This sample comes from Jon Beach (of Fiddler’s fame), from a 6 liter bottle. Jon opened it during this year’s Feis Ile and sold samples for the Beatson Cancer Unit in Glasgow. A nice gesture if there ever was one, especially since he sold 10cl samples of this liquid gold for only 20 quid.

Obviously I had to get myself one and have been thoroughly enjoying it for a while. It’s gone now, and has been for a while but I just realized this morning that I hadn’t put up my review yet.

A 1960s blend with a good proportion of Islay whisky in it. Serge thinks there must be Malt Mill in here, and there might be. We’ll most likely never know for sure. Nor do I really care, since what I care about in this case is how good this wee dram tastes!

Sniff:
There’s a touch of Old Bottle Effect (OBE) at first, but it’s quickly replaced with a very creamy aroma. Oak, cinnamon and ‘Zeeuwse Bolus‘. It’s very rich, with hints of toasted barley like in a stout beer.

Sip:
The palate is rich and has a bit of bite to it. It’s smooth and sweet like cotton candy and marshmallows. Again, the Zeeuwse Bolus so caramelized sugar and a touch of baked lemon zest. Lots of barley and some oak, slightly fatty.

Swallow:
The finish is slightly warming, with fatty popcorn and some sugary sweetness. Marshmallows, cinnamon, oak and barley.

It’s funny how Serge’s tasting notes are so vastly different then mine, but I also know that we have hugely different references and palates. What he does agree on with me is that this is an awesome whisky and should be appealing to beer drinkers as well as whisky drinkers.

Unlike in some modern stouts (more on that in a later post) there’s not too much of the candy (marshmallow, popcorn and cotton candy) happening to overpower any of the other flavors and it makes for a very well balanced and ridiculously tasty dram.

It truly tastes old and the gentle, fatty smoke (which I didn’t even mention before) work very well together and are so vastly different than today’s Islay whiskies. Highly, highly recommended.

92/100