Our 10 year old provides the perfect introduction to the Springbank range. Matured in a combination of bourbon and sherry casks, it is complex yet perfectly balanced from the first sip through to the sweet, salty finish.
Springbank Distillers
Appearance
This dram is damp straw light gold in colour, it has a nice thick swirl line on my Glencairn glass, with slow syrupy legs.
Nose
Initially I’m getting sweetness, with nutty oiliness. Light pineapple with peaches/nectarines come to me first. They slowly morph into hazelnuts next, which are mixed nicely with wood oil, or a softer raw linseed oil.
Interesting, with more time those tropical and stoned fruits have changed. Now it’s very much red berries, red cherries and raspberries mainly. I would even go as far as saying cherry Bakewell tart or cherry flapjack now as I’m getting that cereal cake base too.
Smelling the dram after waiting longer for the palate brings a lime/zest aroma.
Palate
The mouthfeel is nice, becomes more viscous too as the dram sits. And the palate is a spicy/fruity/cereal fusion. The spices, cardamom, black pepper and fainter aniseed start strong, but slowly give way to the red berries, like the later nose, including cranberries, and red currants. The mouthfeel has improved lots by this point.
More time and I’m getting the sweet/cereal cherry flapjack, like the nose. Slowly and towards the end of the main palate it does develop into cloves, star anise, and more black pepper.
Finish
The finish for me is very much a flat cola and prunes thing, perhaps rum and raisin too, it’s quite stewed dark fruits for me, and slightly longer than medium in length.
My thoughts
This is the first time iv’e got to taste Springbank’s 10 year old whisky, iv’e tasted some higher end Springbank’s previously, but wondered what this bottling had to offer. I have to say that i rather enjoyed the whisky, it certainly had plenty to offer on the nose and palate. The mouthfeel improved with time, and it developed nicely, into a direction that i don’t recall happening to any other whisky iv’e tasted so far.
Overall i think it’s a very nice whisky, sadly it’s not a whisky that’s readily available, it comes along in batches, and doesn’t hang around for long when it is available. Springbank Distillers have an almost cult following these days, don’t get me wrong, they make superb whisky, Hazelburn being my favourite, but access to bottles is becoming more difficult, and they’re becoming more expensive also.
A big thank you goes out to Jason – @jason85388511, a whisky friend over on Twitter, for this super sample. Please do give Jason, along with us, a follow on Twitter using the buttons below.
Bottle image – The Whisky Exchange
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