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The Balvenie 16 Year French Oak Finished in Pineau Casks
For this next Exclusive Content Review, we will visit The Balvenie’s most recent release, the French Oak 16 Finished in Pineau Casks. In addition to sampling the new single malt scotch, we will also sip on some of the fortified wine that The Balvenie chose to finish its whisky in as well as sipping on The Balvenie’s 15 Year Sherry Cask Single Barrel and the DoubleWood 17 in an attempt to figure out how this new cask finishing influenced the core product. Buckle up….
The Balvenie DoubleWood 12
For the next review, we will visit the Balvenie DoubleWood 12. I previously did a review on the 17 year old version of this release, but that’s a bit pricey these days, so let’s dig into the more affordable option, which is also their core product. Check out my previous reviews (here, here, or here) for some backstory on Balvenie and the DoubleWood releases and to see some of their other releases….but this single malt was first aged in American Oak and then in European Oak.
The Balvenie DoubleWood 17
I asked some of my Instagram followers what I should review next and The Balvenie DoubleWood 17 Years was suggested. Just in luck, I had a bottle on hand. As those that have read some of my previous reviews know, I am a big The Balvenie fan so I was more than happy to jump on this suggestion.
The Balvenie 30 Year
This next review is the crown jewel of my whisky collection, The Balvenie 30 Year that my wife bought for me for my birthday 8 years ago when we were still dating. She happened to give me this around the time I was hunting for her engagement ring, so to say that she is a master strategist would be an understatement.
The Balvenie “The Sweet Toast of American Oak” Aged 12 Years
Full disclosure, I am a big The Balvenie fan with the first nice single malt I ever purchased being the old Single Barrel 15 Year (the one aged in traditional casks, not the current sherried version). For this review, we will be tasting The Sweet Toast of American Oak Aged 12 Years, which was the first release in the new Balvenie Stories Collection. This expression takes Balvenie juice aged in ex-bourbon barrels and then puts it in Kentucky virgin oak barrels that were deeply toasted at Balvenie’s cooperage. Given the profile, I expected this to be somewhat similar to the 12 year old Single Barrel First Fill staple that is part of the core Balvenie line.