Sunday, 17 November 2013

CRAGGANMORE 1984 - ADELPHI

Time flies... and we've passed 1 week since my last review - oh, well... Here comes the next one...

Tucked away in Speyside, about half a mile off the A95 lies Cragganmore. It's not very well signed and you can miss it in a hearbeat when heading for the usual distillery 'hub' of Aberlour/Craigellachie/Dufftown - but do swing by... it's a nice distillery and even though its standard bottlings are riddled with the evils (E150 Caramel and chill filtration) it makes for a nice starter dram if you need to buy a gift for a newbie whisky drinker.

This whisky I'm about to review is not for a newbie, though... actually I'd say this is quite a challenging dram! and certainly, besides being from a bourbon cask, was somewhat of a surprise for me... but thats what indie bottlings are all about... bottling casks that do not always taste like a distilleries house style.

Oh, and sorry... I've digging holes in my digital archives for a proper picture from Cragganmore for this review, but all I found was bad ones - so you'll have to do without for this review.

Cragganmore 1984 26yo 58,2%, refill ex-bourbon cask#1489, 200 bottles, Adelphi

Colour is straw

Nose:
Waxy, yeast and fresh baking, cut grass left to dry in the sun (hay), citrus and sour apples and a dairy note.

Taste:
Malty, bitter and sour (grape fruits) and spices. Water calms the whole thing down a bit an fruits turn to the boiled kind some honey too. Baked apple in there? Still carries a bit of that sour through to the finish which doesn't really to it for me with this one...

This is a strange one, indeed and certainly not the normal Cragganmore house style. It also doesn't taste like a 26yo. Tried blind I wouldn't say this was older than maybe 15 years. Quite a demanding dram, IMO

81/100!

No comments:

Post a Comment