ST. GEORGE SPIRITS SINGLE MALT
Lot No. SM024 (2024)MASH BILL – 100% two-row malted barley
PROOF – 86
AGE – blend of 5.5 to 11.5 year old whiskeys, among them some dating back 20 years, aged in 25 different used casks that held Kentucky and Tennessee bourbon, apple brandy, rum, Torrontés, Tannat, Port, and Sauternes-style wine.
DISTILLERY – St. George Spirits
PRICE – $109
WORTH BUYING? – Always
At this point, my sharing notes on the latest release of St. George Single Malt is a matter of tradition. It’s the annual winter holiday pour in my home, ever since Batch SM017 reminded me of Christmas cookies my grandmother used to make. From year to year the tasting notes are a matter of nuance, with each batch emphasizing certain of the brand’s familiar core aspects. Every year it’s excellent. So I don’t expect to be surprised by this latest release.
And that is a-okay by me, because I love this brand just the way it is. So let’s not spend more time up front on backstory. I’m ready to jump right into a glass!
Here we are, one week after uncorking and already about halfway through the bottle. I brought it with me to a dinner with friends the night before this tasting, and alongside some other bottles they helped me put quite a dent in it. These brief notes were taken using a traditional Glencairn.
COLOR – a beautiful sepia-toned orange
NOSE – fresh sliced pairs, cream, coarsely ground sea salt, marmalade, Meyer lemon juice
TASTE – even creamier here in flavor and now also texture, with the pears and marmalade submerged in a nice drippy caramel note; also milk chocolate cake
FINISH – the fruitiness of the marmalade lingering warmly amidst lightly bitter citrus peel, oak and oak tannin
OVERALL – light yet rich, cozy yet zingy
Yep. Very nice indeed. This year’s batch balances the bitter and the sweet, the zingy and the creamy. In the past my sense memories have inevitably turned toward prominent variations on quince. But here the pear notes stand out for me, juxtaposed nicely against the citric and sweet marmalade notes.
The color is striking me quite a lot as well, conjuring old family photos taken in the days of actual film and 100% analogue cameras. This adds to my personal sense of this whiskey as a December holiday season pour. The sight and taste of it together send my mind traveling back in time.
I’m posting these notes on the morning of Christmas Eve. Later tonight I’ll have dinner with another set of longtime friends. Then early tomorrow morning I’ll hop in a car and drive down to the site of those old family memories caught in fading photos. The family still gathers there—fewer of us now, some older faces long gone while newer faces come and go from year to year in this much busier, fragmented twenty-first century.
And though I appreciate tradition, and a certain amount of nostalgia for my younger days when the world weighed less heavily on my consciousness, I certainly don’t miss the naiveté of youth. Older now, I very much enjoyed sharing this whiskey with my chosen family of friends the other night. As whiskey always seems to do, so too did this St. George Lot 24 help to bring out our stories. Good friends getting to know one another even better. Our conversation sometimes swinging around to current politics, which is always a much dicier proposition with the blood family. But between our various nods to the current political climate, the whiskey kept us in a celebratory mood—acknowledging the uncertain present, and, perhaps even more so as a result, deeply grateful for longtime friends who ground us and support us in that way only longtime friends can do.
So here’s to family. Here’s to friends. Here’s to tradition, and the healthy change that new faces and perspectives can bring to it.
Cheers!
The Right Spirit 