So it’s 11:30PM on a Saturday night and I just woke up from a 2.5 hour nap to find that Mrs. G-LO and the boys were fast asleep. A normal person would have thrown in the towel and gone back to sleep, but there’s a part of me that’s still hanging on to my night owl past, so instead of going to bed, I headed downstairs and started scanning the Netflix streaming options.

Whilst perusing my late night TV watching options, I received a message from the West Coast Office (WCO) telling me that he’s trying the latest from Northern California’s Lost Spirits Distillery, something called Umami. His mentioning of Lost Spirits instantly reminded me that I still had a sample of the Lost Spirits Ouroboros that he sent me back in October which I still needed to try. I asked WCO if it was too late to do a proper tasting, and in typical enabler fashion, he replied, “Oh hell no! Go for it G-LO!”. So that’s what I did. I went for it! By the time I found the sample, snapped a photo, and sat back down in front of the TV, an hour had passed.

If you listen to the whisky pros (Master Blenders, Master Distillers, Brand Ambassadors, etc.), they say that your nose and palate are in peak condition between 11AM and Noon. I of course didn’t start nosing and tasting the Lost Spirits Ouroboros until 12:30AM, so please take that into account when you eventually get to my tasting notes. Then again, I DID snooze from 9PM to 11:30PM that night, so perhaps my nose and palate were refreshed by this revitalizing nap.

We’ll get to my tasting notes in a minute, but first let me go back to telling you about my movie selection…

So I’m scrolling through my options and land on a little movie called Don Jon. The movie was written and directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. He also starred in the film along with Scarlett Johansson, Tony Danza, and Julianne Moore. Since this is a whisky review and not a movie review, I’ll keep my film analysis to a minimum. Before we get to my thoughts on Don Jon, have a look at the trailer:

In my mind, this is a sort of “coming of age” story: Boy meets and scores with many girls; boy falls in love with one girl but can’t get the porn fantasies out of his head; girl catches boy watching porn when he promised that he’d stop watching porn; girl breaks up with boy; boy meets sexy older woman that teaches him a few things about life, love, and connecting with another person. It wasn’t a great film, but it was told with style and with some solid acting from the three leads. In a weird way, it was almost the perfect film to pair with this whisky because it did a fine job of mixing comedy, romance, and a touch of drama, with a healthy dose of weirdness much like Ouroboros mixes its unusual aromas and flavors together.

Ok ok. Enough movie talk. Let’s get to the whisky…

Instead of just copying and pasting some information from the distillery website like I usually do, I will instead point you in the direction of some interesting articles about the Lost Spirits Distillery. Here are the links:

• An interview with Bryan Davis of Lost Spirits courtesy of the NY Loves Whisky blog.
• The NY York Loves Whisky blog review of Ouroboros.
• The How To Drink Whisky review of Umami.

And now for my thoughts about The Lost Spirits Ouroboros…

• Appearance: Deep, dark amber with an auburn tint.
• Aroma: There are some really interesting scents coming off of this one! I’m getting sea salt, cinnamon sticks, fresh mussels, burnt sugar, clove, and hickory smoked BBQ sauce.
• Taste: Very salty, sweet, and smoky all at the same time, yet also incredibly smooth with little to no alcohol burn. This is a really tough whisky to describe! I’m getting burnt sugar, brine, and smoky BBQ all at the same time. The finish is somewhat astringent with a lingering salt and burnt sugar aftertaste. Also getting a bit of a Fernet-Branca vibe coming through thanks to a touch of bitterness.
• ABV: 54%

This is my first Lost Spirits experience and I gotta admit, it was a damned good one. The last time I tasted something this unique and different was when I had the Balcones Brimstone . If you like funky and weird flavor sensations, then this is a whisky that you must try. I would definitely buy a bottle. If it were still available!

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Many thanks to @AaronMKrouse for the very generous sample!