Dave’s mystery dram?

I recently did a dram swap with a new whisky friend on Instagram and Twitter called Dave, (a link to Dave’s Instagram and Twitter accounts can be found at the bottom of this review), and in the swap he added a mystery dram. I love tasting blind drams, so these are my notes and thoughts on it before Dave revealed what it is, and the dram is revealed at the bottom of this review also.

Appearance

We have a mid gold coloured dram here, it has a nice thick swirl line, and has syrupy thick legs.

Nose

Perfume and spices kick this dram off, it’s a wonderful mix, then it leads on to become a little vegetal, with floral aromas, perhaps a wildflower meadow. Slightly bitter lemonade arrives with a sweet sprinkle of caster sugar, rich tea biscuits bring a cereal feel and Virginia hand rolling tobacco finish the initial palate.

With more time I get red apple skins, sweet honey, vanilla ice cream, and a lemon sherbet fizzyness.

Palate

Straight away there’s an oily mouthfeel, with pineapple cubes. It then moves on to be foresty, with pine needles, followed immediately by a menthol flavour. Sweet lemon arrives next, followed by cola cubes and hand rolling tobacco and figs, is this a Sherry cask matured dram?

More time brings red liquorice and liquorice torpedo sweets. Finally it moves onto espresso, cask char and some tannins. Cranberries and a little drying bring the main palate to a close.

Finish

Black pepper, black coffee, cask char, dark chocolate orange, ginger and tannins bring a lovely dark spiciness with a tinge of bitterness to the experience, which is finally finished with a little more drying.

My thoughts

Having tasted many whiskies blindly, iv’e really come to trust my senses of smell and taste. I’m far from an expert on whisky, but i know what i get aroma and flavour wise, and i enjoyed this whisky while tasting it. It came with a profile that i hadn’t encountered previously, and i thought it was a distillery i hadn’t tried before, and on that i was correct. It comes from a distillery that i have read other talk about, that i’d wanted to try, and now i have, and the whisky i was drinking was……

Clynelish distillers edition 2020 @46% ABV

Thanks to – Dave for the sample swap and this mystery dram, i really enjoyed it.

Find Dave’s Instagram account here ➡ https://instagram.com/washhousewhisky?utm_medium=copy_link

And his twitter account here ⬇

Image credit – Turmeaus.