This is a fancy whiskey which was gifted to our office by some legends who do some work for us. From memory this was received following a particularly busy and successful year at work. The whisky has a fantastic nose and some very interesting flavors - quality stuff which I am very grateful to have had a chance to taste. The bottle was opened recently for a farewell dram for one of the boys in the office who is off chasing a woman across the globe - needless to say it got decimated! Luckily for me I managed to save myself the last dram for this review :-)
Price: At 165$ a pop I'm gonna say I wouldn't be buying this in my current financial state of affairs - it just doesn't offer me enough in terms of ABV, Chill filtration, declaration of colorant added, no I wouldn't buy this for myself, I know I can get lovely whiskey for a great deal cheaper than this. Saying that, it is a very nice whiskey: 3/6
Availability: I can get this in good cocktail bars, whiskey bars, possibly in duty free, online and at the local humongous bottle shop which fortunately for me is a ten minute walk away: 5/6
Packaging & Label: Attractive packaging with a shapely bottle and a deep red/ maroon label. The label tells me that this is single malt scotch whisky aged for a total of 17 years in "Traditional Whisky Oak Barrels" and then finished for some months, potentially up to a year in "European Oak Sherry Casks" and that it is bottled at a marginally above par 43% ABV. There's no mention of chill filtration or added caramel colorant: 4/6
Appearance: It could be due to the influence of the additional aging in the Sherry barrel or maybe they've added just the right amount of colorant to give this a very lovely shade of amber, we'll never know! Legs Shmegs! 6/6
Marketing: This stuff is reasonably well marketed. The website looks good and functions well. There's a distillery tour via a series of youtube videos and there's a fairly inoffensive and bland video specifically for this dram. there's all the usual stuff like tasting notes for the range, info regarding distillery tours and a members group called warehouse 24 for Balvenie enthusiasts. There's heaps of promotion of craft, all very good really just lacking a little spark of character or wit. The links for the website and the youtube video are below if you care to have a look: 5/6
https://www.thebalvenie.com/the-balvenie
https://youtu.be/wPVP--RRo3M
Nose: Very very nice! Vanilla and honey initially with fruit cake mixture coming in with dried fruits, a little spice, some citrus - orange and lemon zest like in a Christmas cake mix before it goes in the oven, Almonds come in after altogether quite lovely! This really puts a smile on my face, I can't imagine that anyone wouldn't like this: 20/20
Taste on Entry: Citrus, dry sherry tones, tannic wood spice - slightly bitter, but with some sweetness in the too, definite malt, very interesting, not entirely pleasing, it's certainly different, something metallic in there, like the taste of iron from your own blood if you've ever had the experience - odd: 16/20
Mouth-feel/Body: Quite good, my initial sip felt very nice but then left me with a little burn surprisingly, and a little dryness: 8/10
Finish: dry, long and varying sherried sweetness initially with tartness coming on the tip of my tongue like lemon sherbet, then some spices come in: 17/20
This for me is a fancy bottle of whiskey which delivers on some fronts but could do better. As I said I wouldn't buy this myself - too expensive without ticking enough boxes for my liking but then again maybe I'm not the target market for this dram. It is very good stuff for sure but currently I would be more inclined to go for a younger bottling or a cask strength version if such a thing existed. This is the sort of thing that I would check out in a whiskey bar if I were treating myself.
Total Score: 84/100
Cheers,
Kev
