Our annual tradition of long standing is to have a rotation of members select the whiskies for the last meeting of the year. This most recent edition of "Member's Choice Night" could be called "From The Vaults". The three members assigned to make the selections asked the Secretary to submit a list of the bottles that had sat the longest since last being tasted.
Capital idea!
From this list they chose:
Benriach 12 year old (last tasted in 2016)
Arran Cognac Cask (last tasted in 2012)
Aberfeldy 21 year old (last tastes in 2016)
The first thing we noticed was the dust. Nothing says "this bottle has been neglected in the cellar for years" like a good encrustation of dust. And so it was.
In these pages we've previously discussed our fears regarding the effects of oxidation. All of these bottles were more than half empty and had a lot of oxygen rich head space to interact with during those many long dark lonely years, yet all of them were still delightful. Perhaps not as delightful as they once were (but then who among us is?) but delightful enough that it made for a very jolly evening of tasting.
To our surprise, the most delightful was the Benriach. At 46% abv, it's not cask strength, but it is more potent than the average scotch, and it packs a wallop of flavour. This is a full mouth experience with a long slow, marvelously astringent, finish. Somewhat bizarrely, the Arran was quite similar. I say bizarrely as it's an Island malt, whereas the Benriach is a Speyside, and it's a cognac cask finish, as opposed to sherry cask, and it is fully cask strength at 59.5%. Yet, there was a commonality in flavour profile. In a good way.
Trailing the pack was the thinner, lighter Aberfeldy 21. Still delightful, but just not as delightful. It's all relative.
To round the night off, we returned to the exceptional cask strength Chorlton bottling of the Ardmore 12 year old that appeared at our last meeting. This was our favourite whisky of 2023 and thus a fitting way to finish the year.
Slainte!
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