The school year starts up again for the young ones and a few of us old dogs. It's another new year of learning and discovering things you didn't know about last year. So as I take some breaks to clear my mind before some studying into my academic and career studies I decided to try an interesting single malt whisky on Labour Day that some may not be too familiar with, but given the easy ability to find information about almost every distillery on the planet this one is definitely more well known then others.
Dallas Dhu is a distillery from Forres and was built in 1899 by Alexander Edward. It means "Black Water Valley" in Gaelic and the whisky before being called Dallas Dhu was bottled as Dallas Mhor single malt. It was eventually part of the Distillers Company Limited portfolio before it closed in 1983 during the economic turmoils in the UK at the time. It's currently used as a museum and the curators from Historic Scotland want to revive the distillery as a commercial business and an education tool, which is interesting to know before diving into one of their cask strength vintages from a bottler that I have been really enjoying lately.
This vintage of Dallas Dhu was aged in oak, .likely a refill ex-bourbon hogshead, for 24 years and bottled at 59.8% ABV. It comes from Signatory who have made some very excellent 70s cask strength releases, including a phenomenal Tamnavulin, so I’m very excited to try this one.
Color: Dark Amber
Nose: Dusty oak, powdered milk, vanilla bean, green grapes, cinnamon stalk, grass, light cereals, apple sauce
Taste: Wood tannins, apples, pears, vanilla cream, salted caramel, raisins, green melon, treenuts
Finish: Long with mouthcoating caramel, creamy raisin desert and allspice notes
The nose makes me seem like this was going to be a tad underwhelming, the palate is a bit muted at first as well but then the finish comes in and like the sole 70s Ardbeg I’ve had it is something else. A beautiful mix of bready cereal, wet raisin and vanilla sweetness and woodspice to make a mouthcoating silky malt that works wonders. Likely more of a 2nd or 3rd fill hogshead which probably keeps some of the more intense flavors back but the distillate quality really shines bright in having not too much cask influence on this older vintage. No wonder so many people want Dallas Dhu back because if they keep their stills and the secret formula to their distillate I’d love to try some more because it’s damn good desert whisky but on the opposite end of the spectrum from your usual Christmas cake sherry dram. Try this stuff now before it’s too late!
85 pts
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