or vintages on our shelves. I'm a big fan of budget wines that give my palate satisfaction and bank account right on track.
So let's dive in and explore the six yummy deals.
Belisario Verdicchio Cerro $23.99
Wonderfully fresh and balanced with vibrant grapefruit characters, white flowers and hints of honey. Beautiful to pair with most seafood dishes or anything that needs a light crisp wine. This bottle is unique due to its shape. The first bottle of Verdicchio had the shape of an amphora, with the colour green, which also represents the colour of the grape itself, Verdicchio. "Verdi" means "green". The bottle shape was introduced in Italy many years ago and was used originally in the Côte de Provence region of France.
Some Young Punks Sauvignon blanc Quickie $19.99
Ooh la la, do we have a new treat for you! This is a new Sauvignon Blanc from Australia and my goodness is it fresh. Jen, Col and Nic are three punks making wine with a punch and personality. All three are extremely educated and dance to their own beat. Don't believe me? Give this a read " This is passion, a monster bigger than the three of us that leads us to soapbox, grandstone and sometimes passed out on the couch". Yup, these three are truly some young punks.
A zingy, refreshing, fruity dry white wine with passion fruit, citrus grapefruit and herbaceous notes on the nose; passion fruit and lime citrus notes on the palate and mild asparagus finish. Need I say more? Whenever you're in need of a Sauvignon with more weight and a gorgeous petrol note. This is the one to go for!
Andreola Bolle Prosecco Rose Extra Dry $ 23.99
Something very disappointing in the world of marketing wine is the perception around bubbles, especially pink bubbles. Here at KWM, we are trying to feed the movement of bubbles for any occasion, and not just to line our own pockets! Bubbles are too fun and lively to be left only for special occasions. Just take a look at this lovely number. Exclusive to KWM - this delicious prosecco is made from a blend of 80% Cabernet and 20% Merlot grapes. We have been representing Andreola for many years and are excited to welcome their first Rose to our sparkling wines section. Prosecco is an excellent wine to serve as an aperitif as it cleanses the palate and gets it excited for the courses and beverages to come.
Encanto Roble Mencia Organic $15.99
This is an organic red wine from Spain - and at a truly awesome price! Mencia is the grape and it is plush, lush, fruity and smooth, with notes of choco...
Scotch Malt Whisky Society of Canada February 2020 Outturn
Posted on February 9, 2020
by EvanFebruary's time is momentarily here
'cause is the shortest month of the year
Even with that day extra tacked on
The leap will still be come and gone
Time is fluid and perpetually flowing
Often I look back through the haze and wonder
O'er the tastings we together plunder
Now a century of months in one long row
Time spent, where does it really go?
With only empty green bottles left showing
Sure, this rhyme confounds and lacks sense
It is convoluted and ignorant of tense
Present and past together do mix
Along with our regular Outturn fix
One hundred now down, the future still owing
I was going to try and rhyme something with one hundred, given that this is the one-hundredth Outturn for the SMWS Canada - but obviously I am no doctor of the Seussian persuasion.
Regardless - happy one-hundredth Outturn from the Scotch Malt Whisky Society of Canada!
What does this 100th Outturn contain? Here is my rundown:
We start the lineup with a relatively rare single cask from number 80. CHAMPAGNE AND ROSES is only the second time we have seen a bottle from the generically-named Glen Spey distillery in green bottle form within Canada (the previous was 80.9 - A WOLF IN WOLF'S COTHING), and only the 10th bottle from the SMWS as a whole.
Up next is a funky Loch Lomond bottling - this time of the unpeated Inchmurrin persuasion. 112.49 shows plenty of fleshy fruit, especially on the palate, but also some weirdness in the form of sharpies and shoe polish on the nose. Not in an off-putting way (at least to me), it just adds nuance.
12.28 is next, and exciting in my opinion. I am a fan of BenRiach, especially the younger unpeated stuff from the Alistair Walker era aged in ex-Bourbon casks. The name ULTIMATE CREAM TEA is appropriate, with plenty of delicious tea and cream notes to be found within.
Like with the first bottle, the distillery for bottle four is not one seen very often, and 59.57 -DANCING A DUET is only the second time we have seen a Teaninich from the SMWS Canada over the one hundred Outturns. It is a distillery I have started to watch for when it comes to indie bottlings as they tend to have some wonderful minerality, grassiness and tropical fruit notes. This one is no exception and virgin oak of the second cask couldn't mask the distillery style.
Number five in the lineup is a black label bottle, so you know it is going to be older and more expensive. This one is a doozy on the age side of things and on the nose and palate. G6.8 - SOOTHING THE MIND comes from the closed and demolished Port Dundas distillery, which once occupied Glasgow. It is a grain, but the sherry influence overtakes much of the initial grain elements. To my mind, this is the best of the black label bottles we have seen thus far.
I was wond...
The Top 25 Selling Spirits of 2019 - KWM's Whisky Year in Review
Posted on October 25, 2024
by EvanIf you have visited our shop before, you can probably assume our best selling whiskies and Single Malt Scotch for the year are going to be a LOT different than your typical shop. We don't pallet loads of your standard 12-year-olds from Speyside that start with Glen - in some cases, we don't even stock them on a regular basis. This is not necessarily because they aren't good whiskies and it definitely isn't because we are trying to be snobs in Championship Vinyl fashion. We simply don't have the space to carry each and every whisky available.
I love High Fidelity, but I hope we never come off like that at KWM! We try to be whisky inclusionists, but there is so much good stuff out there that we can't carry it all. When push comes to shove, we will take that indie label exclusive that you can't find elsewhere over the regular bottling that you can find everywhere. Because those single casks and indie labels are the ones that really excite us. That is why this list is so far askew most top sellers lists.
So, without further ado, here are KWM's Top 25 selling spirits (we might as well just say Whisky - you have been to our shop, right?) for 2019. For bottles that are still available at the time I wrote this, I have linked to our web page for purchasing them.
25. Balblair 1990
Every once in a while, we are offered a deal by importers on some older stock that they need to move in order to make room for a newer product. This sometimes happens when a distillery is undergoing a rebrand, as it did with Balblair. We don't take every deal that comes our way, but in the case of the Balblair 1990 we knew it was a very good whisky and the price was right.
Potential Alternatives: Balblair 18 Year, An Cnoc 24 Year
24. Coole Swan Irish Cream
This Single Malt... Wait a minute... How could this be? What is a LIQUEUR doing in our top 25 spirits list when the rest are all whiskies?!? Well, if you are turned off of the idea of Irish Cream by Bailey's I don't blame you. But don't let that lead you to believe that all Irish Creams are created equal. Coole Swan (and the more recently released and also excellent Five Farms Irish Cream) are made with actual, real cream and don't taste like liquid plastic. Only the lactose intolerant shouldn't enjoy this stuff.
23. Shelter Point Rye KWM Cask
The number of bottles we have left of this amazing single Cask of Alberta Distiller's Rye is dwindling, and I will be sad to see it go when it sells out, which should be soon. As I write this there are 25 bottles remaining This is a stunning 100% Rye Whisky at nearly 60% ABV - and I am not just saying that because I helped pick the cask.
22. Scotch Malt Whisky Society 72.65 - 100mL
Having a Scotch Malt Whisky Society bottle hit the top 25 li...
Scotch Malt Whisky Society of Canada January 2020 Outturn
Posted on April 16, 2021
by EvanHappy New Year!
January is a time of new beginnings, a brief moment to recollect at days past but also dream of what the future holds. The new year means seven new cask strength bottles to discuss and share with friends.
If you are a Scot, a Scotch Whisky Drinker, or both; it also means the spectre of Rabbie Burns looms in the air. He hovers above us, anxiously waiting for his moment to pounce, which as always will happen on January 25th: the day of his birth. Then we will all be forced to don a fake Scottish accent, wear kilts and belt out Gaelic Rhymes in a Seussian manner and gulp down some haggis before we get to the dramming.
Enough of that for now. We have at least a few days more before we do all of that. For now, let's talk about Scotch Malt Whisky Society bottles and the spirits that THEY contain. Here is a quick rundown of the first Outturn of 2020:
There were a few surprises in the lineup, including number one. Starting with an Armagnac? Preposterous! Typically an Armagnac would be too rich and earthy to start a tasting and when they have been included in past Outturns, they usually ended up fourth or fifth in the lineup. Not so for this CUP O' KINDNESS, which is lighter than most other Armagnac I have tasted. Light, but not lacking flavour.
SOUL O' PLAYS AND PRANKS arrived next, and takes its name from one of the Scottish Bard's many poems. The SMWS of course selected a bottle to honour Robbie Burns this month, and 58.29 does so nicely. Rich and elegant with beautiful fruit notes, and hailing from one of the most picturesque distilleries in Scotland.
Third in the lineup was NUTS, SPICE AND INTRIGUE. This is a wonderful unadulterated Dalmore, showing plenty of complexity for a cask that was just ten years of age when it was bottled.
Number four was the oldest bottle of the tasting by a full decade. WALKING INTO A FRUIT PUNCH is not just a pun your dad would make, it is also a wonderfully fruity dram from distillery 35.
We landed on the shores of Islay for the fifth bottle in the lineup. SEA, SAND AND SOOT is an unpeated whisky from distillery 10 that vacillates between being fresh and vibrant to tight and mineral-driven, yet without as much salt as many other SMWS Bunna's have shown recently.
DISTOPIAN CYBERMAN LUBRICANT. That has to either be the title of a 1970s Arthouse/Sci-Fi/Porno film or an SMWS bottle distilled in Campbeltown. Perhaps it is both. Either way, the whisky version is wonderful and exhibits a soft and complex palate with the bright barley and mechanical/metallic character that only The Wee Toon's three distilleries can pull off with any consistency.
Our final green bottle of the Outturn gave us peat in a different manner than we might expect from a typical number seven in a lineup. ACME GHOST REPELLENT gives us mainland peat with little to no coastal notes and hails from an unlikely and ...
Merry Christmas! Day 25 of the 2019 KWM Whisky Advent Calendar - SMWS
Posted on December 1, 2024
by EvanWe made it! Twenty-four days straight of whisky in small bottles to make that difficult trudge to Christmas Day all the more pleasant and fulfilling. Did it work? Did you find some new favourites? I know I did.
It is fun to take this time to reflect on the Whisky Calendar as a whole. Did some bottles stand out for you? For myself, I had tasted many of these bottles before, though some I had never paid as much attention to. The most exciting part for me was tasting some that I had never tried before. Now that I have written about and tasted them all, here is a list of my personal top five:
5 - Buffalo Trace Bourbon - I was saddened when we found out that this was in a plastic bottle, but regardless of that, this shows Bourbon in a nutshell. It has plenty of flavour and even a bit of nuance, and it is very inexpensive for a full-sized bottle. Especially if you are used to Scotch whisky prices.
4 - Glenfarclas 21 Year Old - Despite my protestations in having to find something new to say about Glenfarclas for the blog post, I think I managed it. On top of that, this is a wonderful bottle to revisit, so I will do so whenever I possibly can.
3 - Kilchoman KWM Cask - Of course this would make the top three. I am a sucker for Kilchoman, especially at high proof from ex-Bourbon casks. Our cask checks those boxes nicely and delivers sweet and smokey whisky that is complex beyond its seven years of age.
2 - SMOS Ben Nevis KWM Cask - Yeah, I helped pick it, but I will take any chance I get to revisit this one while we still have some of it around. This is a deliciously old-school sherried malt.
1 - Loch Lomond 18 Year Old - It is no secret that I have been enjoying bottlings from this distillery recently, be it from the distillery labels or from independent bottlers like the Scotch Malt Whisky Society. I was excited to taste this one, but it still blew away my expectations. It has a cereal driven, fruity smoke and peat that reminds me of Ardmore, but the Amaro-like bittersweet notes make it entirely its own beast. I loved this dram.
How was the 2019 KWM Whisky Calendar for you? Which bottles would be in your top five or top three? Feel free to tweet me @sagelikefool and give me your thoughts!
Speaking of Ardmore - for the time being, we still have one more whisky to delve into, and that is the special 100ml Scotch Malt Whisky Society bottle on the top of the calendar box. Firstly, let's go through a bit of background on this not-so-secret whisky club!
The Scotch Malt Whisky Society is the world's largest whisky club, and also an independent bottler. As a club, it has close to 30,000 members all over the world, and branches in close to 20 different countries. It is an independent bottler that has been six times ...
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