Back to trying another Auchentoshan and for me it's really hard to find higher ABV
Auchentoshan's in the wild. Last year I tried a few more the usual, one being a
17 year old sherried SMWS bottling that was nicely put together and another a
distillery bottling 21 year old small batch from 1975 that was super funky and
If tasted blind could possibly have passed for a rum. However, outside of those
two uncommon pours the usual crop of Auchentoshans that end up in stores are
the epitome of undesirable for the seasoned whisky drinker. Most are 40% ABV,
have caramel colouring added and are quite boring, but not bad whiskies in my
opinion, even at the 21 year mark.
So when Auchentoshan
announced their Bartender's Malt annual release line last year I became
interested. For one it was proofed at 47% ABV and used some interesting casks,
such as German oak and ex-Laphroaig casks, in the mix to create what is dubbed
as a vatting of many casks selected by bartenders from around the world that
they think would work the best in a variety of cocktails. While I'm not much of
a cocktail guy I was still interested in the vatting idea and took a shot on
the first edition. It was good stuff but a lot of whisky reviewers,
specifically the many who rate whisky on whiskybase, weren't big fans. So now
we're onto the 2nd edition of this series, now bottled at a higher 50% ABV
while still priced at $75 CAD, which contains a vatting of whiskies as young as
4 years old and as old as 50 years old (according to whisky.com, although some
others claim the youngest as 6 years and the oldest as 40 years but let's just
say NAS for now). While I doubt there's more then a teaspoon of 50 year old
whisky in the mix I'm still interested to see how this dram fares!
So let's take
a look…
Age: NAS
Region: Lowlands
Cask Type(s): Not Available
ABV: 50.0%
No. of Bottles: Not Available
Maturation Time: Bottled in 2018
_____________________________________________________
- Color: Amber
- Nose: Really nice cinnamon butter and puff pastry forward nose, cordial cherries, apple strudel, walnuts, raisins, lemon cream and dry cocoa powder along with a faint salinity
- Taste: Very bourbon forward, almost reminiscent of the old Valinch but more tame and complex, lots of silky vanilla, hard caramels, ginger and cinnamon laced strudel, mincemeat tarts, cherry preserve, rose wine and touches of black pepper
- Finish: Long with more pepper, dry ginger, walnuts and tangerines
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