13/06/2025 Old Fettercairn

Old Fettercairn 10yo (43%, OB, L4165G1): nose: a typical Fettercairn, which is to say: a bit bizarre. It has brine, pickled gherkins, cardboard, and some farm-y aspects too -- a mound of muck drying in the summer sun. Cardboard soon takes the lead, and it is complemented by billowing cigar smoke. With a few minutes of breathing, that morphs into ink-stained blush oranges, also wrapped in smoke, and a touch of strawberry chewing gum. Just how weird can this be. eh? The second nose is drier. It exhibits a bunch of dried flowers (carnations and lunaria) and woven straw upholstery from a smoker's house. In the long run, we might even spot a desert-dry hand-soap bar, or the beige leather interior of a 1970s car that belonged to a smoker. Even the label colour points towards that! Mouth: briny cardboard it is! Peach juice tainted with a mix of cork and smoky cardboard. It has ashes of burnt paper, ground peach stone in the fruit's juice, bone-dry leather, still attached to the carcass of an animal dead in the desert for weeks, and the bitterness of very-dry blush-orange zest. There is a tame spiciness too, probably ground mace or amchur. The second sip starts off juicy, yet that is quickly matched by this peculiar mix of brine-soaked straw, dried zest, and desiccating spice powder. Here too, the feeling is 1970s, when everything was beige and faded orange, because everyone smoked absolutely everywhere. Finish: gentle and fruity for a second, it resumes its strange ways quickly: cardboard, dried zest, cork shavings, coarse white pepper, and brine. It leaves the tongue dry and slightly stripped. The second gulp has a drop of chocolate milk, when one gives way to one's imagination, yet it remains largely the same: zest, brine-stained cardboard, and ground spices. Never a dull day, with this distillery! It must have its afficionados, yet it is easy to see this being pretty divisive. 6/10 (Thanks GN)