Introducing Milsean, Glenmorangie's New Private Edition Single Malt
If you ever want to pick up a few words of Scots Gaelic, you couldn't have a better time doing so than by working your way through Glenmorangie's Private Edition series of single malt Scotch. Begun in 2010, the concept was designed to allow Dr. Bill Lumsden, head of distilling and whisky creation, an opportunity to experiment. Sonnalta was the first release, which was finished in Pedro Ximénez casks, followed by Finealta, a lightly peated whisky aged in oloroso sherry and American oak, Artein, finished in Italian red wine barrels, Ealanta in virgin oak, Companta in French red wine, and Tùsail using an unusual, high-quality barley.
The latest addition to the series is Milsean, which translates to ‘sweet things,' and is finished in red wine casks from the Douro Valley in Portugal. Pronounced "meel-shawn" the whisky recalls the sweetness of bourbon with its inflections of coconut and butterscotch. Lumsden's inspiration, in fact, was the sweet shops of his youth. "I was quite a mouthy lad when I was young," he explained at a recent tasting, "so my grandmother used to fill me with candies and sweets to shut me up. That flavor of old fashioned candies, of lemon sherbet and peppermints is what I wanted to achieve."
With that in mind, Lumsden came up with a list of techniques that would allow him to attain those flavors. His best option, he determined, was to finish the whisky in red wine barrels from the Douro valley after a few years in bourbon casks. Normally, wine barrels are scraped cleaned before they're reused, but Lumsden decided to re-toast them while they were still wet with red wine, which caramelized the sugars. When he aimed his flashlight in the barrel, he said, "you could see the glinty crystalized sugar sparkling inside." Having never tried this aging method, Lumsden kept a close eye on the whisky's progression and soon discovered that the effect was working a little too well. The uptake of sugary flavors was so rapid he decided to take out the whisky after two and half years rather than the five years he'd originally planned. Timing, as they say, is everything. It is a pleasantly fruity Scotch, with candied orange, cinnamon and sweet tobacco.
Slàinte!
Glenmorangie "Milsean" Private Edition Single Malt Scotch Whisky, $103.