Kavalan Concertmaster Taiwanese Single Malt Whisky (750ml)

SKU #1166157 90 points Whisky Advocate

An effusive offering of dark fruits: cranberry, blueberry, and black currant. This is a beautiful marriage of the spirit and the port cask finishing, showing applesauce, aged oak, macaroons, and dry aromatic spices. Black currant holds sway on the tongue, yielding to caramel, ground ginger, a second burst of juicy blueberry, with a hot finish evoking strips of dried tropical fruit and flashes of ground pepper. Rewarding and flavorsome. (JM, Summer 2018)

K&L Notes

After so much time spent merely reading about the great single malt whiskies from Taiwan's Kavalan distillery, we can finally get our hands on them here in the states! The Concertmaster is aged in ex-Bourbon casks for the first three years of its maturation, before being transfered to Ruby Port pipes for an additional year of finishing. The integration is flawless and perfectly balanced -- there's enough malty texture from the Bourbon maturation with just enough red-fruited sweetness to round out the edges. It never tastes gimmicky or overdone. It's somewhere between the Glenmorangie Quinta Rubin and the Balvenie 21-year. The Concertmaster is less decadent than the Balvenie, but has more chocolate and cocoa flavors than the GlenMo. Lovely. It's the humid conditions of Kavalan's warehouse that allows the maturation to take place much faster -- and while I'm normally skeptical of such accusations, the proof is in the pudding here. This is real deal whisky from the next big thing. (David Driscoll, K&L Spirits Buyer)