Blair Athol 2006 Single Malts of Scotland 15-Year
50.7% ABV - Highlands, Scotland
Nose: Mildly sulphorous with wisps of sour fruit and …smoke? Tipping towards a mezcal-like character.
Taste: Ah yes, there is a wee bit of smoke that covers a bunch of fruits—some of which are digging into old memories of longan, nectarine, and… almost peach. Vanilla and citrus.
Finish: Relatively short, with a mild sweetness and light spices. Agave drifting in the background.
Well, I spilled some of this on my computer so the aromas should be… a bit more fragrant than my average tasting-and-typing session…
Blair Athol has been a fun one to try. It’s difficult to find any official release, so I have only managed to find independently bottled single casks and, perhaps unsurprising, they all have been quite different from one another! I took a chance on this because the price was right at around $140 CAD.
While I didn’t like it at first, I feel that it’s opened up quite a bit and it has relaxed, or changed character enough, so that it lines up more with what I like. I don’t remember drawing the mezcal parallel before, but when I sat down to focus on the flavour profile… I didn’t have another way to describe it!
Details: Distilled 02.08.2006, Bottled 08.11.2021. Cask Ref. 8002621. Cask Type: Hogshead. 273 Bottles. Private Bottling for The Barterhouse Cask 003.
Tasted 13 March 2023. (Posted 29 October 2023.)
