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Monday, February 14, 2022

Aberlour 10 year old (2016 bottling)

The Official Aberlour Review Week has been rescheduled repeatedly for nearly 18 months, so I made an executive decision to just do it this week. I tried three standard Aberlour releases side by side on Saturday night. First up, the 10 year old.

Aberlour 10yo and 12yo were among the first single malts that I just didn't like. Around 14 years ago, I remember being unable to finish my very-reasonably-priced-at-the-time bottles and donating them to my first tiny whisky group. I found the 10 year old particularly unpalatable. And, until this Taste Off, I hadn't tried in all that time.

Here's how it played out.

Distillery: Aberlour
Ownership: Pernod Ricard
Region: Speyside (Banffshire)
Age: at least 10 years
Maturation: "traditional and sherry oak casks" per the bottle
Alcohol by Volume: 40%
Bottling code: 2016/11/02
Chillfiltered? Yes
Color added? Yes
(sample pilfered from a whisky event)

NOTES

The nose starts off VERY young, all Bartlett pears and paint VOCs. Then hazelnuts appear, and orange gummy bears and some slight cheesy funk (brie).

The palate is bready and sweet, with black pepper, a generic dried fruit note, and some sourness on the side. Very thin mouthfeel.

The brief finish is all pepper, black raisins and sourness,

WORDS WORDS WORDS

I had thought this was going to be D-grade stuff, but (surprise!) it's C-grade. It's very blendy, perhaps a better version of Chivas 12, but not terrible. One could even add this to some Chivas on the rocks and bulk it up a tiny bit. This is certainly not an endorsement, but I did indeed consume this entire sample.

Availability - not in The States anymore (tragedy), but very available in Europe
Pricing - around $40
Rating - 75