The short hiatus of two weeks can mean only a few things. In this case it was all positive: summer holiday!

This also gave me some time to finish some awesome samples and bottles I had sitting on the shelves here, and this Ben Nevis was one of them. How’s that for camping whisky?

The whisky under inspection came out around the same time as the rather awesome one by WhiskyNerds. Upon first inspection this one seemed a little more fruity than the other one, and the WhiskyNerds version was a bit more purist, with a little more focus on the distillate.

Let’s see how it holds up under closer inspection:

Sniff:
Barley, yellow fruit, oak, a minor note of minerals. Slate, granite. Apple, pear, white grape. Coconut and straw. Some twiglike bitterness, and greenery. Tree leaves, grass, heather, moss.

Sip:
Very spirit driven with even a bit of alcohol sweetness. Quite green like on the nose, moss, heather, grapes, apple. Some bitterness too.

Swallow:
The finish continous down the previously chosen path, with lots of spirit based notes. Quite heavy with heather and some hessian.

It’s an immensely complex whisky with lots of flavors happening at the same time. The baseline of the cask bottled by WhiskyNerds is present, with lots of spirit driven notes, mellowed by a lot of time in oak. However, as indicated before, this one is a little more fruity, and that gives it a slight difference to the one bottled by Bram and Floris. I can’t say this one’s better though. Just different.

91/100

Ben Nevis 1996-2020, 23 years old, Hogshead, 47.6%. It sold out instantly, but of course it’s now available through some bottle-flipper for £ 360.