Auchentoshan 12 Year

Color: Beautiful pale gold.

Nose: Very good – caramel, light brown sugar, sweet cider, vanilla, honey, creamy.

Taste: Caramel, honey, lemon/citrus, spice, ginger.

Auchentoshan 18 Year

Big, Nutty and Fruity. More oily than I would have imagined. Honey malt with a clean finish.

The 18 year old is zesty and refreshing with deep golden summer barley appearance. The nose is fresh tobacco leaf then sweet with a hint of caramelised sugars, green tea and toasted almonds. At first the palate has a floral freshness with sweet barley sugar which gently ebbs to reveal a tangerine zestiness that leaves the palate alive and refreshed. It leaves a long, lingering and well balanced dram that invigorates the mouth.

Balvenie 12 Year Doublewood

Nose: A close relation to the Founder's Reserve, with extra vanilla and honey plus the subtlest of Oloroso influences. Delicate for its age.

Palate: Sweet and honeyed with intense malt meeting the soft peat and controlled sherry fruitiness.

Finish: Smoky and a little spicy with a bigger vanilla tang.

Comment: A more intense malt than the Founder's Reserve. Despite its finesse, it is just shaded in regard to all-round complexity. Still nothing short of glorious.

Balvenie 14 Year Caribbean Cask

The nose is sweet and fruity. On the palate, rich, spicy, and dark fruit is strong, followed by rum soaked bread (dense christmas cake). Old wood, seaweed, and dark chocolate remain for the finish.

Dark, rich, complex, and wonderful. Pretty much on par with the 17 Year Madeira Cask, just darker with a little less spice.

Nose: sweet-barley, candied-fruit, earth, honey, old-wood, raisin, syrup

Body: rich, spicy

Palate: dark-fruit, barley, bitter-chocolate, rum, seaweed, spice, syrup

Balvenie 15 Year Single Barrel

Nose: Honey and peach, buttery baked goods, angel food cake, white port wine, honeysuckle and freshly-cut flowers. Butterscotch.

Palate: Rich with honey and marzipan, low-burn. Clear and unmuddied heather at the beginning, middle, and end. Like liquid candy, but not cloyingly so. Delicate and floral on the attack, growing more nutty and with darker cooked-fruit flavors… like peach pie.

Finish: is short, but with a lingering ghost of lilac and yet more honey. This dram makes me want to be a bee in the next life.

Balvenie 17 Year Peated Cask

Nose: It starts with a nice Smokey aroma. Some kippers, some earthy musty peat, then the sweetness hits you. On top of all this peat floats a little malty sugary (burnt sugar kind of) sweetness.

Palate: We start of with a sweet and malty feeling. creamy, Balvenie style. Some spicy peppery sort of feeling going on in my mouth as well, not spicy pepper, more like Smokey pepper. Butter, cream, oil. viscous stuff. some toffee, and the sugars are not missing.

Finish: Medium, with some cocoa, citrus zest, spices and of course the wee pepper notes, ending on bitters.