Origin: Cork (Ireland)
Type: Blended Irish Whiskey
Strength: 40%ABV
Ageing casks: Ex-Bourbon
Chillfiltered: Yes
Added coloring: Yes
Owner: Pernod Ricard
Average price: € 60.00
Official website: www.jamesonwhiskey.com
Vote: 84/100
We conclude the tasting of the Deconstructed Series with the third bottling, which like its brothers highlights one of the components of the well-known Jameson blended.
After the whiskey pot still and the maturation casks, the protagonist here is the grain part, fundamental for blends (for economic reasons too), which, in the intentions, should give a fresher and ‘greener’ touch to the whiskey.
Personally, I have no great love for this genre, but in blends it often has its uses, and on paper the experiment appears interesting to say the least.
Tasting notes
The major contribution of grain makes the nose dominated by lime, between juice and zest, accompanied by refined sugar, anise, cereals in honey, pear, candied lemon and almonds. Vegetable notes with balsamic overtones sneak in among the aromas, where the more candidly sweet component of vanilla becomes a thread of cream filling a yoghurt plum cake. More fresh perhaps than lively, it certainly doesn’t go unnoticed.
Quite creamy and sparkling on the palate, ginger and lemon boost sweet but not extreme evocations of vanilla, sugar paste, honey and pear and lime gelée, with rougher intrusions of liquorice root, nutmeg and wood. Cereals and dried hay form the background, and even a hint of toast appears.
Fairly brief finish of sugar paste, vegetal notes, hints of liquorice and cereals.
It’s a pity about the finish, which pays for the general lightness of the blended, because for the rest it’s a really pleasant and different dram, which together with Bold represents a valid variation on the theme that hints at the great potential of this whiskey, too often unexpressed to meet the generalist market.