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Tuesday, August 7, 2018

Glenlossie Week: 11 year old 2000 Duncan Taylor Dimensions

Glenlossie Week continues with a release that's about as old as the first whisky review on this website. It's so old that the Dimensions series was still affordable when it was released. Actually the bottle is still for sale at some continental European stores, so that doesn't bode tremendously well.

Like this week's other three Glenlossies, it was aged in American oak. Due to its color, I'd bet it was a refill cask. That could be good. That could also be not good.


Distillery: Glenlossie
Ownership: Diageo
Region: Speyside (Lossie)
Bottler: Duncan Taylor
Series: Dimensions
Age: 11 years old (2000 - 2011)
Maturation: a 🙁cask
Alcohol by Volume: 46%
(Thank you to Tetris for donating this MoM sample to D4P Laboratories!)

NEAT
Its color is very pale. The nose starts off with an odd combo of white mezcal, raisins and yeast. After 10 minutes that mezcal note goes straight to Cuervo Gold. Then apples and Dove soap. The palate starts with sugar and raw heat. It has a cheap blend sourness and bite. Then comes the soap and perfume. It finishes with sugar, perfume, sourness and bitterness.

DILUTED TO ~40%abv, or <1tsp water per 30ml whisky
The nose ditches most of the Cuervo Gold. Picks up a little bit of stone fruit, moss and plastic. Maybe some barley. The palate gets buttery and biscuity, with some lemon. But then comes the agave/tequila thing, which expands and expands with time. The finish is the same as the palate, with extra bitter ash.

WORDS WORDS WORDS
I've previously had issues with Dimension whiskies, in that they lack, well, dimensions. But this is pretty horrible when neat, like some prank combo of Johnnie Walker Red and Cuervo and dish soap. It's better with water, at first very much so. But then the cheap tequila thing barges in. And that's when I decide not to finish the sample.

Style-wise, it bears no relation to the other three Glenlossies this week. While there's a possibility that the sample could be tainted in some way, I think it's much more likely that the cask was dead dead dead. It has wrung awful compounds into the spirit, rather than filtering awful compounds out. So though it reads like 3 or 4 year old whisky, the problem isn't the youth. The problem is bad whisky.

Availability - It can be found in Europe if you are so inclined
Pricing - Too much if not free
Rating - 68 (with water only, 10 points worse when neat)