Today we taste a single cask (HL 14455, to be precise) of a distillery which used us to uncommon products, and a mainly ex-sherry maturation (this is a refill butt). The bottler is Hunter Laing, who waited patiently 22 long years before adding this whisky as part of the Old Malt Cask series, famous for being not-chill filtered and bottled at 50% abv, to maintain a certain level of drinkability. So let’s try it!
N: it opens up on modern sherry notes, ripe red fruits, blackberry jelly; biscuits (red fruits biscuits?), egg yolk. Raisins bread and orange, very juicy, ready to be squeezed. The malt emerges, clean but not too much: we feel a note of gravy, cooked carrot, it gets very interesting.
P: really active, it loses the red fruits quota found while nosing it, giving more space to a fresher and orange-y profile. Hints of orange, apricot croissant, again biscuits and raisins. Orange biscuits.
F: long and intense, again played between egg yolk and orange, in every possible form.
Nice and good! This is one of those whisky we’d like to have a full bottle of, to drink it with calm without being afraid of finishing the sample too fast. Perhaps in having more than 20yo it shows an almost naïve and simple freshness, but what a beautiful simplicity ladies and gentleman! Fully approved with 87/100, also considering the launch price, around 100 Euro.
Recommended soundtrack: JINJER – Pisces (Live Session)
