Cardhu Gold Reserve Single Malt Game of Thrones: House Targaryen
This review is in honor of this past Sunday’s debut of House of the Dragon, the Game of Thrones spinoff prequel story about the Dance of the Dragons. For those that did not understand a lick of my previous statement, welcome back from your underground bunker – believe it or not, Y2K did not end the world….but back in 2011 a series called Game of Thrones based off of the (thus far incomplete) book series by George R.R. Martin debuted on HBO. People loved the show (for many years at least) and many companies wanted to cash in on the phenomenon. Diageo was one of these companies and they released a series of Scotch Whiskies from their portfolio of brands based on the main character families from the show. Fast-forward 11 years and HBO has released a prequel of the Game of Thrones series called The House of the Dragon, so I have decided to do a tasting of one of these bottles, the “House Targaryen Cardhu Gold Reserve”.
In the Game of Thrones world, House Targaryen is the original ruling family in the fictitious land of Westeros. They conquered the land with their dragons and their house words are “Blood and Fire”. These are even written on the label of the bottle, so as a Scotch drinker, I am expecting something fiery and smoky. Perhaps something from Islay since the Targaryens initially landed on Dragonstone, also an Island. This should be exciting.
ABV: 40% (ruh roh, this is not starting well)
How it smells…green apples, camphor, a little bit of nail polish
How it tastes….thin at the start, a bit watery….but then toffee kicks in with a touch of peppery spice at the end. The finish is short, but full of honey and caramel.
Price…. $40 - $50 (I bought these so long ago I don’t remember, but I know almost all of them were in this range)
Rating...🥃🥃
Final thoughts….Much like the last couple of seasons of the Game of Thrones TV series, this was a disappointment. It sort of tastes like I had a few ice cubes in it, the ice cubes melted completely and then enough time passed for my drink to get back to room temperature. I have never had Cardhu before so I have no frame of reference for what to compare it against within its sister releases, but this Gold Reserve seems like a basic, cheap scotch that shouldn’t cost more than $25 - $30, like the Glen Moray Elgin Classic.
This sip wasn’t great, which is perfectly fine. It wasn’t terrible either, though. It also wasn’t expensive (albeit, it was overpriced), but it just wasn’t great. It was sweeter than expected, particularly given the nose. But overall, it was thin and watery. I don’t like 40% ABV whiskies. I’m not one of those that needs every sip to be cask/barrel proof, but for Scotch the bare minimum is 43% but 46% is probably where most should bottle at. Otherwise, you lose too much flavor and the character of the whisky. If the Cardhu Gold Reserve had more depth in the barrel, then it was lost in the bottling when it was diluted down too far. Given that this falls under the “meh” category, a 2x 🥃seems seems appropriate.
If the above didn’t already convince you, I am a bit of a Game of Thrones fanboy in addition to being a whiskey nerd, so when my two worlds combined, suffice it to say, I fell for it hook, line, and sinker. In my own defense, I knew what I was doing and knew it was all just a marketing ploy to exploit the show’s popularity in order to move some product, but I figured all the bottles were basically $40 - $50 so worst case scenario, I have a bunch of basic whisky that I just slightly overpaid for. I have had these for years so I never purchased them at the inflated prices I have seen some of them at over the years. I have them all, except for the “Mortlach 15 Six Kingdoms” which came out after the show ended. A store by me has this one, and I’m tempted to get it because it’s a decently aged Mortlach (and I like Mortlach) with a decent ABV at 46%, but the price tag is $160 so that’s a lot of inflation via marketing since I can get the Mortlach 16 for about $100-$110.
My biggest gripe about this Diageo series of releases is that clearly not a single person involved with this marketing ploy read the books or watched a single episode of the show, and worse, they didn’t even bother to check Wikipedia to do just a teeny weeny bit of research. As I mentioned above, the House Targaryen was a ruling dynasty for centuries. Their house mantra was “Fire and Blood”. They were ruthlessly fierce, riding to battle on the backs of fire-breathing dragons. To represent this via Scotch, Diageo chooses a weak-ass, 40% ABV, SWEET whisky! Dragons. Fire. Smoke. Smoky scotch. Peated Scotch….See, how hard was that? It’s not like Diageo didn’t have any peaty or smoky scotches to choose from, in this series of 8 bottles, they put out bottles from Lagavulin, Talisker, Clynelish, even Oban has some peat! But instead, it seems they blindly picked names out of a hat to select the pairings.
