On this rarest day of the year, I had something else in mind, but, with a little time to spare, I opted for this pair instead.
8.27 33yo 1967/2000 (48.2%, SMWS Society Cask): nose: this promises to be a woody number, with enough encaustic and patina to become almost heady. Mixed peel, crystallised orange segments, furniture wax, cinnamon-bun dough, toasted marzipan, and a drop of nut-liqueur-and-tonic on chewy kaju katli (and if you do not know what that cashew-nut paste is, you have not lived). Persistence helps identify shoe glue and hardened leather, which give the sense one has just walked into a shoemaker's workshop. It is oranges whose contours become sharper and sharper, however, pointing at orange liqueur, even, sweetened, yet also bitter. Cointreau-soaked Madeira biscuits. No! scratch that. Cointreau-soaked amaretti. Yes, the interplay between orange and almond is clearer with every sniff. Lovely. Later on, it develops a note of old marmalade, stained by a less-than-tight tin cap, and, maybe (just maybe), a whisper of smoke, as one tilts the glass. The second nose is more outgoing, giving orange paste in a PiM's, or -- dare I say? -- in a Jaffa-Cake way. If one closes one's eyes, one can probably smell the sponge-y base of those cake bites too. Boozy PiM's... MMmmmMMmMmMMMMmmM! Water unveils a few drops of marmalade laboriously spread onto a polished dashboard. Mouth: meow! The pleasantly-biting attack comes as a surprise, at this modest strength. The wood is undeniable, with woodworm-riddled rustic shelves, galangal shavings and orange peels so dried they crumble into dust. This has a soft-yet-clear bitterness to it, more old plank than plant stem. It is not plank-y, all the same. The afore-mentioned shelves have recently seen a lick of wax, and there is some marmalade too, for balance. The second sip has "yucca-plant trunk" written all over it, somehow. It is not a thick whisky, by the way; it merely has the texture of fruit juice augmented with a spoonful of paper paste. Perhaps it is numbing the taste buds, but it seems thicker, given time: orange and red-grapefruit pulps grow out of that juice. Water brings it remarkably close to the reduced nose, with Seville-orange marmalade on a dashboard. Finish: gorgeously comforting, it has dark pouring honey, caramelised (blackened) marmalade, and even the gentle earthiness of liquorice bootlaces. To say it is minty would be overstating it, but it has an unmistakable freshness that seems to be a blend of toasted aniseed and grilled mixed peel. Fresh, long, it clings to the tonsils or thereabout, which is unusual. The second gulp is a roof-of-the-mouth thing, teeming with warmed pressed-orange pulp, gloopy and delicious, similar, I imagine, to French toasts made with orange pulp instead of eggs. With water, it feels more robust, woodier, even, with cut pear-tree and walnut branches. Time makes it juicier, adding heirloom-apple cider. 9/10 (Thanks for the sample, Volanne)
Tamdhu 33yo 1969/2003 (40.5%, Hart Brothers Finest Collection): nose: it is mute, by comparison. 1970s furniture, at a push. Plastic capsules used to hold saffron, but empty for decades, and nothing left to tell. Discoloured plastic containers, stored in a cabinet for years. Hazelnuts, picked by one's grandparents who died thirty years ago, and forgotten at the bottom of a drawer (the hazelnuts, not the grandparents). I would love to say it wakes up, after a while, but aside that 1970s-furniture halo, not much happens. Let us come back to it later... It works to a point: we now have some glue paste, also from the 1970s, the kind one applied with a tiny... What was it? A spoon? A stick? A spatula? A brush? Anyway, the white school paste kind. The second nose shifts gears without going into overdrive: we have the lacquered wood of a jewellery case, or a watch case, Humbrol modelling paint (dark green for air-force ground-support equipment), and dried orange peel, ground into a powder served on toast. Water hints at the bottom of a firewood basket, full of wood dust, shattered dried leaves, and twigs. Mouth: this is a lot shyer than the other. I misread the ABV, and likely introduced a sequence mistake. Bah. It has cereal milk (as in: the milk left in the bowl after one has eaten all the cereals), dried wax, and dried, unripe peach slices. Emphasis on "unripe": this is well bitter. The mouth shows itself to be chewy, after a couple of minutes of moving around, and reveals (Dior Mirage) nail varnish on blanched hazelnuts. The second sip seems thinner, closer in texture to citrus-scented white spirit than to a liqueur of any kind. It ends up giving away dried-hazel-wood sawdust, before reclaiming some moisture, with blush-orange zest, steadily progressing towards orange pulp (though it never reaches it). Water gives lichen-covered beech branches, cherry stones, and caramelised stewed apricots. It has a fleeting note of tonic too. Finish: this is the strongest part of this dram. Like some of the most-satisfying whiskies, it goes down without a fuss, barely signalling kaju katli, then gradually comes back up the oesophagus in waves of nutty warmth. Crushed hazelnuts, then peanuts, then almonds, then almond skins. Indeed, it grows bitterer with time, though still an old-wood bitterness, rather than a green-plant-stem one. It gets as far as fresh-blush-orange or fresh-red-grapefruit peels, then stabilises. It has a fleeting hit of metal, at some point, akin to a razor blade, or a pencil-sharpener blade. It is faint, but it does come in and out of the frame like a whack-a-mole. The second sip is as impressive, creamier and fruitier, even if it keeps a clear old-bookshelf bitterness, at the death. With water, we see walnut spread on crispy toasted crumpets. Even reduced, the finish remains the best part. 8/10
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