The Perfect Dram is a quite presumptiously named brand from The Whisky Agency. The experience is that it’s not necessarily untrue since they use some of their best casks, and The Whisky Agency itself is already a cracking bottler.

This whisky came out sometime last year, when Irish single malts ranging from their early 20s to some 26 or 27 years old were popping up everywhere. They have been hugely popular (Trump would say ‘yuuuuuuge’), but not all of them. Somehow The Whisky Exchange had one of their own bottlings available for a year or so, and they are not a bottler to scoff at either.

Anyway, maybe they’re more popular on the continent than on the British isles. Here, if you want one of those 20-something year olds you have to be F5-ing the website when it comes out.

I got a sample of this one somehow, probably from Teun van Wel, but I’m not entirely sure. I should write that shit down, but I’m a lazy mofo.

Image from Whiskybase

Sniff:
The typical, slightly chemical sweetness of winegums and winegum bags (the plastic ones) is here. Pear drops too. Very sweet with some oaky notes.

Sip:
On the palate it’s enormously sweet too. There’s some salmiak too and dryness, oak and pepper (both black and red). But, mostly it’s all very, very sweet like it was on the nose.

Swallow:
The finish too is dry and sweet, albeit a tad less sweet than it was before. Some grassy notes and winegums. Quite long.

As you might have guessed from the review, I’m not a huge fan of this whisky. I find it far too sweet, with those chemical notes of winegum and peardrop. There are some other notes but all of them are inferior to the sweetness. Apparently though, I am one of the few people around that doesn’t like this one since the Whiskybase review after 41 votes is over 91 points!

85/100

Irish Single Malt, 1988-2015, 26yo, 50.7%, The Perfect Dram. Available on Whiskybase for 400 euros as we speak.