Auchentoshan 15yo d.1981/1996 (46%, Direct Wines Ltd. First Cask, C#1159): nose: light and clean, it has spring-flower leaves, such as lily of the valley not yet in bloom, or budding tulips. There is a subtle hint of jasmine, barely noticeable, a blend of plain flour and confectionary sugar. Yes, it is extremely discreet and ethereal; almost too much so. Shaking the glass does help a bit, producing faded boiled sweets, crystallised raspberries, talcum powder to keep baby's bum soft, and flower pollen. The second nose has lichen on slate, slate that is kept in a barn, hazelnut shells, and still that flowery fragrance that is struggling to make itself heard. Mouth: light and sharp, the palate prolongs the flowery course, with leaves and petals, now (yellow tulips, daffodils), but then it adds a dollop of mocha, this time. It has that soft bitterness that comes with mocha-flavoured milk chocolate (think of Côte d'Or Mignonettes in the brown wrapper). That is right: the mouth has something lightly toasted. The texture is milky, borderline creamy -- a mocha cream, of course. Kahlua drowned in milk, hazelnut liqueur, also drowned in milk. Each sip seems sweeter than the previous, strangely enough. Finish: it is clearly milk coffee, here, augmented with a pinch of black-cumin seeds. Oh! it is milky. Repeated sipping might swap the coffee for some kind of nut liqueur (blanched hazelnuts or almonds come to mind), but it certainly retains the milky character! Virtually none of the flowery taste survives this far; at a push, we could debate whether it has a drop of hyacinth-stem sap: it is true that the minute bitterness does not exactly come from something toasted, in the finish. I call it mocha chocolate and I rest my case. After trying to convince myself that it deserves 8, I decide it does not, and stick with the same score I gave it the first time. 7/10
Auchentoshan 22yo (48.3%, Creative Whisky Co. for The Good Spirits Co., 123b, b#101): nose: one would be hard pressed to identify this as coming from the same distillery! A fruity number, this one! It has chewy sweets (currants, berries) that quickly turn dryer, if not less fruity. Imagine chewy candied pineapple cubes, dusted with confectionary sugar. Flowers then take off -- dried flowers: bluebells, lavender, heather and saxifrage offer a subtle pot-pourri, very much in the background. With time, that chewy fruit becomes more and more juicy, dishing out cranberries, blackberries, blueberries, myrtles, dark grapes. It has a faint whisper of Virginia tobacco as well, just to be sure. The second nose feels warmer, somehow, while still churning out the dark berries. Now, we have bananas, peeled and stored in a cask (do not ask!), a drop of scented ink, and a waxed plastic carrier bag. Further nosing cranks up the fruit, if anything, and I swear it has blackened mango and banana, as well as chewy blackcurrant cough drops. Mouth: wow! That is juicy. Dark plums, dark grapes, blackberries, blackcurrant jelly so dark it might even give a liquorice impression. The berries here are so dark they are earthy to a point it actually feels smoky. The acidity and bitterness interplay tightly enough to nearly cancel each other, leaving the whole ideally balanced, bathing in dark-fruit juice. Currant paste, berry jelly... The texture is thick and chewy, and the whole is confidently fruity. Purple passion fruits are here too, as are figs, oozing caramelised syrup. It feels almost like a Cognac, after a few sips, so full of terroir one can almost taste the vine roots. Retro-nasal olfaction brings a gentle note of peppermint, as if a Fisherman's Friend got lost in a bowl of fruit jelly. Finish: the dark-berry symphony goes on, adding the edge of a knife to the equation (that would be steel, then). Long, full of currants, elderberry, rosehip, eglantine, prunes. For a fleeting moment, it seems as though all that wants to morph into an earthy, smoky explosion, yet it is contained after all, and the only thing that blows up is that crazy dark fruit, jammy as fook, and turning more tropical by the second -- mango and passion fruit at the ready, waiting for their moment in the spotlight. The whole seems slightly less tropical than when I tried it in the shop, yet it is a work of art all the same. 9/10
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