CLYNELISH 2008 10YO - SIGNATORY FOR TWE

There was a time when this distillery flew quietly under the radar - a time when malts like this one were only drunk by the whisky anorak, a time when what was in the bottle mattered but those days are over...

Today, the contents still matters to some, of course, but we also now see Clynelish being snapped up for investment purposes, sadly... This has created a surge in prices both on the primary but also secondary markets over the past couple of years.

Another whisky drinkers whisky this has happened to, is Springbank - a distillery that will have a harder time than Clynelish keeping up with demand and an ever growing fan base.

The first real sign of this, was the ever growing number of participants for the Campbeltown Malt Whisky Festival these past 4 years (not counting 2020, of course) Also now, for the first time ever there will be a ballot for the bottles for the Springbank Society Fan Club - a club that should have stopped signing up new members when it was clear that Springbank couldn't keep up the same level of service to existing members as previously. A controversial statement, I know - but rather that than risk loosing hard-core returning customers down the line...
They are, after all, the customers they must rely on when times gets hard again - and it will, eventually... 

A sign of the times, I'm afraid - a time where I truly feel sorry for people just starting their whisky journey. A journey that will be both more expensive and poorer in quality than even just a few years ago.

Let's return to the whisky in question, though...
This whisky was selected and bottled for the 20th anniversary of that London heavyweight, The Whisky Exchange along with a small handful of other bottlings.
Signatory has a pretty good reputatation surrounding them as has the cask pickers at The Whisky Exchange so I just straight in and bought a bottle back when it came out in 2019  - Check below for the verdict

Clynelish Distillery, October 10th 2014 - © The Malt Desk

Clynelish 2008 10yo (06.06.2008/01.04.2019) 57,4%, 1st fill ex-bourbon cask#800139, 237 bottles, Signatory Vintage for TWE's 20th Anniversary

Nose:

Upon first approach, the smells you get when you open the spice cabinet. Both with regular spices and ones used in baking, vanilla, all spice, white pepper, icing sugar, licorice root.

Also in there are a hint of camphor drops, delicious oak notes, a slight floral note and green malt mixed in with a mineral note (chalk/flint ??)
Also initially got a hint of fresh onions (Imagine that! :-O ) though it disappeared again when the other notes came through. All in all quite fresh and lively...

Taste:

Not really finding much the usual Clynelish waxy style here, though hints of it do seem to come through. My thoughts are that this might need a few more years to have the notes we know so well come through? I certainly see why they're bottling the standard expression at 14yo.

There seems to be a rumor floating around that a few of the production years during the 00's didn't quite deliver the style of spirit they were aiming for - maybe this is one of them? Then maybe not as I am picking up a slight note of that
recognizeable Clynelish style :-)

Anyway, the cask generally seems to be of good quality allowing a good amount of malt/barley sugars to shine, natural oils, bags of white fruit, quite a floral honey note and some lemony notes dominating along with the malt

All in all, this is quite nice, but I prefer my Clynelish with a bit more age to them... Still, this has potential

86/100!