After getting back home from a weekend off in Newport, RI with a great friend and her husband I finally got a chance to try Chivas Regal. Although I had heard about Chivas before and have been drinking whisky for years now, it was a brand I had not gotten around to tasting.  Finally getting a chance to sample it was a nice way to end a perfectly great weekend.

Chivas is a perfectly well balanced blended whisky. It’s smooth and tasty, but it won’t knock you off your feet, and if you ask me, it doesn’t really need to do that. As long as it’s good whisky, why would we complain?

HISTORY

The start of Chivas can be traced back to 1801 when the Chivas brothers established their grocery store in Aberdeen and began selling high quality malt whiskies. It wasn’t till 1830 that they began aging the whisky in the cellar of their store. Their success led them to launch their 25 year-old blend in 1909 but prohibition affected it so greatly that this year went away and when it was introduced back in the states it was with a 12 year-old blend instead. Pernod Ricard purchased Chivas in 2001 and the 25 year-old blend made an appearance in 2007 when it was re-created by master blender Colin Scott as a limited release.

TASTING NOTES

Nose: honey and fruit
Palate: glides into your mouth and then you get a nice slight burn. There are notes of vanilla, apple and honey. It is sweet and definitely fruity.
Finish: Smooth and light

I enjoyed this blended whisky and although it wasn’t wow, this is amazing; it was good to the point of enjoyment. If you’ve never tried it and you stumble across it then yes I recommend you try it. It’s a quality product that is worth the taste. This is also a product that is extremely affordable. The price range I saw was $40-$59. There are product I’ve tasted that are more expensive and that aren’t great at all. For the price and taste, you certainly can’t go wrong.

Cheers!

PS: Sharing pics from our tour this weekend at a vineyard in Newport, RI.