When you have friends who try to celebrate decadence by pruning their whisky collection from anything that they wouldn’t rate at 90 points or higher, some old bottles tend to show up.

I bought a set of bottles of the ‘Weird Whisky Tasting’ I did little over a year ago during lockdown. A tasting filled with whiskies that were getting surprisingly strange rates and reviews on the internet. This one wasn’t part of that batch, but it came with similar preconditions. A 1973 Lochnagar that, at the time, scored some 86 or 87 points? These oldies tend to get higher ratings, and my curiosity got the better of me.

Since I opened the bottle sometime in early 2021, I slowly went through it, and sold some samples as well. By now it’s empty, and I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it. Let find out how much!

Sniff:
A lot of very old-fashioned notes of steeped barley, hessian and dunnage warehouses with earthen floors. Quite some mulchy oak too, but not as dark and old as you might picture. Apple pie and some apple sauce too.

Sip:
The palate brings quite a bit of white pepper, dry oak shavings, sawdust and dry soil. Very old-fashioned with coal dust, oak, barley. Dried apples.

Swallow:
A rather spicy and warming finish. Quite woody, with a focus on the barley. Hessian, cracked leather, apple sauce.

Mostly very old-fashioned, but also quite generic. As in, the different style of distilling (less homogenized distilling regime, more erratic) and less tinkered-with maturation, these are both noticeable. On the other hand, the whisky itself isn’t overly unique.

However, with these recognizable old style whiskies are now few and far between, it is something I appreciate highly!

88/100