Whisky : Midlands tasting

A friend kindly said that more people should read my blog. A lovely sentiment ruined slightly by the follow-up 'well your beer and food reviews anyway'. oh well, can't have everything.

It's a start, syndication here we come !!!

So the other week we had the Midlands whisky tasting. I was looking forward to this one as I'm quite keen on the midlands - a vague descriptor including regions we'd usually claim as Highlands. So how was it...

Glenturret G & M 40% 1990-2006. Nose: leather, apple, liniment, hint of sherry. Palate: soap, boring, dry. Finish: short, boring, strong overtones of vomit. 3.5/10. Yup that's how bad it was, I didn't even finish it. Now there's context for you :)

Glenturret 11yo Chieftains Port Finish Cask#90091, 90092 Oct 93-Sept05 43%. Nose: raisins, musty, caramel, sulphur, sweet. Palate: well none to speak of. Finish: nothing to speak of, very artificial. 5/10. Ok so a slight improvement on the first one, but still crap. I finished it, but only cos I wanted booze, and I'd used up the others...

Ahhh I've just found out Glenturrent is FamousGrouse's distillery. Explains a lot.

Glengoyne 21yo 43% unpeated Soap, coconut, apple, nice, very nice nose in fact. Palate: kinda bland. Finish: cheap wine (not a good look for whisky), short. 6/10. Not a good start TBH.

Glengoyne 16yo unpeated Ltd Ed Scottish Oak Finish 53.3% bottle 1746. Nose: sweet, sickly, xmas cake, middle aged. Palate: cask, caramel, hint of pepper - tasty very tasty. Finish: tingly and long. 8/10 much much better.

GlenGarioch 17yo Adelphi cask#2659 1990-2007 55.8% had hopes for this as Adelphi don't generally let you down. Nose: aniseed, not nice! wood glue Palate: cask, vanilla, butter. Finish: more butter! tingly and long. 8/10. Ok so it's not the best review, but it was a good wee drop.

Edradour SFTC Bourbon/Gaia borollo 12yo. This was the mystery malt, so apologies for the lack of detail and/or spelling mistakes. I may have mentioned my love for Edradour in passing. Maybe. Nose: sweet, raisins, salty, little bit of age. Palate: light, leather. Finish: high alc, short. 7/10. Probably wouldn't buy this, but it was interesting. I dunno, I don't seem a huge fan of the SFTC range, prefer the slighty older ones.

Edradour SFTC 10yo Sherry butt #84 97-08 58.8% 1051 bottles. So how did the other Edradour fare? Nose: sweet, vanilla, lollipops, varnish. Palate: cask, vanilla. Finish: coffee-chocolate, tasted like vinyl smells (which may mean something to some of you!), medium length finish. 8/10.

So over all a tasting of two halves, first 3 were crap and the last 4 were good to very good. Nothing outstanding, and I didn't buy anything - as I've got enough examples of this style. I'm not sure the tasting worked either, is the Midlands deserving of a separate tasting? If so, could we have had a better selection? We've done a fair number of the Edradour's over the years, could they have been replaced?

Next tasting is in a couple of weeks. We'll see how that goes...in the meantime I really should start to clean up some of my almost empty bottles.

B.