29/08/2025 Scapa

The level worried
me a little, but it
has not lost in power

Scapa 24yo 1965/1990 (50.1%, Cadenhead): nose: oh! meow. OME in full effect, with metal, dusty fruits and corroded brass buttons. The fruity side ends up the most obvious, which is always good news to tOMoH. Sliced nectarines and peaches, tangerines and mandarines turning dry, a pineapple that is starting to grow its own hair. Behind that fruit is a cardboard-y, metallic presence. We are talking about rusty tin and dusty card, here (flat-packed, you know? We are not psychopaths). Minutes into it, that opens up to deliver a delicious tart, all hot apricots and custard. The rusty metal is now relegated to a knife that will cut said tart. Oh! and it smells powerful too. The second nose sees fleeting dried strawberry slices and bone-dry wood covered with a thin lichen. Hot sawdust -- really one dusty number, this! Further nosing adds more and more custard, which is appealing, augmented with smashed raspberries and dried cherry slices. Water does not alter it; it simply makes everything louder. The fruits, as well as the wood and cardboard. Only the corroded metal is more discreet, now, dull tin, rather than a derelict car in the woods. Several minutes in, at last, custard starts shining a little brighter. Mouth: ooft! How punchy. This is properly numbing, close to disinfectant. Once the tongue recover some feelings, it picks up rusty metal (this time an old armoured vehicle abandoned on a Pacific island in the mid-1940s) and cardboard again. That eventually dissipates and makes way for barely-ripe nectarines, served in a white-hot tin can. Chewing brings about dusty, stained blotting paper and a bitterness that is hard to identify precisely; it is not that of a metal blade, nor that of leaves. Maybe lichen-covered sheet metal? The second sip is just as hot and numbing. Despite some fruit, it feels close to downing a nip of disinfectant from a wooden drinking vessel. Once more, the recovering taste buds detect warm nectarine slices in amongst woodworm-riddled walnut wardrobes. All that wood is a bit drying, in the long run. Here too, water seems to amplify the flavours. We get Merbromin-sprinkled dried berries and a warm custard tart served on dusty cardboard plates. How amusing! It still has a faint bitterness too, though that is not accentuated by said addition of water. Finish: neutral on arrival, it gains character within a couple of seconds. Then, we spot flashes of fruits (nectarines, white peaches), and metal and cardboard again. The whole is warming and long-lived, even if calling it "coating" or "sticky" would be inaccurate. Instead, it is borderline earthy and reminiscent of an old cellar with a dusty earth floor, in which one would have stored cardboard boxes. The second sip is more focussed on fruits, yet it is not a walk in an orchard by any means. It is still a big, muscular, cardboard-y affair with fruit slices dotted here and there. The more one samples this, the more the fruits morph into dried berries (raspberries, strawberries, cherries). Water perhaps changes the finish most. Despite an obvious bitterness still pervading, what strikes is a wonderful vanilla custard punctuated by cut berries, or a warm berry custard cake, which suddenly turns this into an outstanding dram. From the first nose, I reckoned this would score higher. All in all, it is a challenging beast, this. 8/10