Recently hubby has been watching a Scottish youtuber called Ralfy reviewing whiskys. He's a down to earth no frills rustic guy vlogging from what looks like an old stone shed. The most entertaining part, I think, is when he gives the marks. He rummages in his little plastic pot, fishes out a hand written score card and plonks it on the table. It's so cute!! This is his channel if you're interested.
In one of his recent videos Ralfy reviewed anCnoc 18. It's the first time hubby has heard of it, and he was intrigued by its review. Then he saw another YT channel where two American guys did a blind test on anCnoc 18, Macallan 18 and another whisky. Both put Macallan in third place. One put anCnoc in first place and another in second.
Hubby was very impressed by the reviews and ordered a bottle from the internet immediately. To be fair, he hasn't bought a bottle for a while. Even though this cost just under £100, he was pretty pleased with his purchase. The packaging was nice and clean and informative. The first thing I found very useful is that it teaches you how to pronounce the name correctly a-nock and not ank-noc. The other thing we noticed is this is a non chill-filtered whisky, a new term that hubby has learned from Ralfy recently.
He's seen the term on a few of his other whiskeys before, but never paid much attention to it.
The term chill filtering refers to an optional part of the whisky production process. As the name suggests, whisky is first chilled and then filtered. Just before bottling the whisky is cooled to a temperature around freezing point. As a result, certain substances, such as fatty acids, proteins and esters, clump together and get stuck in a special metal filter. Source https://whiskipedia.com
According to the above website, this optional stage is more for cosmetic reasons. It makes the whisky less cloudy and more desirable to whisky drinkers. Distilleries who don't chill filter their whisky say the process has a negative effect on the taste but whisky connoisseurs say the difference is negligible. For a non whisky drinker, this sounds like a production process to make a fine product even finer, like taking it from 99.8 to 99.9 score. Not sure if the extra effort is justified. But then, what do I know about whisky drinking?
Hubby took the anCnoc round to my brother in law's earlier this week when we went over for dinner. The anCnoc looked quite dark in the bottle, but when poured into the glass it was a much lighter golden shade. Both of the guys were very impressed with it, especially my brother in law who said it was nearly on par with his most favourite whisky of all time - Hibiki 21. That's quite a compliment. Hubby described it as silky and full bodied, with a complex taste, in a nice way of course.
Intrigued by my brother in law's comment about anCnoc being nearly on par with the Hibiki 21, I decided to try it myself. I took a whiff first. It had a nice floral flavour, with a bit of lemony dried fruit smell. It actually smelt quite nice, normally I find whisky smells like petrol 😀 Then I took a small sip. It was very pleasant on the palate and had a nice hint of honey and chocolate taste, but not sickly sweet. The lemon chocolate after taste lingered in my mouth for a little while. I wouldn't say it converted me to drink whisky, but it's definitely one of the nicer whisky I've tried.
