17/01/2024 Adelphi 30th Anniversary

A virtual commercial tasting hosted by Luvian's St Andrews shop to celebrate the release of Adelphi's selection of single-cask bottlings for their thirtieth anniversary. Has it really been that long?

The hosts are Archie McDiarmid (for Luvian's) and Antonia Bruce (for Adelphi).

Clynelish 12yo 2011/2023 (58.3%, Adelphi Selection, 1st Fill American Standard Barrel, C#800305, 208b)

Nose: an easy Clynelish, well waxy, full of plasticine, modelling wax, and a vague, musky cloud. It also has plums and leather, perhaps.
Mouth: "spirit-forward," to say something stupid. It is lively on the tongue, a tad leafy, with a drop of ink, and leather beaten by the sun. It is actually suede, or sheep's skin, rather than leather. AMcD mentions musky apples, which I agree with.
Finish: inky at first, it soon welcomes lots and lots of warm plasticine, and, indeed, fermenting (mouldy) tart apples and cinnamon splinters.
Comment: it is okay. A decent sipper. 7/10

Imperial 27yo 1996/2023 (52.4%, Adelphi Limited, Refill American Standard Barrel, C#3411, 187b)

Nose: obviously a lot older, deeper, and more refined. Warm crusty bread and lovely bakery shenanigans. Incredibly, that is soon matched by mussels in broth. Fleeting, but still! We go back to bakery and confectionary in no time, with biscuits stealing the show.
Mouth: sharp, it has a gingery cedar wood note, unripe hazelnut, plant stems (tulips?), and cinnamon-ginger bubble gum (Boules Magiques, obviously).
Finish: creamy, cinnamon-y, it offers Custard Cream biscuits, yellow tulip petals, and vanilla-sugar-augmented whipped cream.
Comment: I love this. It will remain my favourite tonight. With an RRP of 560 GBP, I will also come out of my usual reserve, and call it badly priced. 8/10

Benrinnes 12yo 2011/2023 (52%, Adelphi Selection, 1st Fill Oloroso Sherry Hogshead, C#301624, 302b)

Nose: simultaneously creamy and winy, it displays wine sauce, roast beef, sloe berries (AB), patina-encrusted coppe dell'amicizia, and walnut purée.
Mouth: woah! Very meaty on the palate, with pastrami and other cured meats, a noticeable alcohol bite, and a coating dusty fruitiness (earthy elderberry, unripe blackcurrant) akin to rancio. It is like licking the inside of a solera!
Finish: mellow and short (if warming), this has more of the coating elderberry mentioned before, and dry earth. Dark fruits end up taking over, slowly but surely.
Comment: nothing special. 7/10

Akkeshi 3yo 2018/2023 (57.8%, Adelphi Selection, 1st Fill ex-Bourbon American Standard Barrel, C#1011, 253b)

Nose: heavily peated in a Staoisha style. Rich, greasy, oily peat. That gets a tad drier with a few seconds' breathing, with dark earth, ink, muck, and a lick of juicy manure to prevent it becoming too dry.
Mouth: initially chewy, it soon becomes rather thin, with Kaffir lime leaves (AB), smoked potting soil, and hot sands as the noticeable markers.
Finish: Oolong tea, pu-erh, charred pineapple, and the clay floor of a warehouse.
Comment: very interesting drop. We are told the barley for this was smoked with imported peat; it was distilled in 2018, and Akkeshi only received permission to dig peat from the local peat bog in 2020. Also, whisky must not leave Japan in oak, so it was transferred to a plastic container, then was stranded by the worldwide lockdown of 2020. That is why it is a three-year-old bottled five years after it was distilled. 7/10

Ardnamurchan 9yo 2014/2023 (56.2%, Adelphi Limited, 1st Fill Pedro Ximénez Hogshead, C#240, 320b)

Nose: PX alright! Sweet and enticing, almost heady. Dried dates and figs, raisins, sultanas, quince paste out of a tube, and fruit jellies.
Mouth: extremely drying, stripping. Chenin blanc, split granite, and a drop of ink. Following the generous nose, it is quite the surprise.
Finish: what a lovely fruitiness, in this finish! It is full of sultanas and dried dates.
Comment: simple, with a challenging palate, and a great finish. It was put in this position to be close to the Caol Ila, hence why the last three drams are peaty/non-peaty/peaty. In tOMoH's opinion, it is a sequence mistake. 8/10

Caol Ila 7yo 2016/2023 (58.5%, Adelphi Selection, 1st Fill Oloroso Sherry Hogshead, C#26580, 256b)

Nose: hot sands, and the breath of a smoking-and-drinking grown man in the morning (yup, that unpleasant). In addition, we have burning mud, sand after a black tide, and Mezcal (AB).
Mouth: muddy, inky, petrolic, though not in a pleasant way. Black-tide sands, murky water, oil-stained cockles. It is bitter, even acrid. It would be sooty, if it did not feel so wet and muddy. AB notes capers; I agree.
Finish: more black sands (petrol, not tar), and mud, interlaced with bitumen. We even detect preserved lemons, dipped into crude oil.
Comment: AB wonders if the information about the cask is a mistake, since it is so pale, and bears no obvious influence from a Sherry cask. Either way, I am not a fan of this, to say the least. It has no complexity, and I do not care much for the one note it plays. 6/10

Glad to have taken part, pleased to have been able to try those whiskies, but honestly, I struggle to fully enjoy a tasting like this. There is no interaction between the tasters and the hosts, the hosts talk constantly (some of the information given was interesting, while some felt improvised, with "kind of" used three or four times per sentence, as punctuation), and read tasting notes before each dram that were written up prior. All that makes it hard for me to focus on the qualities of the whiskies and make up my own opinion. To put it differently, it would probably have been better suited to a Youtube shindig than a Zoom tasting. Also, at fifteen minutes per dram, it feels too rushed for my preference; it is merely enough to decide whether to purchase or not -- something that is incredibly unrewarding when there are between zero and two of each bottle available to purchase, for a group of twenty tasters.

On that note:

AB: "Luvian's is lucky, they got two bottles. Shop allocations vary between one and two bottles at most. It is difficult, we do not know what to do."
AMcD: "Where can one find Adelphi's products?"
AB: "We are present in forty countries."

If one assumes a dozen shops in each of those countries, is it ever a surprise that those shops cannot get more than one or two bottles of a release? It comes across as poor calculation destined to make everyone angry, in tOMoH's opinion. Not that anyone is asking him.