Whisky Show 2024 – Decadent Drinks

Posted on February 15, 2025 by Carissa Hickling

London’s Whisky Show brought many delights. One was time spent at Decadent Drinks – the folks behind the irreverent Whisky Sponge – which has “retired” as a brand! We didn’t quite get through the full range – yet we definitely covered a gamut from light to heavy moderately aged to mature!

Glen Garioch 21 year (2003 / 2024) 1st fill bourbon hogshead 55.1% 1 of 248 bottles (Decadent Drinks)

Our explorations began in the highlands…

Nose – Fruity, juicy, then shifts into hazelnut chocolate nougat
Palate – Lovely fruits n spice n everything nice! Waxy, with a roll around the palate kinda substance
Finish – Almost a hint of copper

What a wonderful way to begin with fruity fabulousness. Yum!

Aberlour 33 year (1989 + 1991 / 1999) Ed No 29, Refill Hogsheads 49.7% (Whisky Sponge) GBP 365

Nose – Gorgeous sherry! Unlike some heavy sherry drams – this was not “in your face” – instead just beautiful dark fruits
Palate – More elegant and refined than your typical Abelour, lovely balance
Finish – Sweet and long

A proper “grown-up” whisky! Sometimes Aberlour with its devotion to full-on sherry can be a bit much – this was incredibly nuanced and complex. Just wow!

Glen Grant 31 years (1993 / 2024) 52.7% 129 bottles (Decadent Drinks – Whisky Land Chapter 3) GBP 595

Nose – Surprisingly strong – rich fruits and how!
Palate – What fun! Prickly ginger spice, buttercream
Finish – Sponge cake

If the Glen Grant 12 year old from the 1970s was elegance and refinement, this was the crazy cousin showing very different colours!

Notable Age Statements Blend 17 year 53% (Decadent Drinks) GBP 95

As a play on NAS – No Age Statement – the folks at Decadent Drinks have a series of Notable Age Statement whiskies!

Nose – Classically elegant
Palate – So balanced, sherry berry
Finish – Don’t laugh – but my tasting companion dubbed this quite a “bitchy” finish!

What more do we know? This is what the folks at Decadent Drinks have to say:

This bottling is composed of a 1^st fill sherry butt of 2001 blended malt and a 1^st fill sherry butt of 2006 Aultmore. The resulting, multi-vintage mix was bottled with slight reduction at 53%.

This is our attempt to create an older style, sherry matured malt whisky profile. Designed to be easy, fruity and highly drinkable with plenty of classical, earthy and elegant sherry character.

Ardnamurchin 7 year Ed No 100 57.9% (Whisky Sponge – final edition)

Nose – Sherry joined by glazed maple with a hint of peat
Palate – Sweet and a bit sharp – young and brash, then it settled down to become super fruity and juicy, stewed fruits
Finish – Quite active

This was a whisky of contrasts – active and sharp then balanced, vacillating in between quite different characters. It was almost as though it had a kind of identity crisis!

It all made sense when I looked up more details. Here is what they had to say:

This is Whisky Sponge Edition No.100. It’s a 2016 and 2017, 7 year old Ardnamurchan small batch. It’s a potion that Angus cooked up in collaboration with the good folk at Ardnamurchan Distillery. It’s a mix of 1^st fill and 2nd fill, peated and unpeated sherry octaves. We mixed them all together and married them in a refill sherry butt for over six months until the whole potion turned 7 years old, then we bottled it with slight reduction at 57.1%. For those of you that deify transparency, here’s the recipe…

2017 – Unpeated 1^st Fill Sherry, Peated 1^st Fill sherry, Peated 1^st Fill Sherry, Peated Refill Sherry
2016 – Unpeated Refill sherry, Unpeated Refill Sherry, Unpeated Refill Sherry, Unpeated 1^st Fill Sherry

We wanted to celebrate and mark the final edition of Whisky Sponge with a whisky that was excellent quality, one that was collaborative and that we’d had a role in creating and making unique to us, and that was modern in the best sense and looked to the future. We feel we have succeeded in this – we hope you agree.

It was quite an interesting experience!

Ledaig 29 year (1995/2024) 52% (Decadent Drinks – Westie Sponge 4)

Nose – Coffee, cinnamon, sweet spices, cakey
Palate – “I’m here now!” Big, bold, brilliant flavours! Sherry and coffee, cherry, chewy… lightly peated
Finish – Long and strong

Westie Sponge is a series devoted to the Western Highlands and Islands – which naturally needed to include this Ledaig from Tobermory distillery from Isle of Mull.

Bowmore 20 year (2004) 53.3% 171 Bottles (Decadent Drinks – Whiskyland Chapter Two)

Nose – Fresh and bright, a delightful sea breeze, perfume then dark fruits, lush
Palate – Sweet peat, fruity in perfect harmony, elegant and well-rounded
Finish – Lingers

What more do we know? It is a refill hogshead from 2004. In some ways it was an un-Bowmore-like Bowmore – less forceful and more restrained. Lovely.

Ardmore 22 year (1997 + 2000) 53% (Decadent Drinks – Whisky Sponge – Equilibrium 3rd Edition) GBP 215

Nose – Love it! Peat and sweet
Palate – Perfect balance of peat and sherry, unctuous mouthfeel, meaty yet soft too
Finish – Marshmallows and cherry

The deep ruby hues (without any added colour!) means there has been some serious contact with an ex sherry cask! Here’s what else they have to say:

For this final bottling in the Equilibrium series, we took a refill matured 1997 and sherry finished 2000, medium peated highland malt and married them together in a 2^nd fill sherry hogshead. That mix was then bottled as this 22 year old with a few degrees reduction at 53%.

The result is the softest of the three Equilibrium bottlings in terms of peat level, and probably the richest in terms of sherry character. But overall, this is a wonderful, complex and beautifully quaffable sherry and peat influenced dram, one where age and time have also worked some pretty delicious tricks…

Mortlach 16 year (2007) 48.5% (Decadent Drinks – Equinox & Solstice Summer Edition)

Nose – How extraordinary? There was a distinctive chaat masala aroma of black salt! Tangy, tropical fruits
Palate – Sherry edge, no lightweight at all. Oily, big and bold. Fruity and full. More of that chaat masala too!
Finish – Coffee

It was muscular without being heavy-handed.

Miltonduff 11 year (2012) 1st Fill Sherry Hogshead 48.5% (Decadent Drinks – Equinox & Solstice Winter Edition) GBP 110

Nose – Rich yet not overpowering, juicy fruits then shifts into a mocha sundae, creamy eggnog
Palate – Think of a delicious black forest cake with dark cherries, yet restrained too
Finish – Beautiful

A clear Speyside hero in its best form.

Thank you Elise from Fredericton New Brunswick for making our time with Decadent Drinks so rewarding!

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Christmas Sherry Bomb – Aberlour A’bunadh Batch No 35 60.3%

Posted on December 29, 2015 by Carissa Hickling

One of the first cask strength whiskies I remember picking up was Abelour A’bunadh. I was in Singapore airport, they had lots of different whiskies to sample however this one caught my eye. I will admit, I knew next to nothing about it at the time…but it was very affordable, I hadn’t tried it before so it joined my journey back to Bombay.

It was opened with a mad group of friends and became a hit. For many, it was also their first introduction to an unabashed sherry bomb. And yes it packs a punch with alcohol ranging from high 50s to low 60s.

Over the years, more than one A’bunadh has made its way in and out of my collection. While it is No Age Statement (NAS) blended from barrels between 5 to 25 years, you can tell immediately by the batch number what year the whisky was bottled. And there are slight variations between batches though the overall rich robust berry sherry element remains the core profile you can count on.

Most A’bunadh’s I’ve had were from the 20s… however a few from the 30s too. Then we started our whisky tasting group and a whole new world of whiskies opened up! And Abelour’s A’bunadh was no longer a priority when passing through Singapore. However as it remains an affordable dram, I did pick up a bottle or two a few years ago. Which meant that I had both a Batch No 35 (bottled 2011) and Batch 40 (bottled 2012) kicking around in my cupboard.

For Diwali, Batch No 35 joined the Whisky Ladies Cask Strength evening – which was greeted by enthusiastic delight from one friend who remembered well our earlier A’bunadh evenings. Her infectious appreciation lead in no small part to the bottle being well dipped into that night!

So when I was in the mood for something ‘Christmasy’ while we still had our tree up, revisiting the A’bunadh seemed about right. Overall, my findings were in complete agreement with our Whisky Ladies with only a few additional elements here and there.

Abelour A’bunadh Batch No 35 (NAS / 2011) 60.3%

Colour – A deep dark burgundy with ruby highlights
Nose – Figs, rum soaked plum cake, lots of cinnamon and cloves, gingerbread, pronounced prunes, black cherries, Christmas cake, classic sherry-bomb
Taste – Oh baby! That rummy yummy rich plummy Christmas cake, a drizzle of caramel, warm and smooth, apply cider, raisins, prunes, robust and bursting with character, a little ginger, creamy and very berry Christmassy
Finish – Think curling up by a cosy warm fireplace… replete with roasting chestnuts, cinnamon
Water – This one works straight yet also does a happy dance with drops or a dollop!

Absolutely perfect for a chilly evening (ok that means 22’c in these parts!), with a kitten curled up purring beside me, watching the Christmas lights dance in our tree.

And just in case you were curious, here’s what the folks over at Abelour had to say about A’bunadh:

Nose: Terrific aromas of allspice, praline and spiced orange, in harmony with deep notes of Oloroso Sherry.
Palate: Orange, black cherries, dried fruit and ginger, spiked with dark bitter chocolate and enriched with lingering Sherry and oak. Superlatively full bodied and creamy.
Finish: Robust and long lasting, with bittersweet notes of exotic spices, dark chocolate and oak.

In short absolutely hits the spot for a Christmas sherry bomb dram!

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Whisky Ladies Conquer a Cask Strength Diwali!!

Posted on November 12, 2015 by Carissa Hickling

We are no shy retiring missish lasses… no siree! Mumbai’s Whisky Ladies aren’t afraid to take on a trio of cask strength malts against the backdrop of India’s Festival of Lights – Diwali! After all, if firecrackers are bursting around us, why not have a few sherry bombs and whisky booms delighting our senses?

Last night we explored:

And here is what we found…

Glenfarclas 105 NAS 60%

Colour – Burnished copper
Nose – Smells like Christmas! Very sherry-y, caramel, then vanilla notes as it opens up
Taste – Sweet, dark and smokey, honeyed prunes, raisins, nutty and chocolatey
Finish – Smooth yet also quite dry – especially with a few drops of pani (water)
Pairing – We just happened to have a few truffles on hand… so naturally started testing out pairings and pronounced it successful though “The kick comes back after a hit of chocolate truffles!”

Comments…

“It’s just like bad life choices… with caramel”
“Like cafe patron!”
“No sweet tooth here, just alcohol tooth!”
“Now it is simply a sherry wine bomb!”

This Speyside dram got things off to a rollicking start! Some missed the step of… “Perhaps you may wish to spit your 1st sip“ as going from 0% to 60% in the first swig can be a bit jarring. However our ladies were undaunted and found it became increasingly dangerous as this dram does go down rather well, easy to just keep sipping and sipping and sipping…

Ichiro’s Malt Chichibu 2009 French White Oak Cask #2357 63.1%

Colour – Golden straw
Nose – A little spicy, very sweet, light floral notes and yet can pack a punch or hit you between the eyes too!
Taste – Cayenne pepper, very summer-y and light, flirty, smooth yet confusing, bright and bubbly
Finish – Deceptive… there but much more subtle than the aroma and palate would indicate
Water – A couple drops of water rounds it out
Pairing – For some, the Chichibu and strawberries was a killer combination – who needs champagne if you have an effervescent whisky? For others, it was the brie cheese that did it. And the balance? Well… let’s just say there are a few of the opinion that chocolate goes with practically everything, doesn’t it?

Comments…

“From the wrong angle, just a sniff will get you!”
“While light and flirty, if you look at it the wrong way, it will kick you in the ass!”

This young Japanese single cask has many unique qualities and distinctly different from the straightforward Glenfarclas. It has a bright light element that completely belies its strength. Again – a dangerous combination!

Abelour A’bunadh Batch No 35 60.3%

Colour – A deep dark burgundy with ruby highlights
Nose – Cinnamon and cloves, gingerbread, honey, pronounced prunes, black cherries, Christmas cake, classic sherry-bomb
Taste – Apple cider, caramel, warm and smooth, very ‘Christmassy’, rum-soaked raisins, robust and bursting with character
Finish – Think curling up by a cosy warm fireplace…
Water – This one works straight yet also does a happy dance with drops or a dollop!
Pairing – Best with a sharp old cheddar, needs something that can hold its own with such brilliant flavours.

Comments…

“Beautiful things are happening in my nose! And its not what you are thinking!”
“This is one you notice every sip… and yes! It is probably getting you drunk…”

When the A’bunadh came out, there was literally a squeal of delight from one lady – as she would be re-uniting her taste buds with an old favourite. Talk turned to the slight shifts in flavour profiles between batches, fruitless efforts to track down certain batches from the 20s! Disbelief they are now into the 50s and a recommendation to simply ‘grab it’ if you see it!

What makes this Speyside stand out is its unabashed sherry quality. Rather than simply acquiring a sherry ‘finish,’ A’bunadh matures exclusively in Spanish Oloroso sherry butts, gaining a rich, robust and surprisingly well rounded profile.

Even better was the realisation that the price point for both Speysides remains reasonable (i.e. below $70) though the Japanese is near impossible to find at any price!

Our whisky ladies relished this cask strength trio – without a doubt a Diwali night to remember!

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