91
score
whiskyfun.com
May 30, 2020
Colour: gold. Nose: can you smoke vegetables? This really is like a big mash up of scorched bonfire earth, distant peat embers, the gloopiest, most syrupy of old school, herbal cough medicines and parsnips roasted in honey. Really another world entirely. There’s also plasters, ointments, old herbal liqueurs, muddy sheep wool and a wee gallon of camphor. Malt whisky for Aberdeenshire farmers that somehow found itself in Italy. Mouth: extremely fat, syrupy and herbal. Sooty, muddy peat, black olives mashed in their own pickling juices, herbal toothpaste, mysterious old ointments, tractor engine grease and various medical embrocations. Wild, bonkers and, quite frankly, brilliant! Finish: long, drying, getting increasingly peaty, peppery, greasy, fatty, smoked bacon lardons, herbal jelly, smoked jasmine tea, putty, anthracite, tar and gentian. Comments: Sheer, utter, brilliant madness. Now, having said that, there does feel like some kind of OBE witchcraft has occurred while in bottle, but I would place this firmly in the category of ‘great OBE’. Which is to say the basic flavours of peat and barely have broken down and meandered off in various tertiary and tangential ways creating a fascinating look at the undercarriage of this distillate. It’s well known that some of these old official Glen Garioch dumpy bottlings can be utter soap bombs, but when you get a good one like this… what a joyous treat!
