Odds & Ends: June 2019

Whilst Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall highlights our global plastics crisis on the BBC, here’s yet more distraction in the form of random plastic-free drams I’ve enjoyed of late.

 

Aberlour A’bunadh Batch #61 [2017] Ob. 60.8% WB87.47[89]

• N: I smell lovely oily nutty husky sherry casks.
• T: Rather spirity neat. I poured in a whole heap of water with no detrimental effects whatsoever. The trick is adding enough to extract the underlying waxy herbal character.
• F: Not overly complex but it’s a good hummer.
• C: A slugger really, and a good ‘un.

Scores 86 points

 

Glengoyne 21yo (+/-2018) Ob. 43% WB88.15[785] [WF]84 [WM]84[13]

• C: Much like Glenmorangie, I find Glengoyne’s younger bottlings to be just as good as their older expressions, the [Glengoyne] 18yo & 25yo being the exceptions. I find this 21yo a super clean/rounded & faultless sherry driven malt, and that’s about all.

Scores 84 points

 

Laphroaig 10yo CS Batch #010 [2018] Ob. 58% WB88.54[359]

• N: A contemporary-styled, peated vegetal Laphroaig – that’s pickled veg with an aromatic chilli touch and lime & unripe mango pickle with shoe polish. Once you find yourself stood inside a bicycle shed with a slice of vanilla icecream in a cardboard-y wafer, that’s your lot. 
• T: Tight, short/acute arrival, drying as it travels,…
• F: ,.. yet becoming fluid towards the tail, wrapping up with a bitter-fresh old oaky smokey profile.
• C: Water reveals there’s less under the surface but what’s on the surface will suffice.

Scores 83 points

 

Laphroaig An Cuan Mor [2018] Ob. 48% WB85.68[390]

A sample from Laphroaig’s Feis Ile Open Day in 2018, kept and tried a year later.

• C: Decent whisky certainly, but at £83 for a 70cl travel retail bottle is a push given the standard 10yo is significantly cheaper and of a similar standard.

Scores 85 points

 

[Springbank] Longrow 1991 16yo Un-Ob ref: 08/91-3 56.8%

This sample was saved from last year’s Campbeltown Malts Festival [WLP], which as far as I can tell never did see a release as a 1991 vintage. At Springbank’s New & Forthcoming Tasting I rated it 87 at the time, which for a 9 year Chardonnay-finished peated malt is quite something. Let’s see how it fares a year on.

• C: This is superb & unique whisky that has enjoyed every year in that Chardonnay cask. I’d definitely buy a bottle without hesitation but of course now I’m a year too late. Shucks!

Scores 88 points

 

.

END

.