To follow up on yesterday’s cracking Deanston, I’m going through some more Archives bottlings until Friday. Today’s post goes to a 25 year old Bunnahabhain from a ‘Dark sherry cask’.

Bunnahabhain is a distillery who’s product usually goes very well with sherry casks, especially when the whisky gets quite a bit older. The top ones that a lot of connoisseurs talk about when they come out are from the 60s and 70s, but those are getting more rare, and much more expensive.

The next decade automatically becomes a point of interest for both monetary and availability reasons. Luckily, Bunnahabhain doesn’t have a bad 80s reputation like Bowmore with their FWP heavy whiskies.

Bunnahabhain 1987 Archives. Image from Whiskybase

Sniff:
Slightly nutty with lots of leather and sherry influence. The nuttiness is no surprise, when tasting Bunnahabhain, I think. Quite punchy with some dried fruit, wine residue. Quite a lot of sherry, in a good way.

Sip:
At first it tastes a bit thin, surprisingly. After that initial surprise it gains in thickness and richness quickly. Barely any wood flavours but quite a bit of dried fruit. Plums, and also banana (not dried). Sweet and sugary.

Swallow:
Spicy with sweet cloves. Finally I get a bit more oaky notes. Slightly bitter too.

A very tasty whisky that isn’t overly big on its sherry notes. While the Spanish wine is definitely present it doesn’t overpower the distillery character and leaves enough room for the spirit to do its work. I really enjoy that.

Surprisingly when a whisky like this pops up and I am generally not overjoyed at first since the sherry is a bit tamed and the whisky doesn’t have a massive oomph. After I’ve had it and I think about it a bit I find that I usually really love those drams. The added complexity gives you so much more to enjoy in a bottle.

So, again, kudos for the guys at Whiskybase. They’ve picked a great cask again and I’d really like to get myself one of those bottles. What’s keeping me is that I just got allocated one of those Karuizawas from TWE. Yes, allocated.

Bunnahabhain, 1987, 50.2%, Archives for Whiskybase, Fishes of Samoa series. € 145 at Whiskybase.