ABV: 40 %
Origin: Highlands
Type: Single Malt
Bottles in collection: 0
Emptied bottles: 0
Impression: 3/5

Tasting notes
Nose: This is fresh and fruity. Apples and pears sit together with red berries on top of butterscotch and vanilla. As time passes in the glass the vanilla moves to the sides and the fruitiness stays in the center. There’s a pine note coming through the fruitiness and a honey sweetness adding to the vanilla. This is very mild on the nose and there’s no complexity. It’s very straight forward.

Mouth: It starts out quite spicy with a thin taste of cardboard and it takes a while before other flavours start to come through. It’s a touch bitter and not as fruity as on the nose. Butterscotch and a small dark fruitiness with raisins and prunes is in there as well as vanilla and honey, but all those flavours are quite muted. The oak is also present and it’s a bitter oak with notes of coffee. It feels a bit medicinal and sharp and it doesn’t mirror the nose very well.

Finish: The spicyness stands alone once again and there’s almost no flavours coming through before the oakiness takes over. It’s a slightly dry, quite tasty oakiness with coffee and walnuts. In the tail end the dark fruitiness and butterscotch slowly return. This is not bad but it lacks some balance. The nose is by far the best thing about it.

Additional information
Made at the smallest of Diageo’s distillery this 12 YO is the only single malt in its core range. It’s aged in a mix of american ex-bourbon barrels and ex-sherry casks.