
November 2, 2024

Angus's Corner
From our correspondent and
skilled taster Angus MacRaild in Scotland

A pair of Rosebank

A quick pair of Rosebank this week. I had started writing these a few weeks ago for inclusion in a closed distillery post, but then realised that Rosebank is no longer technically closed. You have to keep up with today’s whisky world! I’ve never been as excited about Rosebank as many other folk seem to be, but I’m very keen to see what the new owners do with it and I’m happy it is back up and distilling once again.

Rosebank 1991/2009 ‘Handfill’ (55.1%, The Whisky Exchange)
We kick off with a useless tasting note for a Rosebank bottling sold as a handfill, back in the ridiculously innocent days of 2009 when you could go to The Whisky Exchange shop at Vinopolis and buy Rosebank direct from the cask, probably for around £65 a bottle. Neither possible, or even legal now (possibly also illegal then too). Colour: pale gold. Nose: typically fresh and chiselled, all on chalk, limestone, pin-sharp citrus notes and hints of olive oil. As we discovered in a tasting at Whisky Live Paris the other week, Rosebank and Chichibu seem to share a lot of similarities, and nosing this is only re-affirming that impression to me. Very grassy, crisp notes of gooseberry and nettle coming through. With water: really on limestone, clay, vase water, white flowers and the most subtle note of wax. Mouth: hay, white flowers, more gooseberries and tart green apple. I’d also add that slight funk of cider apple, some lemon barley water and mirabelle eau de vie. Crisp, pin-sharp and very bright. With water: excellent combo of crisp, clean cereal notes, sunflower oil, hand cream and lemon rind. Finish: medium, flinty, rather mineral, chalky and continuing with white flowers and lemon peel. Comments: the customers of TWE Vinopolis never had it so good! Excellent, sharp and tense Rosebank.
SGP: 551 - 88 points.

Rosebank 21 yo 'The Roses, Edition 5, Fascination’ (49.5%, Specialty Drinks, Madeira cask, 633 bottles, bottled 2021)
Colour: pale gold. Nose: very proximate to the handfill, with these very crisp, pure notes of green apple, hay, white flower, pollen and things like vase water, clay, olive oil and even a slightly petrolic edge. Great freshness and sense of sharpness once again. Mouth: I find it a little rounder and fuller than the nose suggested, more oily, slightly sweeter and more on barley extracts, beers, heather honey and even a little camphor, perhaps this richer side comes from the Madeira influence. There’s even a little treacle, dried mint and something slightly salty and leathery. Good power once again. Finish: medium, with a continuation of these more rich, rounded and savoury/sweet balanced qualities that dominated the palate. Comments: very good, how long was it in madeira casks? It’s a bit of cask trickery that seems to have been very cleverly handled here.
SGP: 561 - 89 points.

Thanks to Phil S!

Concert Review
by Nick Morgan
Bill Frisell Four
Cadogan Hall, London, Friday 25th October 2024

I’ve been lucky enough to travel the world with Bill Frisell for twenty-five years or so, ever since he released Good Dog, Happy Man in 1999. On a series of increasingly sophisticated devices and headphones, in increasingly sophisticated aircraft, the opening bars of ‘Rain rain’ have, like a magic carpet, whisked me away from the tedious mundaneness of long-haul flights to the peaceful haven of Frisell’s ‘colorful, commanding tone poems’ The album remains my most played – even more than Revolver!

The studious Frisell has always had something of a scholarly bearing – you wouldn’t be entirely surprised if he put down his guitar, gig half played, and started reading a learned paper on the most esoteric of subjects. Since I first saw him, also about twenty-five years ago, he’s climbed the greasy academic pole from senior lecturer, through a readership, a chair, and soon (now in his seventies) perhaps an emeritus professor. In the Cadogan Hall this evening he’s certainly taking a back seat and giving a lot of space for his junior colleagues, Greg Tardy on saxophones, Gerald Clayton on piano, and Jonathan Blake on drums to perform. This is the band who recorded the ‘irresistible’ Four on Blue Note records in 2022, the realisation of musical themes sketched out by Frisell during the pandemic.

For those who don’t know the Cadogan Hall, just off Chelsea’s Sloane Square, was originally built for the Church of Christ, Scientist (Christian Scientists) in 1907. The building was designed by architect Robert Chisholm (who practised mostly in India) in an imposing Byzantine style and has remarkable stained glass windows designed by Baron Arild Rosenkrantz. In the 1990s, no longer in use and a church, it was briefly owned by the now disgraced Mohamed Fayed (who tried, and failed, to convert the building to residential use) before being acquired by the Cadogan Estates and transformed into one of the most spacious airy concert halls in London, with excellent acoustics. For all that there is something of a Senate House and Rationalist vibe about the interior: you wouldn’t be entirely surprised if a black-shirted Oswald Mosely strode onto the stage mouthing antisemitic tropes. But he doesn’t.

Cadogan Hall, in London's Chelsea

Frisell’s tunes are always riff heavy and rich in melody, often never too far away from a twelve-bar blues, and normally illuminated by an array of effects pedals and loops. But the emphasis in this performance is more on the other players rather than Bill’s electronic wizardry. In a set that comprises mostly material from the Four album (which in turn contains reworkings of a handful of tunes from Good Dog Happy Man) there is plenty of room for improvisation, and the fluid playing of Clayton, Tandy and Frisell comes and goes like waves gently breaking on a beach. With no bass the glue all comes from drummer Jonathan Blake, who, with a deceptively lazy style, delivers his chops with pinpoint accuracy (and plays a memorable solo). The music is immersive, almost transportational, on stage each musician is looking out for the other, clearly enjoying the performance as much as the audience.

Frisell’s music has drawn heavily on American culture, folk music, and the great American songbook in its broadest definition, from ‘When you wish upon a star’ to ‘I heard it through the grapevine’. Your never quite sure when a familiar melody or phrase is going to creep up on you, and so it was at the end of the concert. Having received a rousing ovation, a typically meandering groove in the encore leads into the very familiar refrain of Hal David and Burt Bacharach’s ‘What the world need’s now’, recorded by Frisell on his 2020 Blue Note album Valentine. Which with wars, climate change, elections, budgets and the like, I’m sure the whole Cadogan Hall audience agreed with as they stepped out into a cold, dark autumn night. - Nick Morgan

Bill Frisell’s pedals - pinched from his insta page

billfrisell.com