The spirit of Speyside whisky festival 2017 was the 24th – 30th April. During this festival a number of distilleries in the area open their doors for special events. One of these events was on Saturday 29th at the Tamdhu distillery where they had a “Meet, Tweet and Grill” event which I participated in via the tweet aspect (no BBQ) for me!

The tasting involved four different samples which included:

• Tamdhu new make spirit
• Tamdhu 10 Year Old – 40%
• Tamdhu 10 Year Ltd Edition – 46%
• Tamdhu Batch Strength II – 58.5%

Like all tweet events this one was centered around a particular hashtag and the one to check out is #tamdhuWhisky.

The new make spirit is the third new make I have tried. The other two being the triple distilled Auchentoshan and the new Kingsbarns new make. Both of these experiences were part of the distillery tours which I enjoyed greatly.

The Tamdhu new make was totally different in character to my first two experiences. Where the lowland new makes were light, fruity and lightly malty the Tamdhu was much heavier on the malty, bready notes.

After experiencing the raw Tamdhu spirit we moved on to the standard widely available 10 year old expression. I have previously reviewed this bottle at https://malted.blog/2016/12/21/tamdhu-10-year-old/

The limited edition Tamdhu I will make a special post about separately so if we skip that now and move on to the last one, the batch strength.

The Dram

As with all Tamdhu expressions this is natural colour. The batch strength also benefits from not being chill filtered but does not give any information on ages. The label does however state that only sherry casks have been used in the batch.

The second edition of the batch is still widely available for £57.53 Here

Tasting Notes

Colour – somewhere between a dark yellow and light orange

Nose – initially quite spirity and you can pick out the odd hint of the new makes notes we picked up at the start of the night. Lots of vanilla and coconut sweetness with a background of dairy toffee or highland fudge.

Palate – A thick mouthcoating texture is obvious. There is oak spices  but also a creaminess of vanilla ice-cream, the type which has vanilla pod flakes in it. Orange peel and lemon oil finish things off.

Finish – More lemon oil and rich vanilla pods linger on the finish. I am constantly reminded of a rich “posh” ice-cream with this dram.

Final Thoughts

This is an interesting whisky which provides a dialed up reinterpretation of the 10 and 12 year old I have previously reviewed. The flavour profile takes cues from both those expressions and concentrates the flavours down with its meaty 58.5% alcohol.