A 2019 distillery exclusive bottling – 1 of only 6,000 bottles.
Appearance
Very light gold, white wine in colour. The swirl line on my stemmed tulip glass is quite thick, with a few medium thick legs and very thick teardrops hanging from the swirl line.
Nose
Initially it’s seared pineapple rings, balsa wood, cough syrup, mocha, and raisins, it’s coming across spicy too. Apricot and vanilla pasties are also coming through, with caster sugar.
More time and there is a white wine feel to this, and it’s married with wood varnish, linseed and cherries that come through late.
Going back to the dried glass I have to say there is a faint smokiness for me, perhaps cask char? I’m not really sure to be honest, but it is there.
Palate
The mouthfeel is light initially, and as the nose suggested the palate is spicy. Eccles cakes and bitter lemon kick off the palate, coffee beans, cough candy, and icing sugar arrive next.
A meatiness slowly makes itself known, there’s no peat but it does come across as bbq’d meats. Towards the end of main palate the coffee becomes stronger, with chocolate raisins, cranberries and possibly orange zest.
Finish
The finish is medium long in general but the spices do last longer, not chest warming but fresh. Really late on I’m sure I’m getting a faint salinity, it plays nicely with the spices.
My thoughts
When my whisky friend Jason from Twitter said he was going to send me a sample of this i got very excited, this is the type of rarely spoken about whisky that i love to try. I had recently tried the entry level bottling, which i quite enjoyed, so i had a base to work from.
This whisky is said to be “Fruity, sweet and mellow” by Diageo, it’s owners, yet i found quite a bit more in it, including darker notes and a meatiness, and i’m presuming it’s all from Ex Bourbon casks.
I rather enjoyed it as you can probably tell, the only thing i found as a very minor thing is the mouthfeel, it’s thin-ish, but if that’s my only complaint then all else is pretty good in my book. Yes it’s a bottle i’d have, especially as i’m an Ex Bourbon cask whisk(e)y lover.
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 Grand Whisky auction.
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