The Sassenach Blended Scotch
The Sassenach Blended Scotch
This next review for The Sassenach is going to be two firsts for Nice Sipper…the first review for a blended Scotch whisky and the first for a celebrity spirit.
Celebrities endorsing products is not a new concept, but celebrities launching their own brands, especially in the alcohol category, is a pretty recent phenomenon. Why sell your name for a fee when you can own the brand itself? The first big celebrity brand that I remember dates back to the aughts with Sean “Diddy” Combs’s Ciroc vodka. Then George Clooney sold his Casamigos tequila for a cool billion and all hell broke loose. Now you have actors, athletes and musicians all either launching their own brands or partnering with existing brands for new releases including Duane “The Rock” Johnson (Teremana tequila), Ryan Reynolds (Aviation gin), Peyton Manning (Sweetens Cove Tennessee Whiskey), Nick Offerman (Lagavulin), Matthew McConnaughey (Longbranch bourbon, part of Wild Turkey’s portfolio), Metallica (BLACKENED), Bob Dylan (Heaven’s Door), Bryan Cranston & Aaron Paul (Dos Hombres Mezcal) and the list goes on and on. I think it is safe to say that while a lot of these are pure money grabs some of them are legit enterprises and produce some good products.
Today we will be tasting Sam Heughan’s The Sassenach, which is a blended scotch made at the Loch Lomond distillery in the Highlands of Scotland. For those unfamiliar with Sam’s work, he is the male lead on the Starz network’s Outlander, which 6 seasons in, is an adaptation of a series of books written by Diana Gabaldon. My wife and I watch the series, but I first heard about the whisky when I listened to an audiobook called Clanlands: Whisky, Warfare, and a Scottish Adventure Like No Other while on vacation last year. The book was written and narrated by Sam and his Outlander castmate, Graham McTavish, and it’s a fun “read” given the interactions between Sam and Graham. In the book, he talks about how and why he developed The Sassenach and I was intrigued enough to find a bottle.
At first glance, The Sassenach’s bottle is quite appealing. It’s clear that a lot of time and attention went with their packaging selections, from the bottle itself, which is ribbed, adding a tactile element to the experience, to the cork closure. Normally, I do not dwell on the latter, but there are a few bottles out there (here) that, through terrible experiences, made me more aware of this element of packaging. Overall, the bottle seems more fit to be a decanter. It’s weighty, it feels nice in the hand, and most importantly, it pours very well. When I’m done with the whisky, I’ll likely keep this bottle and reuse it as yet another decanter on my shelf. My wife will be thrilled, I’m sure.
Packaging is great, but the liquid inside is what we really care about. This is a blended scotch, which means it can utilize both single malt scotch and single grain whisky in its overall blend. The Sassenach’s website acts more like a landing page to direct you where to buy a bottle online, depending on where you are located, and has scant information as to what’s inside the bottle. Luckily, given the celebrity status of the release, there’s a slew of articles on the web that paint a clearer picture of the whisky’s components. Sam worked in concert with Michael Henry, the Master Blender at Loch Lomond to create The Sassenach, and given that Loch Lomond has it on its website as a product, it’s safe to assume that all the component whisky in the blend is sourced from that distillery. Sassenach is said to blend a “high percentage” of single malts aged up to 12 years and is combined with an organic 19 year old single grain, all of which is then finished in Madeira casks. Some websites that I read claimed a blend of single malts aged from 9 - 20 years old, but having tasted it, the blend of up to 12 year olds makes more sense to me. I have reviewed both the Loch Lomond 12 Year Old and a Loch Lomond 20 Year Old Single Grain so I was pleasantly surprised to read that about The Sassenach.
Ok, time for the tasting…
ABV: 46%
How it smells.…very light with candied caramel apples, a little grassy and a touch of camphor, but overall it smells a bit young.
How it tastes….sugary sweetness kicks it off followed by apples and fruitiness. I don’t quite get any particular fruit per se (beyond the apples), more like a fruit salad. The fruit transitions to chocolate malty notes with some toffee, butterscotch and caramel. The finish is long and sweet with a touch of gingery spice that dries out your mouth a little, providing a slight bitterness at the very end of the finish. Not a bad bitterness, more like the long aftertaste after sipping an espresso.
Price....$90
Rating....🥃🥃
Final thoughts…This is a difficult one to rate. On the one hand, I enjoyed the sip and having gone back to it a few times, it holds up. It’s a nice Highland Scotch sipper that transitions well from fruit to rich malt with a general sweetness throughout the entire sip. On the other hand, at the $90 range for a blended Scotch, I feel like I should be getting more. If this was sold at a $60 - $70 price point, I’d probably always keep some on-hand.
The initial whiff comes across youngish. The sweet candied apples remind me a lot of the Loch Lomond 20 Year Old Single Grain that I purchased from Scotch Malt Whisky Society, with the grassy and camphor notes tying it to the 12 Year Old. At the start, the sweetness is more fruity in nature, clearly some nice influence from the Madeira cask finish. The sip then turns malty, with rich cocoa layered in with butterscotch and caramel. It’s a really pleasant, sweet, sipper from start to finish. I wish it had a little more spice worked in there, like in the SMWS single grain release, as it may have added the extra depth and complexity that I thought it lacked.
Unfortunately, at $90, I have to rate this a 2x 🥃 because the value just isn’t there, despite how pretty the bottle looks and how pleasant the sip. For blended scotch, at a $90 (plus or minus $10) price point, you are competing with Johnnie Walker 18 Year Old, Dewars Double Double 21 Year and Chivas 18, not to mention a bunch of releases from Compass Box that are providing a bit more oomph than The Sassenach.
Recommendation: Pass due to value
