I do whisky sample swaps with whisky folks on Twitter, and quite often i find it difficult to decide on which sample i should enjoy and review next. So i posted a poll on Twitter of 4 whiskies i had taken from my samples draw, i’d numbered them from 1-4 and asked Twitter folk to pick one for me.
This was the fourth choice from my 24hr poll, a dram very kindly sent to me by Tom, a Twitter whisky friend (a button to follow Tom on Twitter can be found at the bottom of this review).
Nose
Light gold in colour, with a medium thick swirl line and a mixture of slow running thick legs and quick legs that turn into beads as they fall.
Nose
Wow it has a huge nose, and straight off there are the lemon chunks from a Turkish delight box. Once the ABV calms down a sweet perfume comes through, sweet cocktail cherries slowly come forward too.
Even though this is only a 5 year old whisky it has a dustiness about it, and with more time tropical and stoned fruits start to join the fruit medley. Pineapple cubes, apricots, light peach aromas, and lemon meringue pie, it’s all about sweetness at the moment.
Now I’m getting Cherry Bakewell tarts, cereals and grains, and lemon cheese cake, and a spicy wood aroma.
Palate
Jeez, that’s a spice bomb and a half, my gums feel temporarily anaesthetised!
Once the palate acclimatises to the ABV, I’m getting lemon sherbet sweets and bitter lemon with quite high cocoa content dark chocolate. A playoff between slightly bitter notes and sweet fruit notes starts as sweetness starts to come in, icing sugar is here.
Anise and black liquorice start to ramp up as the sweetness is pushed aside, with vanilla pods and hot cinnamon. It isn’t said whether this is a first fill bourbon cask, but with this level of spice I’d be inclined to think it is.
Finish
Quite long and the spiciness just continues, the spiciness does finally drop off, not fade, and is much like the palate flavour wise until this happens.
My thoughts
This is a bourbon cask bruiser, no surprise at this ABV, and is full of quality bourbon cask spices, with plenty of fruits. I really enjoyed this dram and would definitely have a bottle in my whisky cupboard. Another cracking bottling from A.D.Rattray in my humble opinion.
Notes – This whisky is natural in colour and is non chill filtered and bottled at natural cask strength.
Thanks to Tom for the sample, follow him on Twitter here ⬇
Follow @TomsDram
