Question: Is Blackbush dumbing down???

[IrishWhiskeyChaser]

I opened a bottle of Blackbush lately. It is one of the newly packaged ones with the fancy new Bottle.
Now I cut my Irish Whiskey drinking teeth on Blackbush and loved it for the fruit cake raisin & spice notes.

This one seems to be much dumbed down on what I thought it was. Is it just me and had I remembered a better whiskey or have I progressed to a stage that this whiskey is not as tasteful to my palate as it used to.

It is also an age old argument that a new bottling is or is not covering up something different. I personally think it is usually a gradual thing though.

This is always a tricky question to call on when you don't have a sample of what you thought it used to taste like to compare.

Further to my questioning, I had asked my wife one night to pour me a blind whiskey. However I could not guess what it was ... I knew it was Irish and when it turned out to be Blackbush I was perplexed

I had it again last night and it was really bugging me. Is it dumbed down or is it just me

The nearest I had to had of another sample was a bottling for the 70's so I open her up and went for a side by side tasting.

Is this a fair comparison I cannot really say but it was all I had to work with.

Firstly the colour I noticed is markedly different. The 70's is much much darker and the new one is lighter. Now we could say this is a positive as there may be no use of caramel colouring (or very little) in the newer bottling but is it a sign that it is different. Even the 90's bottlings were on a colour par to the 70's bottlings so yes there is a change.

So we get to the taste, well the side by side tasting is very black and white. The 70's bottle has all the big raisin and spice flavours (even though there is a little bitterness there too that I never go before) that I associate with Blackbush while the new version is very mellow and easy drinking. Definitely some sherry influence but I have a sneaking suspicion that is has far less sherry than it used to or possibly more grain content than it used to.

Anybody notice this or is it just me?

[Fionnán]

a politically unwise post for a man currently seeking to be welcomed into Bushmills as an honoured guest... but yes, i agree that the last blackbush i had was a little milder than what i remember, and i wasnt even of drinking age in the 90s...

[IrishWhiskeyChaser]

a politically unwise post for a man currently seeking to be welcomed into Bushmills as an honoured guest... but yes, i agree that the last blackbush i had was a little milder than what i remember, and i wasnt even of drinking age in the 90s...

I was thinking of bringing it up at Bushmills HQ if I got the opportunity ...

Just to add I retrieved a few spare bottles of Bushmills I had and fetched a Blackbush and a 10yo both of which happen to be from 2005.

I was curious about my comments on colour previously ... what I found was that the 2005 Blackbush is indeed a darker colour than the new version though it was not as dark as 1970's. However 2005 would be closer to the 1970's version than it would be to the current one and there is a marked difference in my opinion. What I also found interesting was that the 2005 10yo Bushmills was virtually the same colour as the current Blackbush. While not having a spectrometer inbuilt into my failing eyes I cannot say for sure they are identical in colour but they are very close to the naked eye. So is the new 10yo a lighter colour too? well going by PR pics it would indicate yes. This actually does not mean anything and in actual fact may not necessarily be a bad thing and could mean that they are not using as much or no colouring at all which can only be a positive. I'm very tempted to open the 2005 Blackbush but having 3 of them open would be over kill. I think I'll leave it a while or maybe I could swap with someone if they have a similar bottling open.

[IainB]

Curse you IWC for putting this into my head - I now have to dig out various BB bottles and do a comparative tasting.