All right. We’re doing the tasting of the today acquired John Barr scotch whisky that we found for a pretty good deal, considering all the other whiskeys were way overpriced. Obviously, the people who operate this liquor store had no clue what John Barr was, so they even asked me, “What is this?” They’ve only sold two of these in the last two years. I was like, “Yeah. Well, you have to know Scotch whisky to know what John Barr is.” It’s a good whisky. By no means a great whisky, but a good whisky. 🥃

So now, I have it and I am tasting it here in Los Angeles. I’ve noticed immediately the packaging has changed. This is a much smaller bottle than the one I had years ago, almost a decade ago. Much more modern packaging. Color looks great. Before I even tasted it, I looked at the label, read the contents, and noticed that it said 40%. So, they’ve brought it down to what I call your entry level Scotch—40% alcohol by volume—which is fine. Just tells me right off the bat, there’s probably not gonna be any amazing things about this, but maybe just a solid blended Scotch whisky.

So I poured it. It spilled a little bit. I just put that on my hands and rubbed it in good, and took a good sniff like I was taught years and years ago. You can tell a lot—most of your tasting is through your olfactory, through your nose. The flavors I was getting just smelling it immediately kind of told me that this is gonna just be a down-the-middle blended Scotch whiskey that probably won’t be special, but should be good.

So here we go. We’re gonna taste it neat out of a hopefully clean hotel glass by Marriott. Swish it around your mouth a bit like Richard Patterson taught me and hold it there a bit. I did that. Yeah, this is just a—I’m gonna say it’s a quality Scotch whiskey, blended Scotch whiskey. It’s an everyday drinker. You could mix with this. I guess you could. You could make, like, I forget what the version of the old-fashioned using Scotch is called off the top of my head, but you can do that and it would be fine.

There is a light oiliness to it—not heavy. Some cinnamon kind of bit to it. Vanilla is not high. But this is a daily drinker and it’s not bad. It’s actually, for what I bought it for—which I think was a good deal here in Los Angeles, where they’ve marked everything up like $20—this is a good deal. This is a good daily drinker.

And that’s about it. That’s the update to the John Barr product which I originally blogged on, I believe, in 2014, and I’ll put a tag in here to that probably. If you see it and you notice it’s considerably discounted and you just want a Scotch whiskey that’s just a drinker—nothing fantastic, right?—that you don’t want to pay a lot of money for, but just to have some Scotch, pick it up. I think it’s a smart choice and Whyte & Mackay is still doing a fine job.

All right, thanks. Cheers.