Another left over I got from helping out at the Whisky Festival The Hague. This time a Macduff, and I’ve been looking forward to this one, since Macduff is putting out some terrific casks lately, most of them around the 10 year mark from 2000 and 2001. This one is from a hogshead instead of the more regular sherry butt and bottled by Douglas of Drumlanrig. This bottler is considered by many (myself included) as a hit & miss bottler, with quite some nice whiskies but also a few that really suck.

Nose:
I get a huge hit of balsamic vinager right away, with green tree bark and lemon juice. There’s also a scent of boiled vegetables in a very, very nasty way. In some cases the balsamic vinegar scent works, but this is not one of them.

Taste:
The flavour profile is a bit better than the nose was. Reasonably sharp, lemony and quite grassy as well. Wet, mossy wood, like the green tree bark above.

Finish:
The finish is, again, a little bit better, with some young woodiness added to the grass and lemon. Not very long.

After writing down these notes I threw the rest in the sink. This is an absolutely dreadful whisky, in my opinion. It tastes like the cask gave of the exact wrong flavours. The finish loses much of the very nasty flavours but doesn’t give any goodness in return either.

While Jock Shaw states that there is no bad whisky and you’d be happy with this after being stranded on an island for a year, you’d also be happy with a half rotten mango after almost being starved to death. That doesn’t make it any good, though…

Macduff 10, 1999, Douglas of Drumlanrig, 46%, used to cost around € 40