Single Malt Report: Auchentoshan 23 year old 1990 Archives #6850

On Wednesday and Thursday I reviewed Auchentoshan whiskies and today I will again review an Auchentoshan whisky.  And then that's it for Auchentoshan here, for the foreseeable future.  There ain't no samples of it left in my stash.

Today's Lowland single malt is the oldest of this week's three, but also has the lowest alcohol-by-volume.  The good folks at Archives, who are also the proprietors of the Whiskybase shop, selected a hogshead which may have been losing more to the angels (or devils or thieves or rats) than the cask owner may have desired.  Archives and Whisky-Fässle split the cask which was weighing in at a total of 47.7%abv and had an outturn of only 142, which means it had a loss of around 60% of its contents.  That's a lot of empty cask space.  These sorts of casks can be pretty fun, though they can also be pretty gross.  Having enjoyed a number of Archives's whiskies, I'm betting on the former.

Distillery: Auchentoshan

Independent Bottler: Archives
Range: The Indian ducks and their allies

Age: 23 years old (11/11/1990 to 9/2014)

Maturation: Hogshead
Cask #: 6850
Limited bottling: 71

Region: Lowlands

Alcohol by Volume: 47.7%

NEAT
The color is the lightest of the three whiskies, a nice straw color.

That straw comes through on the nose.  Oats, barley, rice cakes.  Lightly earthy.  Soon it develops a nice cookie dough note that lingers throughout.  That's followed up cherry Jolly Ranchers, fresh raspberries, and sesame seeds.

The softly layered palate has some earth, honeyed sweetness, something savory (beef stock?), white fruits, lemons, and limes.  A nice barley delivery.

The lightly sweet finish shows honey, lemons, and toasted oak spices.  Despite the fragility of notes, it lasts for a long time.

WITH WATER (~40%abv)
The fruit gets louder in the nose, with stone fruits joining the berries.  Black licorice.  Still lots of cereal grains.

The palate becomes surprisingly complex.  Moss, barley, fresh herbs, something metallic (copper?), and a nice compact white fruit and honey concoction.  Yet the sweetness is kept mild and steady.

The finish has the fresh herbs and moss.  Mild honey sweetness again, now encased in a menthol glow.

COMMENTS:
It was Jordan of Chemistry of the Cocktail who convinced me to try this.  And the really weird thing about this whisky -- considering my experience with indie Auchentoshans and this cask's strange outturn -- is that it's not at all weird.  Between the hay, earth, grains, berries, and green herbs it proves to be a very rustic whisky.  Something nice and light for a country spring evening.

What is unusual about it is its youth and the prominence of the barley spirit.  I'm going to guess that may have something to do with the mostly empty cask.  Time has softened the rougher parts of the new make, but left its heart.  CJ and Menno and whomever else has the good nose over there, have done it again.

Availability - Only through Whiskybase Shop
Pricing - €135 pre-shipping
Rating - 89

Single Malt Report: Auchentoshan 15 year old 1997 Old Malt Cask #HL9807

This is the second of three indie Auchentoshan reviews this week.  As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I enjoy independently bottled Auchentoshan better than the official ones because the indie Auchs are consistently odd, in a good way.  This whisky, whose sample was provided by Florin (a prince) is from the Laing family's Old Malt Cask range.

Distillery: Auchentoshan

Independent Bottler: Hunter Laing
Range: Old Malt Cask

Age: 15 years old (12/1997 to 5/2013)

Maturation: refill hogshead
Cask #: HL9807
Limited bottling: 211

Region: Lowlands

Alcohol by Volume: 50%

NEAT
Though older than yesterday's 13yo, its color is noticeably lighter.

Once again, the nose fires all sorts of notes out at once.  Peach nectar, anise, menthol, whipped butter, strawberry candy, and cookie dough.  Giving it some time in the glass......it gets rosier, picks up some lemon candy, and something moss-like without actually being peat.

The palate starts out with a pleasantly dirty earthy note.  A bit of a pepper sting up front.  Ginger beer.  The third sip suddenly produces a massive floral note.  Violets, perhaps?  And then the curious mossy note from the nose.

The finish is long and citrusy, growing more sweeter with time.  Smaller notes of caramel and green herbs appear here and there.

WITH WATER (~40%abv)
Now there are band-aids in the nose.  Dirty hay, too.  Then berry jam and a solid malt note.

The farmy note shows up in the palate too.  But it's also sweet and lemony with some baking spice around the edges.

The finish is sweet, spicy, citrusy, and farmy.

COMMENTS:
Again, an indie Auchentoshan that keeps cranking out simultaneous dissimilar notes, and then changes course, and then does it from a different angle.  I don't know what to say other than, it usually works.  If you're looking for a well sculpted consistent whisky, then this won't do it for you.  Though I like it, I wouldn't actually go out and buy a bottle of the stuff because I can imagine it gets exhausting pretty quickly.

Availability - Perhaps some specialty European retailers
Pricing - $60-$80 (without shipping)
Rating - 82

Single Malt Report: Auchentoshan 13 year old 2000 Exclusive Casks

Going from triple-distilled Irish whiskey to its mate a triple-distilled Scotch Whisky 150 miles away by air.  I'm not the biggest fan of Auchentoshan's regular official range, yet I've always enjoyed independent releases of its whisky.  And I have to ask, am I the only one who finds every single indie Auchentoshan odd?  Will this week's three bottlings continue the weird streak?

First up is the youngest and strongest of the three, a 13 year old from The Creative Whisky Company's Exclusive Casks line.  My last post about one of their whiskies caused some hubbub.  Let's see if this one will do the same.

I actually wrote about this whisky a year and a half ago while doing an eight-whisky tasting.  The whisky was weird (as usual, as mentioned), but not my brand of weird.  I was promptly told privately, by two people whose palates I respect, that I was out of my Vulcan mind.  Try it again, they said, it must have been the sample!  Okay then somebody give me a new sample, I said.  Nothing.  So I went out and got the sample myself, grabbing THE LAST bottle of it anywhere (according to Total Wine's website) for March's OCSC event.  And, indeed, the whisky elicited some "That's interesting" comments from club members.  I tried a half ounce and found it most......drinkable.  Here's a review of a larger sample, nosed in the dark confines of my whisky cave.

Distillery: Auchentoshan

Independent Bottler: The Creative Whisky Co.
Exclusive to: Total Wine & More

Age: 13 years old (2000 - ???)

Maturation: likely (2) refill American oak casks
Limited bottling: 488

Region: Lowlands

Alcohol by Volume: 53.6%

NEAT
Its color is light yellow.

Its nose begins with a pleasant mix of barley, lemon zest, and spearmint.  And then a blast of white rye spirit slams through.  Giving it a few minutes......now there's papaya and cloves.  Black cherry soda.  Big League Chew (bubblegum).  Okay then.

The palate is barley spirit-forward as well, though never too sweet.  Some Ceylon cinnamon and clover honey.  Suddenly it develops a rooty earthy note.  Some mushrooms too.  And here's the bubblegum.

The finish gets sweeter than the palate.  Some sugar in with the cinnamon.  It's bold and fizzy.  Fudgey at times.  Rich and sticky.  And the bubblegum.

Dear god, what'll happen if I add water...

WITH WATER (~46%abv)
Oooh, the nose gets super fruity and totally nails the candy shop thing better than Glenmorangie Milsean (and without the wine cask futzing, mind you).  Bubblegum, gummy bears, Big Red chewing gum.

The palate remains rich at this strength.  Big Red gum, honey, fresh ginger, and rock candy.  Still has that slight earthy thing underneath.

It finishes sticky sweet.  Bubblegum, oranges, and a fragrant floral tea.

COMMENTS:
It's a cracker.  And damn it, Andy, I found the Big League Chew note too.

It's the nose that wins here, with or without water.  It's all a bit schizo, especially the neat palate, but it usually works.  It may even work best *glup* with water, which pulls things together as best as possible.  But trying to corralling its separate parts is like herding two-year olds, yet slightly less stressful.

So what about that original mini-review?  I caught all the candy and barley notes in both instances, but I didn't get the fetid cheesy notes this time, which definitely helped it out.  Perhaps six months in a half empty sample bottle did the whisky no favors the first time.  I still say this is some weird whisky, but this time I can see what the fuss was about.

Availability - Gone
Pricing - $80
Rating - 86

A tale of two Bushmills White Labels: Diageo era (2015) and Irish Distillers era (1980s)

I've always had issues with Bushmills White Label blended whiskey.  Even when I was not so choosy about my Irish whiskies, it was the last one I'd go for.  Sometimes I'd wondered if this was Diageo's fault.  (Of course he'd wonder that, you're thinking.)  It was as if they'd taken the Johnnie Walker Red Approach to this blend.  Bushmills's Ulster malt whiskey is perfectly serviceable stuff, sometimes quite good, so was Diageo taking potentially salvageable malt and drowning it in the cheapest grain whiskey they could find?  From an accountant's perspective the answer is, of course they are.  It's their cheapest product, it had better have the cheapest ingredients.  Yet, this Irish fan knows that all of the Republic of Ireland's Midleton Distillery's blends, priced the same or less than Bushmills White, are of higher quality.  And Bushmills even uses Midleton's grain whiskey.  It's not like the Catholics know something the Protestants don't know.  About whiskey, I mean.  So......I start to blame the producers for giving up on quality control.

Segue!

When dusty hunting in Southern California, one is lucky if one finds something cool in 1 out of 10 stores.  During a particularly fruitless dusty hunt, I found myself going 0-for-11.  Store 12 proved to be uninspiring too, so when I spotted an old 200mL of Bushmills for $5 I bought it, figuring it would be my lone thing to show for the day, like the little gold painted plastic trophies with sharp edges given out to Little Leaguers at the end of the season because their parents paid the league entry fee at the start of the season.  I filed this trophy next to another, an '80s Early Times bourbon.

When I bought it, I thought the whiskey was from the 1990s, but upon unearthing it recently, I saw that it was actually from the '80s.  A bonus trophy!  Like for the kid who draws the most walks on his team.  It's not that he's a good baseball player; he doesn't swing because he doesn't actually know the strike zone because he probably needs glasses but he hasn't told his parents yet because his dad just got laid off from the paint factory for drinking BUSHMILLS on the job and the boy has heard that glasses cost a lot of money.  Whew, I didn't know where I was going with that but I saved it right there.  The bottle is post-1980 because it measures in metric and pre-1989 because it doesn't have the government warning.

I also had a mini of the current version of Bushmills White because I'm a masochist.  That bottle has an early 2015 bottle code and a Diageo reference on the back, thus it was made during Diageo's ownership period.  But since Diageo didn't buy Bushmills until 2005, who made my bottle of the old stuff?  Irish Distillers owned Bushmills from 1972 to 1987, when it was then sold to Pernod Ricard.  I believe my bottle is genuine Irish Distillers stuff because Brown Forman was the bottle's importer and Brown Forman was under contract with Irish Distillers to import Bushmills to the US.

So if you've skipped down here because you're getting all TL;DR on me, see at least the above paragraph.

Taste Off!

NEAT (40%abv)

Diageo 2015 bottling
Its color is quite light so there is, thankfully, a minimum of e150a colorant in the mix.  The nose is fruitier and more floral than I'd remembered, though often it smells like straight up grain whiskey.  There's some dried apricots and vanilla, though that fades quickly.  It gets very grassy after 30 minutes in the glass.  The palate is hot.  Big on notebook paper and a plain sugariness.  Some nondescript white fruitiness.  A hint of shortbread.  Bitter, sour berries.  Feels like a watery Jameson.  Here's the heart of the problem, it finishes rough and bitter.  It has the vague vanilla and shortbread notes, but it ends up reading as something between a cheap Canadian whiskey and vanilla vodka.

Irish Distillers 1980s bottling
Its color is similar to the current version, maybe a hint lighter.  The nose is very malty, and the fruit and flowers are well defined.  Fresh lemons, citronella, orange blossoms, and jasmine.  Gets more biscuity (or cookie-ish for us Americans) with time.  After 30 minutes, a rich vanilla bean note arrives and the citronella brightens.  A much thicker mouthfeel in the palate.  Malt and milk chocolate.  Mandarin oranges and toasted oak spices.  Simple but rich.  It finishes mildly with nice notes of vanilla cake and caramel sauce. Hints of citrus and baking spices linger underneath.

Comments: So far the Irish Distillers blend has the advantage, but part of that is due to the weakness in the Diageo version's palate and finish.  The '80s blend has a thickness and lusciousness that is missing from most current Irish (and Scottish) blends.  And I can only guess that's due to less grain and a better matured malt content.

---

Normally, I do a round on the rocks when reviewing cheaper blends.  But I just couldn't bring myself to add ice to this stuff because I just always drink Irish whiskey neat.  So I decided to add water and drop the ABV quite a bit, much like blenders (allegedly) do when assembling their products.

WITH WATER (~30%abv)

Diageo 2015 bottling
The nose is still there, a good sign.  Fizzy, like ginger ale and tonic water.  Orange candy, generic vanilla and caramel, and some plain woody notes.  A hint of malt and lime in the palate.  Tangy, woody.  Mostly watery vanilla.  Not much in the finish.  Tangy with a peppery bite and little bit of vanilla.

Irish Distillers 1980s bottling
Oh my goodness.  The nose is incredibly rich.  TONS of chocolate.  Egg creme soda.  Circling notes of caramel chews, toffee pudding, and butterscotch.  "Holy crap," says my notes.  Vanilla beans, orange blossoms, and fresh limes.  A gorgeous rose note.  A whole bowl of fresh citrus fruits.  The palate remains plenty thick.  Better vanilla notes.  A touch grassy, but also brightly peppery and fizzy.  A little bit of the rosy notes show up in the finish, along with vanilla beans and peppercorns.

Comments: Stunned. The '80s bottling's nose was one of the loveliest I've ever experienced, and it went on and on.  I've never found a blend to open up like this at such a low ABV.  I'm just going to enjoy the rest of this bottle at 30%abv.  The current version doesn't totally collapse, but it is breaking apart.  These are two very different whiskies at this point.

---

That was so much fun that I decided to add some more water for the final few milliliters just to see what would happen.

WITH WATER (~25%abv)

Diageo 2015 bottling
The nose is still perky, now all lemon juice and Belgian witbier.  The palate is bitter with moderate notes of vanilla and caramel.  Not much left of the finish, as it's mostly just bitter.

Irish Distillers 1980s bottling
That nose is still kickin', full of Balblair fruitiness.  Honeydew, mango, and lychee.  Maybe some ocean air.  The palate is very creamy.  Cream puffs, milk chocolate, and malt.  The fruit returns in the finish, with just a hint of tartness.

Comments: The current edition's nose is still pretty good, but the palate is done for.  Meanwhile, Mr. '80s still works very well.  Even the palate is keeps on clicking.

---

FINAL COMMENTARY:
The 1980s bottling is the sturdiest 40%abv blend I've ever had.  And, in my experience, it has one of the best noses on any blend, period.  At 30%abv it's pure joy.  Bushmills White Label once had a very good recipe with exemplary ingredients, but I fear that was lost long ago.  The good news about the current version is that it's better than I'd remembered (faint praise!).  I thought I'd be giving this one a super low score, but the nose works moderately well for a $20 blend.  The palate is still problematic and the finish is worse.  Yet, it's better than most $20 scotch blends (even fainter praise!).  But if you're out treasure hunting around old liquor stores and you're in a rut, don't be so quick to pass up on an old Bushmills.  You may be in for a treat.

Diageo 2015 bottling
Availability - Everywhere
Pricing - $16-$28 for 750mL in the US
Rating - 71

Irish Distillers 1980s bottling
Availability - Happy hunting!
Pricing - my 200mL cost $5.19
Rating - 89 (add water!)

Single Malt Report: Talisker Port Ruighe

Each week, my reviews have some sort of theme that ties them together.  This week originally had no theme, since I was just trying to review some current stuff.  But now I realize that there is a line that connects all three reviews.  GlenDronach Peated, Highland Park Dark Origins, and Talisker Port Ruighe are all recent NAS products that venture into new territory for their well respected distilleries.

Talisker Port Ruighe (pronounced por-tree, I believe) entered the market right on the heels of Talisker Storm in 2013.  Those were released in April and May, then Talisker Dark Storm appeared in July, and soon after that Talisker Skye showed up.  Suddenly Talisker had a whole portfolio of NAS whiskies.  And I wondered, did any market ever really ask for this?

I've had Storm and Skye.  Storm was a mixed bag, though better than I'd expected and certainly had more punch than Skye.  I've grown to like port cask whisky more and more over the past few years, so I'm holding out a little bit of hope that Talisker can pull it off.  I mean, Amrut does a mean port finished whisky, can't Diageo pull off something of similar quality with so many more resources at their disposal?

Distillery: Talisker

Ownership: Diageo

Region: Isle of Skye

Type: Single Malt Whisky
Age: ???

Maturation: A combination of whisky aged in American oak casks, European oak casks, and "deeply charred" casks is then finished in ex-port wine casks.

Alcohol by Volume: 45.8%
Chillfiltered? Yes
Caramel Colored? Yes
(Thanks to Brett for the sample!)

NEAT
At first the nose is like The Speakeasy with a layer of sugary candy on top.  Lots of cinnamon, peat moss, and raspberry jam.  Then maybe some prunes, definitely a quantity of struck matches, and an old parmesan wedge.

The palate is smokey mezcal with grape candy and very strong acidic notes.  Red Hots candies, salt, a little bit of cayenne pepper, dried apricots, hay, and mild peat.

The very sweet finale has spoons of raspberry and strawberry jam and lots of fruit acid.  Swisher Sweets and applesauce with cinnamon.  Maybe a hint of peat.

WITH WATER (~40%abv)
The nose has a little bit of that Milsean candy shop thing, but here it reads like someone spilled a glass of port on a new carpet.  And some orange pixy stix.  And it's slightly cheesy.

The palate dissolves mostly into narrow sensations rather than notes.  Bitter, sweet, slightly farmy, very acidic.  Grapey port.

The finish is just like the palate, though quite long.

COMMENTARY:
If you were to tell me this was a complete failure of a whisky, I'd have a hard time disagreeing with you.  As if Talisker Port Ruighe were Glenmorangie Quinta Ruban's chain smoking dyslexic brother, absolutely nothing congeals in this whisky and all its parts fly off in separate directions.  It's as if someone in the warehouse dumped a bottle of cheap port into a 5 year old Talisker cask, stirred it once, and then said, "I got yer finish right here!"  So, yes, this doesn't come across as a professionally produced whisky.

But I kinda like it.

There's something about it.  It's like watching a video of a golden retriever releasing the parking brake, staring happily from the driver's seat window, and coasting a Plymouth Voyager down a steep hill.  It's dumb and a disaster in motion.  But it's funny.  Just like this whisky.

Availability - Europe and (maybe) travel retail
Pricing - $45-$85 - I'd buy if it were $30
Rating - 74 - this includes a 10 point bonus for being such a silly puppy

Single Malt Report: Highland Park Dark Origins

When I said that a bottle could get none more black than Ardbeg Dark Cove's, I was wrong.  Highland Park Dark Origins's bottle is in fact more black.

Scotch companies seem to like to use the whole foreboding thing in their product names -- Dark Cove, Dark Origins, Loch Dhu, Tempest, Storm, Storm, Storm, also Storm, and who could forget Dark Storm.  And I guess a gigantic killer whirlpool (Corryvreckan) counts too.  What this scariness really attempts to do is cover the lack of age statement on all of these whiskies.  Except Loch Dhu 10yo, and that worked out so well.

Ignoring the rest of those, today's review is of Highland Park Dark Origins.  There appears to be conflicting reports about whether or not this NAS bottling is replacing Highland Park's 15 year old.  If you google "Highland Park 15 discontinued", you'll find the answer to be both yes and no, with those yeses and nos both coming from brand reps.  If the answer really is yes (which would stink), then the only way Dark Origins is really "replacing" the 15yo is in its price point.  The 15yo was the HP whisky with the most American oak influence, meanwhile Dark Origins focuses on the sherry.  It is possible they brought the Dark Origins to the market while they gradually phase out the 15yo because they want to have enough older stock for the more popular 18 year old.  But that's all theory at this point.  HP15 is still rather easy to find.  For now.  Here's the tasting.

Official photo

Distillery: Highland Park

Ownership: The Edrington Group

Region: Islands (Orkney)

Type: Single Malt Whisky

Maturation: both first fill and refill sherry casks, though there's twice the amount of first fills compared to the 12 year old

Age: ???

Alcohol by Volume: 46.8%
Chillfilltered? No
Colored? Unknown
(Purchased 50mL bottle)

NEAT
The color is of a 12 year old bourbon.

There's a lot of rubbery sherry in the nose.  In fact, that's the main element.  Then there's dark chocolate, menthol, and walnuts.  After 20 minutes, it opens up a little bit, showing some mango juice, red berry notes, and pencil shavings.

The palate starts off with horseradish, roots, and arugula. But the notes are too mild to really be exciting.  Just a slight bitterness.  More rubber sulphur and a hint of dried berries.  After 20 minutes, there's more sherry, more berries, more sweetness, and a metallic note.

The finish is green and dirty like the palate, but, also like the palate, not bold enough to be of much interest to those of us who like that style.  There are also brief notes of bubblegum, sherry, cinnamon, and bitterness. It's of a good length and gets sweeter as it goes.

Watering it down to the range's usual US strength...

WITH WATER (~43%abv)
The nose is a little more salty and floral, but otherwise pretty similar.  Still plenty of rubber.  Maybe some plastic and caramel.

The palate is much quieter, though somewhat sweeter.  The rougher notes have nearly vanished.  Some more sherry shows up, as does some pepper.

Black pepper, cinnamon, sugar, and a hint of mesquite chips in the finish.

COMMENTS:
First off, I'm with Team MAO/Sku.  This is definitely sulphurous.  Some of European reviewers call it smoke or peat, but to me this reads as sulphur.  Peppery sulphur, struck match sulphur, and lots of rubbery sulphur.  I find barely any actual smoke character, except maybe in the finish.

I have to say, I don't get this whisky.  It's unlike the rest of the HP range, but not in a fun way.  It's not terribly complex, nor is it a pleasant drink, nor is there much in the way of good mature spirit showing.  Plus the sherry element cannot compete with the richness of the rest of the HPs.  It's not a bad whisky.  It's fine, but the rest of the regular range (including the 15) is damned good.

Dark Origins is preferable at its bottled strength.  Having lowered the abv to 43, I can see why they didn't bottle it there because it thins out and washes away.  Had those green and dirty notes been amped up a bit in the palate then this could be recommended as a cool quirky Highland Park. But they're not, so I'll stick to the rest of the regular range.

Availability - Most specialty liquor retailers in the US and Europe
Pricing - $60-$100 (US & Europe)
Rating - 80

Single Malt Report: GlenDronach Peated

Glendronach, famed for its high-quality sherried malts made from a previous owner's distillate, have recently brought two new and very different products to the market.  GlenDronach Heilan and Peated are the first products made from the current ownership's (Benriach Distillery Company) spirit, and neither have much of a sherry cask influence.

Heilan has an age statement, 8 years, and is quite malty-licious in my opinion.  Meanwhile Peated, the newer "expression", does not have an age statement.  Though Glendronach spirit has previously held a tiny bit of peating, the Peated spirit is made exclusively from peated malted barley (PPMs unknown).  The spirit spends it's first maturation in ex-bourbon casks for an unknown period of time, then has a second maturation in ex-oloroso and ex-PX casks, again for an unknown period of time.  Peat + sherry can be fun if done well.  Let's see what happens here.

Distillery: GlenDronach
Ownership: BenRiach Distillery Company Ltd
Region: Eastern Highlands (on the edge of Speyside)
Age: ???
Maturation: first ex-bourbon, then a combo of ex-oloroso and ex-PX sherry casks
Alcohol by Volume: 46%
Chillfiltration? No
Added Colorant? No
(Sample was purchased)

NEAT
Its color is a light amber.  Must've have been the wettest of sherry casks.

The nose starts with light peat, ocean, seaweed, and yeast.  Sort of Ledaig-Lite.  A slight sulphuric note in the background, but also some peach candy and marshmallows.  Occasionally, there's a super floral new make note......okay, not occasionally, the new make takes over after 20 minutes in the glass.

The palate is malty and sweet with vanilla peat.  White frosting, pears, rock candy.  It gradually develops a slight bitter sting.  Some pepper and seaweed here and there.

A very sweet finish, with hints of peat moss, marzipan, marshmallows, and seaweed.  Ah, the floral new make shows up again.

WITH WATER (~40%abv)
Not much change in the nose, really.  Maybe more yeast.  Some oats.  It's a little fartier than before.

The palate does shift a bit.  Cinnamon and peat candy.  More bitter smoke.  Bigger cereal grain notes.

The very very sweet finish has hints of peat and saltwater, but is mostly sugar.

COMMENTS:
I was going to hazard a guess that this was younger than 8 years old before I tried it, specifically because Glendronach already has an 8yo, meanwhile this has no age statement.  Then, as I went through this tasting, I started to think it was 6 years or younger.  By the time it was done, I started to wonder how many days over 3 years they waited before bottling.

The good news is Glendronach priced it low(ish), similar to the 8.  And if you're an enthusiast of naked malts, this is indeed pretty nude.  I can't imagine how many rounds these casks went through previous to this filling.  And if you don't like sherry, that's good news because there's very little of it to be found in Peated.

I like a good new make which is why I won't totally roast this whisky.  But man, this is really really really young, sort of reminiscent of Kilchoman's 100% Islay releases which always seem a half step removed from their raw distillate.  The whisky leaves me wondering why they were in such a hurry to release this stuff.  In the end, I can only recommend this to people who want to experience 'Dronach's peated new make.

Availability - Mostly Europe, only a few US retailers so far
Pricing - $45ish in Europe, $60ish in US
Rating - 79