As far as I know Sestante is a bottler of old. When you hear the name it usually together with a certain amount of reverence and awe. Not strange, if you look at the average scores on WhiskyBase.com or the prices indexed at Whisky Wardrobe. High scoring, high priced bottled from before I was of legal drinking age.

Dalwhinnie is one of Diageo’s malts that you don’t come across all that much. There is a regular bottling and a Distiller’s Edition every now and then, but I can’t remember trying an indie version from the Highland distillery.

Sniff:

Image from WhiskyBase

Lots of cereal and barley, with even more sweet fruits mixed in. Tropical and juicy with peach, pineapple and rock melon. European oak, pepper and some wood spices too. Ginger and tree bark.

Sip:
A little bit thin, but again with the load of sweet tropical fruits. Mostly the peach and pineapple again. An old style nonetheless with full sherry and it does remind me of old (Golden Promise era) Macallan and Karuizawa. Quite some wood influence, but not in a bad way.

Swallow:
The finish is the let down here. Very short and a bit too gentle I think. Fruity with orange and peach.

I think this bottle should have been bottled at a higher ABV, or drunk earlier. It might be because of the ancientness of the bottle that it went down in impact and power a bit, or just that it is filtered, and watered down decades ago. But honestly, that’s the only thing I can think of and the flavours and smells are very good, you just have to work a bit harder to get them all. A bit of work never hurt anybody, right?

Dalwhinnie 16, Sestante, 43%, approximatly € 250 now.