Glen Grant 40yo 1972/2012 (51.6%, Maltbarn, Sherry Cask, 49b): nose: hehehe! A sea of beeswax and honey, propolis and furniture patina. It has maple syrup, candied peach slices, and mirabelle-plum tarts, dripping with melted sugars. Hot on their heels are baked physalis and wax applied on a green car body. Scratch that! That car body is glazed in honey. Acacia honey, manuka honey, prickle-pear honey, a dollop of Douglas-fir honey, and a spoonful of resin. Phonetically close, we have raisins too, or sultanas, to be accurate (the golden type of raisins), converging towards fresh grapes (between Sultana and Crimson Seedless). Further back comes a whiff of a newly-oiled light-wood bench (birch or acacia). The second nose is perhaps even more expressive, with a slightly different angle: this time, it has a fruity yoghurt of sorts, or stewed apricots bathed in custard. Later yet, we note baked tangerines (segments and foliage) and clementines (ditto). It is as if the honeys had muted into fruits, definitely citrus. Out of nowhere, a cloud of coal dust appears, subtle, and closer to charcoal-cracker dust than to soot, but still. Mouth: refreshing at first, it soon acquires a spicy edge -- fierce ginger, galangal, mace, and asafoetida manage to conceal sweeter notes of honey and dried apricot. Those are there alright; they just take some effort to discern. Oak splinters rub elbows with maple syrup, gold-crusted bread meets dark honey and other spreads yet to be identified (walnut?) The second sip has the same spices, with more emphasis on asafoetida, perhaps, which gives it an almost-butyric quality, with zero of the oiliness one may associate with that. Still, chewing allows maple syrup and honey to resurface, powered by ginger peel and cinnamon-bark splinters. The whole surfs on a texture of coconut water, though it does not taste of coconut. Over time, light-wood shelves join in. Finish: big and long, it offers a solid woody profile, full of set dark honey and pine-cone oil (why not?) It has a clear minty freshness too that flirts with liquorice root in terms of intensity, yet has none of the bitterness. Indeed, the 'woody' qualifier brings comfort and rusticity, not plank-y dryness, more set dark honey on black bread than dusty old bookshelves and lemongrass. The warmth that this exudes is impressive; slow-going, but unstoppable. Five minutes after swallowing, the whole bust feels as if it had been sunburnt -- though in a pleasant way. The second gulp has a fleeting full-fat-milk feel to it, before honeys make a comeback -- pine-tree, or prickle-pear honey on charcoal crackers, dark, softly bitter, and cleansing, or so it feels. The burning heat is borderline worrying, after a while. Based on a scene in Fat Man and Little Boy / Shadow Makers, I would liken it to being exposed to Gamma radiation, and burning alive from the inside. Obviously, it is not that bad, here, a pleasant, if irrepressible glow, and I hope never to find out how accurate that comparison is. All the same, that is the mental picture it conjures up, this whisky. To come across as less doomy, let me say it feels like eating a slightly-too-hot apricot compote, or a similarly-hot peach jelly. This is pure class. So glad to have had a chance to try this micro-outturn. 9/10 (Thanks for the dram, JS)
Let us have another forty-year-old Glen Grain.
Cambus 40yo b.2016 (52.7%, OB, Hogsheads, 1812b, b#0685): nose: perhaps it has been sitting in a sample bottle for too long (has it really been seven years?), because it feels shyer than it should. It certainly has pineapple and papaya (papineapple?), yet they are buried under a layer of dust. A minute of breathing fixes that. Pineapple chunks, dried peach and mango slices float on a wood shelf (a dusty old chipboard turns into newly-oiled birch) and untoasted rye bread. The more one breathes in, the clearer wood oil becomes, to a point it eclipses the lovely tropical fruits. Well, not entirely: candied papaya cubes and mango slices remain; it is mostly fresh fruits that fade out, as if stashed away in a lacquered-wood box. The second nose feels a little darker, reminiscent of a well-aged brandy, or a liqueur, integrated so strongly that it is virtually impossible to tell the base product. And then, we return to pineapple and, this time, citrus: grapefruit skins, as well as blush-orange peels. Some may find a nearly-chalky, crumbly laundry-detergent tablet quality to this. Not tOMoH. tOMoH prefers to call that Korean pear, or kaki, crunchy, crumbly, fragrant, without the soapy connotation that laundry detergent carries. Mouth: it has not lost anything on the palate, in any case! Beside a minute touch of wood at first, this is a fruit market. Pineapple, grapefruit, mango, papaya, dragon fruit, persimmon, cherimoya, carambola, guava, longan, kumquat, chikoo burst with flavour, augmented with a dash of liqueur de cassis, and a drop of hazelnut oil. Some of those fruits are wrapped in pages torn out of dated glossy magazines, yet nothing can stop the fruity debauchery. The second sip is probably even more ridiculous in its fruitiness (chikoo and longan come out on top, now, just exceeding mango), yet it also feels stronger in alcohol, and more custard-y in texture, chewy, actually. As if all those fruits were smashed into a pulp, and dunked into coconut milk, then doused with a lovely rum. Finish: here too, we witness a fruity explosion. Witness? Nay! we live it. (Dried) mango, papaya, pomelo, kaki, ugli fruit, chikoo, mirabelle plum, all pressed and blended with milk or yoghurt to make one killer of a smoothie. It is as if the vague woody tones of the nose and palate have turned earthy, at this stage, a dollop of modelling clay, or a ploughed Hesbaye field in the distance. Repeated quaffing just underlines the fruity aspect, and adds a couple of drops of wood varnish for support (or is it dark rum and molasses?) Smashed pineapple and pomelo (or pink grapefruit) make a lasting impression. Incredible how it fares, even after the stellar Glen Grant. Grain whisky does not get better than this. Any whisky would find it hard to be better, in fact! 10/10
That Cambus tastes even better when you glug it straight from Colin Dunn's bottle
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