Community Tasting Note

NineteenEightyTwo Likes this wine:

Friday, September 7, 2018 - Light golden-brown color with orange-amber glints. Hefty alcohol; this almost singes your nasal hairs. Densely packed nose with kirsch, Arnold Palmer (iced tea mixed with lemonade), pine needles, and hot buttered sourdough toast. Suddenly, there's a surprising note of green apple and a polished, woody richness, rounded off with a bit of cinnamon. Clearly a very clean sherry cask, allowing a lot of the underlying malt character to come through. The palate is tripartite, with a waxy entry akin to a boxed chocolate sampler. Then, a youthful, malty midpalate, with a piquant salty nuttiness, the sweet cinnamon note of freshly-baked apple pie, and a subtle black licorice flavor. A somewhat winey aftertaste emerges before this finishes long and nutty. Particularly in the mouth, there's an intriguing element between the midpalate and the finish that eludes the mind's grasp, with the consequence that one immediately craves another sip. Lots of countervailing, balancing forces here- high quality malt matured in a good cask and bottled at high strength. Unlike the disappointing Reserve bottlings, where the flavors get a bit muddled, this allows more of the underlying quality of the distillate to come through. Another great example that age isn't everything. I'd recommend this, especially to those Glenrothes haters out there who have been (rightly) underwhelmed by some of the core range bottlings.

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