Jura Perspective No.1 16 Year

Tasting Notes

Andrew's Tasting Note

Nose: honeyed, malty, and nutty with orchard fruits and a soft kiss of sherry; the barley is juicy with a touch of wet hay; the American oak notes hit first with drizzly honey and white chocolate; green apple, poached pear with a touch of blue cheese, lemon and lime; Quaker Harvest Crunch Honey and Nut and white chocolate macadamia nut cookies.

Palate: malty, floral, and fruity with toasted oak and soft nutty tones; more Honey & Nut granola and Subway's white chocolate macadamia nut cookies; chewy barley with just a touch of fresh stable hay; the green apple is baked now, while the poached pear is still topped with a bit of blue; citrus flavoured Jujubes as well as some candied and dried dark fruits; the sherry asserts itself more on the palate, but is still balanced with soft leather and dark milk chocolate; building warn earthy spice.

Finish: bright, lively, and fresh with warming spices and creamy toasted oak; sweet, fruity, and chocolaty.

Comment: this is a very well put together and dangerously drinkable bottling of Jura at a great price... need I say more?!"

Distillery

Originally written by Evan for a blog post relating to KWM's 2020 Whisky Calendar.

The Isle of Jura Distillery is the only distillery on the Isle of Jura (yes, I did read my previous sentence and no, I am not going to change it). The distillery site was originally founded in 1810 when it started its life under the name Small Isles Distillery. While it operated for most of the 19th century, it was shut down in 1901 and mostly dismantled. Jura Distillery was finally rebuilt and revived six decades later in 1963 when whisky production on the site started once more.

The distillery may not receive the amount of love from consumers that it should, currently. It is owned by Whyte and Mackay/Emperador and while the company does try to put focus on the Jura label, it is overshadowed by another brand in their portfolio. That is Dalmore Distillery, which has more of a following (and a lot more pretension in my opinion). It could be worse, though: Have you heard of Fettercairn or Tamnavulin? In Alberta, we just started to receive official bottlings from these two distilleries, but not much effort has been put into making them household names at this point.

While Jura whisky has a fanbase, the label and lineup have been a little scattershot and schizophrenic over the past decade or more. For years, it was tough to figure out what kind of whisky you were going to be getting from a lineup that carried both unpeated, lightly peated, and heavily peated whisky. I know they were trying to brand their peated styles with the mysterious names of ‘Superstition’ and ‘Prophecy’, but telling what was peaty and what was not in their range could be difficult for consumers.

The Jura brand was relaunched in 2018, though you can still find some of the older bottlings on shelves. The new range might not be much better for consumer understanding.