Auchentoshan is probably one of the less charming Scotch distilleries: try to imagine a highway exit in the suburbs of Glasgow… It’s not a bucolic location, is it? Despite its unlucky setting, the Auchentoshan visitor centre is really nice and its whiskies are renowned for their subtlety, due to a highly selective cutting of heads and tails and to the triple distillation (if you’re whisky nerds and you want to know a little bit more about the Lowlands style and the triple distillation, here you can find some info that wil make you feel an engineer). Today we taste a 18 years old released some years ago, matured exclusively in ex-Oloroso casks. The colour is golden.
N: suddenly it stands out for a complete closure, which only allows it to show a sherried profile without any fruity or pleasant note. Instead, a “sulphury” atmosphere is the main suggestion here: synthetic leather or something slightly rancid (squashed bug, or sour milk). Unpleasant notes of gauze and medicins. A little comfort arrives, on the background, with suggestions of almond oil, a hint of cinnamon and some dried fruits… In the context of an overall inertia, maybe you can recognize some cut grass. The water opens up everything, increasing the more pungent grassy notes: probably it would have been better to keep it closed…
P: unfortunately, very consistent with the nose, except an extra sweet note. Even if it’s an undistinct and artificial sweetness, something similar to brown sugar. Again hints of processed plastic and yeasts. Maybe nuts.
F: the misunderstood austerity experienced in the nose comes back: short, bitter and unpleasant.
Honestly, we expected anything but this. It’s nasty from beginning to end. Some sweetish notes here and there remember us that we have a whisky in the class, but we don’t know how a distillery can decide to bottle a product like this. It’s not that we don’t like it: it’s simply wrong. 60/100 is our judgment, and Serge agrees with us. We never expected to write “squashed bug” in a review…
Recommended soundtrack: at the end of the tasting, we feel like this: Sunn O))) – Bathory Erzsbebet. (even if Jacopo appreciates the Sunn O)))…)
