Blended
Scotland
Originally released to the travel retail market, Double Black combines the rich, malty flavour of Black Label with slightly peatier whisky and casks that were more heavily charred. The result is a toasty, smoky whisky with Johnnie Walker's usual rich, malty core.
Slightly smoky and almost medicinal on the nose, it offers up hints of vanilla, a little tar, a touch of barbecue sauce, citrus and malt.
Good body and very creamy with a sublimely malty core. It offers up a surprising level of peat smoke which works really well. Creamy sweetness, hints of soft wood smoke, salty butter, custard and cereal grains.
Good length with notes of malt, boiled sweets, black pepper and cool smoke.
The marketing is annoying as it is not much like Black Label at all. Once you get that out of your head you realize that what it is is a very unique and sexy blend. Smokey in both a scotch/peated sense and in the character of bourbon, which is new for me in a whisky. The texture is oily and smooth, and the finish is malty and quite sweet, like with all JW whiskies that don't have a red label. The other fun thing about this whisky is the cinnamon/clove spice that comes after the entry. Just a very entertaining and complex experience.
Nice whiskey, not personally as good as standard black as looses some of the profile and smoothness of black due to the added smoke. That said on its own its a decent drop, has that smokey, peaty tone but not overly harsh (it's not an ardbeg but not that price point) Not sure worth the £10 hike over black label and for the money a few decent peaty single malts drop in like carol ila, Tobermory and some of the bowmores maybe a tailisker 10 on a price promotion day. Nice but not sure another bottle will join the collection once this ones done.
This is an excellent price point to get into a lovely Talisker-like whisky at half the price. It has the standard raisin fruit cake characteristics of normal JW Black but definitely magnified. It is richer and oilier in texture. A very good whisky.
Only a shadow of the Black label, very young indeed. Worrying trend after discontinuation of the Green label.
It's a little bit smokier, but the difference to regular JW black is fairly small. Which means it's still great stuff (JW Black remains my favourite of all blends), but I'm not sure if it's that much better to warrant the significant price difference.
