ABV: 52.5 %
Origin: Islands
Type: Single Malt
Bottles in collection: 0
Emptied bottles: 0
Impression: 4/5

Tasting notes
Nose: This is sweet and fruity. The first thing to come through is a mild vanilla sweetness together with liquorice and assorted dried fruits. It’s a gentle nose and it’s not popping out of the glass. After a few minutes it grows a tiny bit more confident and start to deliver a bigger array of nuances with black currant, ripe red berries and a slightly gritty background. A menthol note is also present. It feels quite young and lively for its age and the distillate is really showing through. It becomes a bit sweeter over time but it’s the fruitiness which is the main note. This is a great nose if it gets a lot of time in the glass.

Mouth: It starts out with a sweet and dusty malt note in the center. There’s a fresh sour fruitiness coming through around the edges which develops into a mix of red and black berries. A black coffee bitterness and an oak note build up in the back. There’s a mild black pepper spicyness sprinkled in as well. The sweetness subsides and it becomes quite complex after a few seconds when an earthy note gets added to the center. The fruitiness is not as pronounced at this point and still resides at the edges.

Finish: The finish starts out with the dusty note in the center and the sweet malty note up front. It then turns up the volume on everything else and gives a nice push of spicy pepper, liquorice and a black coffee bitterness. The vanilla is still in there as well as the berries. When everything subsides, all that remains is a slightly bitter and dusty oakiness, which isn’t the greatest end to an otherwise pleasant journey. This is a great whisky with both ups and downs throughout.

Additional information
This is a single cask release. It’s aged in an ex-sherry hogshead. It was distilled in 1996 and bottled in 2017. Cask no. 187. The bottle tried has no. 15 out of 327.

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