Product Highlights
Nose: If you can find a blend where the smoke has this perfect an effect, please point me to it. Somehow the delicate phenols possess a dual role acting as both ballast and, paradoxically, the more ethereal element as well. Sandwiched between is the handy work of the stunning grain: firm yet just about soft enough to have absorbed the complex oak-led vanillas...
Taste: Silk, with a little itching powder. The delivery moulds into every crevice of the palate, but just as you settle there is a tingling of light spice. Weak ulmo honey heads the understated sugary parade, with a little Tunnock’s Teacake-style marshmallow helping to lay down the tannins as a little red liquorice and butterscotch formulate.
Finish: Just so long and elegant, with a dull ache of phenol and tannin to occupy the faint spice.
Balance: I am not entirely sure how the people at The Last Drop continue to unearth whiskies which are truly staggering; absolute marvels of their type. This one is astonishing because the grain used is just about faultless. The peating levels can be found around about the perfect mark on the dial. Just mesmerically beautiful.
— Distiller's notes
Taste: Silk, with a little itching powder. The delivery moulds into every crevice of the palate, but just as you settle there is a tingling of light spice. Weak ulmo honey heads the understated sugary parade, with a little Tunnock’s Teacake-style marshmallow helping to lay down the tannins as a little red liquorice and butterscotch formulate.
Finish: Just so long and elegant, with a dull ache of phenol and tannin to occupy the faint spice.
Balance: I am not entirely sure how the people at The Last Drop continue to unearth whiskies which are truly staggering; absolute marvels of their type. This one is astonishing because the grain used is just about faultless. The peating levels can be found around about the perfect mark on the dial. Just mesmerically beautiful.
— Distiller's notes
Expert Reviews
In 1971 the astronauts of Apollo 14 were busy hitting golf balls from the moon and Disney World was opening its doors in Orlando to the joy of American children... and in Scotland some 40 different distilleries of malt and grain whiskies were busy distilling the spirits that would eventually become part of a truly exceptional blend. First blended in 1983 as a Premium 12 Year Old for the USA, the balance after bottling was refilled into 11 ex-Oloroso Sherry Butts. After a further nine years of ageing, a small volume was siphoned off and bottled as a 21 Year Old Blend. What remained was refilled once more, this time into nine ex-American Oak Barrels. These nine casks were returned to an old traditional dunnage maturation warehouse where they lay for a further 24 years until we bottled the whisky, in its prime, at the grand age of 45 years. The 1971 Blend can thus be classed as a ‘Triple Matured’ Blend which is probably unique for such an old whisky. You need only taste one drop to be enveloped in the harmonious complexity of this exceptional whisky, and yet one drop is certainly not enough for this old blend to unveil all the rich flavours developed during its long, multi-faceted maturation.
— 97 Points Jim Murray's
