CADENHEAD’S 7 STAR
Blended Scotch Whisky (2023)MASH BILL – blend of malt and grain whiskies
PROOF – 96.4
AGE – 30 years
DISTILLERY – Cadenhead’s (sourcing)
PRICE – $122 (more often ~$150)
WORTH BUYING? – On sale, sure.
Uncorked and tasted in The Year of No Buying (The what? 🔗 here.)
I don’t buy much brand-name scotch bottled by its distillery. Too expensive, too often watered down, artificial color almost inevitably added, frequently filtered of its full flavors. Why buy scotch from the source when independent bottlers like Cadenhead’s offer them undiluted, unfiltered, naturally colored, and for a similar price or far cheaper?
The only scotch I buy less often than distillery-direct scotch is sourced blended scotch, which typically uses a higher percentage of cheaper grain whisky balanced by a lower percentage of single malt. It’s the most popular form of scotch on the planet in terms of sales—e.g. Johnnie Walker, Chivas Regal, Dewar’s, Monkey Shoulder. And of course blended scotch sells well—it’s sweet, readily available, goes down easy, and is (mostly) affordable.
Now I can’t just say blended scotch is bad. I rarely try them, for one thing, so my experience with the genre is limited. And I also recognize the art of blending whisky is a true art—arguably much more so than picking single cask releases, which is more a matter of taste and timing.
But when I have tried blended scotch brands, I’ve never been drawn back for more. Ever. Even that most cliche of high-end blended scotch, Johnnie Walker Blue Label, though exceptionally balanced and utterly approachable, is easily forgotten. It’d make a great Highball cocktail—and an expensive one!
But when I saw Cadenhead’s was offering this revival of their own discontinued mid-twentieth century blended brand—only they’d upped the ante to 30 years and cask strength, finished the blend in Oloroso sherry casks, and priced it at a fraction of what most any 30-year scotch whisky would ever cost these days—well, how could I pass that up? Unfiltered and no color added like everything else Cadenhead’s produces, this revival offered age, purity of strength, and kitsch. I love old timey labels, but particularly ☞ when what they’re wrapped around has integrity. We don’t taste the label, after all. It’s the whisky that matters.
So here we are, three and a half weeks after uncorking and four pours into the bottle. These brief notes were taken using a traditional Glencairn.
COLOR – a dirty medium orange-amber
NOSE – rich red sherry fruitiness, dripping honey, pineapple rings, vanilla and caramel custard, faint wood tannin
TASTE – very like the nose, with the sherry and honey notes dominating, the sweet and dry qualities vying for center stage, a return of the wood tannins toward the end
FINISH – the dryness wins out here, backed up by the sweetness, with lingering sherry, honey, and custard notes
OVERALL – a sherry and honey bomb that unfurls rather than explodes
Neither subtle nor overbearing, this whisky aims less for complexity than for crowd pleasing. It’s like a higher class rendition of a cheap old fashioned nostalgic stroll along a beach boardwalk—touristy, with old restaurants serving the same menu they always have on white table cloths, and aging waiters in tuxedos harkening to a more habitually refined time.
The Oloroso sherry cask finishing is so strong, I can’t help wonder if Cadenhead’s used it to save some old stock that had gone too tannic. Is this a true throwback, or an effort to save a throwaway?
Whatever Cadenhead’s motivation, there is something genuinely enjoyable about this blended whisky. It’s at once cloyingly sweet and wittily dry in a way that conjures places like San Francisco’s Pier 39 or the UK and New York’s respective Brighton Beaches—tourist traps offering seaside views, overdone candy, and endless tacky hyper-local souvenirs.
Living in San Francisco, I generally avoid Pier 39 like I would any pop-trash heap. But occasionally I do get a perverse desire to go down there, buy an overpriced cup of fresh Dungeness crab meat or a Boudin clam chowder bread bowl (usually both!) and stroll through the nicknack shops and dilapidating carnival sideshow attractions. The seriousness of life does occasionally benefit from some stupid distracting frivolity of the likes a Pier 39 eagerly offers—the facade of local culture, adjusted to the expectations of both the tourists who come at the suggestion of their hotel lobby’s brochure rack, and the pretentious intelligentsia who come for some mental “slumming it.” 😉
This being a blended scotch, modeled after a discontinued brand from the mid-twentieth century when cocktails were all the rage, I just had to make a Highball with it. I’d had a handful of Highballs on a recent cocktail bar hop in Japan, each a bit different…
…but all of them quite simple. So I kept it simple. A healthy 2 ounces of the whisky, topped with Fever Tree Club Soda, stirred on ice the Japanese way, zested and garnished with lemon, served in a vintage glass:
Ironically, the whisky’s caramel and custard notes come out stronger here. The lemon zest and garnish add a citric edge that either blends seamlessly with or obliterates the whisky’s own tannic edge, I can’t tell which. And the Fever Tree Club Soda’s hard bubbles provide definition, like a crisp line drawn around the softer candy and fruit flavors.
Not the best match for the chilly winter afternoon on which I’m sipping this. But I’ll keep it in mind for when spring and summer roll around. 👍🏻
I don’t mind having this Cadenhead’s throwback/throwaway effort on hand at all. Even considering the eye catching 30-year age statement, the price is indeed a bit much for the experience it offers. But the pretentious intelligentsia in me does appreciate the nostalgic trip down kitschy lane. I might just take a stroll along Pier 39 soon. It’s been quite a while!
Cheers!
The Right Spirit 