Amrut has long held a special place in my glass, so when two exclusive single casks landed at BSW, my favourite store, I knew I had to put them through their paces. These are special releases picked by my friend Rohit, who lives not far from me and worked directly with BSW to bring these casks in.
Supporting that kind of local passion project made buying them an easy decision, but the real question is whether they deliver in the glass. To round out the tasting, I also pulled an old Portonova from my basement, and the results told an interesting story about patience, climate, and cask influence.
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Let’s start with that Portonova, because it taught me a lesson. Bottled back in March 2020, it sat untouched in my basement for a good three years, largely because I didn’t love it when I first cracked it open. Fast forward to now, and time has done wonders. The nose is that classic Amrut dessert-forward profile I adore, all buttery croissants and sweet pastry, with juicy port riding through the finish.
The lesson here is simple. If your bottle isn’t singing when you open it, give it air or run it through a decanter. It climbed all the way to an 87 for me, though I’ll admit I docked it a couple of points for making me wait so long to reach that money zone.
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The younger port pipe single cask, an ex-bourbon and second-fill port pipe combination at a hefty 60% ABV, won me over from the very first pour. I love the peat here, which they smoke in Belgium to a specific level, and it pairs beautifully with a note I can only describe as jelly spread over burnt toast. It’s warm and robust, exactly what you’d expect from India’s climate accelerating maturation.
That said, I still believe patience in the cask trumps heat. These Indian whiskies are a different mutant altogether, and you simply can’t fairly compare them to a mellow older Scotch. Another solid 87.
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READ THE STORYThe PX, however, was the clear winner. Seven years in a first-fill Pedro Ximenez cask gives it a rich, sweet complexity full of cooked fruit, figgy bread, and wafts of smoke on the back end. It tastes far older than its age, easily in the fifteens. That’s a banger, plain and simple, and it earns a well-deserved 89.
If you’re picking just one, the PX is the bottle for me. So which speaks to you more, the peaty port pipe or the rich, sweet PX?
To see me taste all of these Amrut Indian whiskies, check out my YouTube video.
