Ian Macleod are the owners of the Glengoyne and Tamdhu distilleries and are an independent family owned company. They also recently bought the last remaining stocks of Rosebank from Diageo including the trademarks to restart production soon. Dun Bheagan is their premium line of single cask and small batch scotch whiskies and actually not something I have seen around until now.

The Dram

This 20 year old Tomatin was finished in ex-PX sherry butts for an undisclosed period of time. The whisky was distilled in 1996 and bottled in March 2017 with 539 being produced. Like all the single malt products from Ian Macleod this bottle is presented in craft presentation so no artificial colouring or chill-filtration. The price is also very respectable at £100

Partly the price is so reasonable as the bottling strength is 46% so a few more bottles were able to be sold in the batch to make up the profit margin for the producers. I don’t think we lose out of this as the consumers though so it’s all good.

Tasting Notes

Colour – Marmalade orange

Nose – alcohol soaked raisins with some burnt toffee and an unusual note of liquorice allsorts. In time the nose sweetens up to show some fruity boiled sweets as well.

Palate – Initially things follow the nose with more dark fruit notes but the development switches things up with oak spices and root ginger. The texture is wonderfully thick and luxurious as well.

Finish – The finish lingers a long time and develops into a bitterness of citric waxy fruit rinds.

Final Thoughts

Very much a Christmas type of whisky with lots of dark winter fruits stewing in alcohol for a luxurious pudding. I did enjoy this whisky but I also note that a lot of the flavour if not all is coming from the PX finish. When you have a whisky that has been in a barrel for two decades and you give it such a vibrant and intense splash of flavour then you have to wonder what if any flavour was there before the extra work was done.