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Wiser's DeLuxe 10-year-old

Price:

$22.99/750ML

Bought at

Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation (Halifax)

This is a bottle of Rye which we got some time ago but the end of which we have let linger, awaiting review. I was suffering from one of my Rye cravings and picked this bottle, hoping for a glimpse of what an older rye might be like, and a different experience. This hope, as it turns out, was not destined to be fulfilled. The smell is pungent with ripe fruits, even on the edge of spoiling, especially plums and bananas; not, however, the bananas one finds in Irish Whisky, but something closer to Jack Daniels. The dryer smell of roasted grains helps temper the pungency, but the end result is still a heavy smell, by no means disagreeable, but not exactly intriguing all the same. The texture is very nice, rich and smooth; the taste starts out with a breath of flowers before it hits the palate proper, at which point it becomes solidly oaky and sweet, reminding strongly of rum, a characteristic which I do not like in Rye (hence perhaps my harshness towards this one), worse yet, I do not find that the taste evolves much as the experience progresses, the intensity merely increases. Luckily, the aftertaste is a redeeming point, the overbearing oak dying quickly and the sweetness refusing to linger as it so often can, thus leaving a flavour of grain and orange which is rather pleasant: without this saving grace, I have little doubt that drinking more than one or two drams at a time would have been difficult.

Along with this bottle of Wiser's came a small sample of their eighteen-year-old version of the same product, giving me a chance to compare the two. The lack of difference in the smell led me to fear the worst at first, but the taste proved to be something else: there is little difference as such, rather, it mostly lies in the lightening of those characteristics which I found most overwhelming in the ten year version. The sweetness is very much humbled, perhaps balanced out by a new saltiness that is now present; the oak is still there, but, instead of sticking out like a sore thumb, it is now married with the rest of the aroma, lending the Whisky a quasi-smoky character which I found appealing, if not striking. In comparison, this is a much more pleasant drink, though one finds it disturbing that one should need wait eighteen years before finally being able to enjoy this Whisky.

On the whole, I was rather disappointed with this Whisky: Mr. Wiser's words, Quality is something you just can't rush, had rather appealed to me, but I'm afraid they turned out to be more marketing than fact. The eighteen years version is rather good, don't turn down a glass if it is offered you, the DeLuxe version isn't altogether bad, just forgettable: I would really recommend Gibson's instead. But then, I am beginning to think that Rye is good as a cheap drink (i.e pay $20 'n get somethin' decent) rather than a premium drink, and I have noticed that, as the price goes up, the gap between the experience you get for Rye and what you get for, say, a good scotch blend increases significantly.

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