The Famous Jubilee Special Edition Jubilee Reserve with Goran & Ryan

‘Allo! ‘Allo! ‘Allo! Wot ‘ave we ‘ere, den?

Sorry. I’m sorry.

We have here our third entry in the Grouse family, The Famous Jubilee.  This blend was specially crafted for Her Royal Majesty Lizzie Windsor’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012. You know, that party a whole country had for their richest lady.

There’s a couple interesting things with this bottle. Well, one anyway. There’s no french, anywhere on the bottle, which means it was certainly not meant for the Ontario market. The LCBO is one of the largest single purchasers of liquor in the world, astonishingly enough, so when they ask for bilingual labeling, they get it.

But not only is neither the box nor the bottle bilingual, there was a weird plain white sticker on the back label. I picked it off (of course, must pick it off), and underneath is a stamp, x’ed out with sharpie, that says “liable to UK excise duty, for the UK market, HM Revenue & Customs” and what I think might be a VAT number. That’s Value Added Tax, not the whisky vat this came out of.

All of that detectivery to say that I think we got this because it didn’t sell as well in the UK as was expected and sat on the shelves for a year. Whether that’s because Lizzie isn’t as popular as she used to be, general Jubilee branding fatigue or because the first person who tried it liked it as much as we did, we won’t know, but here’s what we thought:

colour
Simon – light maple syrup
Goran – not too dark, light caramel
Ryan – dark, bourbon range

nose
Simon – apples, caramel, fruits
Goran – sherry, cider
Ryan – granny smith apple

neat
Simon – chest warm, apple pie
Goran – bland like monarchy, not much but dried fruit
Ryan – apple, sour apple, not sweet

finish
Simon – lingering on back of throat
Goran – medium long & spicy
Ryan – light wood

splash
Simon – slight cottonmouth, wood
Goran – tea
Ryan – n/a

The Famous Jubilee Blended Scotch – 40% 700ml – $39.95 – Scotland

Try it? Not necessary. Buy it? If your OCD requires you to complete your Jubilee collection only.