Ahh some nice Highland scotch, not a peat monster or too light and fruity – sounds great, and there’s the sherry cask to rain our parade. The problem is however how hard it is to tell if such casking is actually the best parts of this whisky. Overall it’s not great, but at it’s best it’s the fruity aspects that make it work in at least a few categories, while doing awful to mediocre in the rest.
The first glass of this made itself VERY well known – it was as it said – hello – my name is Aberlour. The wood and smoke hit you in a way that makes you take notice, but thankfully – this is actually a good whisky so taking notice is a good thing.
It’s bold – we’ll give them that. The whisky itself is actually a fine combo of smoke, sweet, citrus, and wood – although failing to properly bring them together. No, we say it’s bold because it looks very nice and well defined, but then you read what is being said. In short, we’re a site that’s built on honesty, and often we find what people say about their product to be a load of spunk – but we sort of revel in the sheer audacity of Aberfeldy.
There is a rule of design where you put the most valuable information closer to the top-left as most people look there first (obviously our Arabic or Japanese readers would disagree among others). As such we too could not ignore the elephant that is is apparently the official spirit for golf, the King’s Game, or as we call it – a good walk spoiled. (One of our reviewers does occasionally golf, but we’re not sorry)
We mentioned the week before about giving out a gift for the Christmas season (we know it’s April, friends in other states does this), and this is the companion piece – the gift to the lounge. We are willing to admit that in a blind buy we got better than we gave. While there are some niggling details here to stop this from being a darling, it’s a fine gift.
Christmas time has come and gone once again, and once again a scotch has been gifted to the lounge. Sadly however it’s not a scotch as it’s been tainted by the wicked evil magic that is sherry. We’ve long been opponents of sherry aged scotches, but the recent trend of finishing in sherry has revived our hopes and can often be enjoyable. That is not the case here.
A most joyous Ludachristmas has befallen us! We start off the year 2018 with a scotch from our annual gathering of friends for the holidays, and as usual, it’s more scotch. (To complement all the other scotch we review of course). This time it’s a Highland 12 Year that has a bit of strangeness about it.
The Dalmore has always been in the peripheral vision when a Glenfiddich review comes up, but it’s here for a slightly odd reason. Namely the recent movie release of Kingsman 2, of which the first film had a mention of a special version of the Dalmore Whisky – which is how we end up here.
(Happy Christmas btw folks!)
We’ve often maligned Macallan in-person as the ‘what those who know nothing of scotch buy and say is the pinnacle.’ which is likely why this is our first review of them. No need for a spoiler alert though – because it’s been maligned for a damn good reason – it’s awful.
Before we get to the Oban distillery on our Scottish tour we try a whisky with a weird cat thing on it. It also (self-described) tastes like a candle? Because who doesn’t want to eat candles? It could be worse though. You could try this on the rocks. (hey-o)
