Another COVID leftover. This one, like many others, was bought to be part of a tasting. At this point, I’m not even sure that ever happened, but the bottle did end up in my collection during lockdown.

Anyway, Tomatin can be good, but can also be insanely boring. This one did have good ratings on Whiskybase, and quite some votes, so I was rather confident going in. First Fill Bourbon Barrels generally sits rather well with me, especially with some age to it.

Sniff:
A bit of an Indian Summer whisky, with lots of yellow fruit and warm barley. Bread, pound cake, barley, apples, pear. In the background there’s a whiff of aniseed too.

Sip:
Dry barley and dried apple at the front. Some white pepper, white bread and a bit of vanilla custard. Less crisp and bright than the nose. Ripe, sweet and dried yellow fruit.

Swallow:
The finish is slightly less fruity, and more bready, white bread and white pepper. Not overly long.

There is not much about this whisky that is surprising. What is there is exactly what you expect to be there, but luckily the execution is quite spot on. Some vanilla, but mostly bready, barley driven notes backed-up by yellow fruit from the bourbon casks.

With this, at 21 years old and with a nice maturity to it, coming in at little over € 100, it’s quite a good buy. Compared to what whisky of this age generally costs nowadays, I think there’s little harm in this one. Good stuff!

87/100