The whisky appears on the face of it to be full of high rollers. It doesn’t seem to matter how much a bottle costs they sell out and fast but I believe this is all an illusion.
For sure looking at the world as a whole there is enough people available to buy 4 or 5 figure bottles of whisky. Sure there is even enough who live in a region we can actually ship to without hiring a legal department to work on each individual order. However, those folks aren’t the population at large and ultimately and indeed sadly they aren’t me.
I went through a phase of only buying what was on offer in the supermarkets and for the most part I had good success with this buying strategy. Highs were good and lows were tempered by the small capital outline on getting disappointed.
The Strathisla 12 year old was one of those purchases which was widely available and cheap at the time. Now it appears to be discontinued and the distillery doesn’t appear to have any single malts available at all. This is not completely surprisingly though with the majority of production ear marked for Chivas blending requirements.
The Dram
Coming in at 40% ABV and with colouring and filtering as standard this whisky is telling me low margin and high volumes are the game here. Picked up for £25 in Sainsburys 4 years ago maybe I was probably sucked in by the modern and sleek bottle and label. I was and still am a sucker for marketing but at least I own my shame.
Being a Speyside distillery and this a representative of the region it will have some form of sherry used somewhere. Probably a finishing but actually who knows what was involved in making this expression.
Tasting Notes
Colour – whisky
Nose – sour wood and boiled sweets. morning pastry and butter
Palate – clean and light texture which is basically watery. malty and doughy notes with cinnamon swirls.
Finish – a short finish which ends with bitter oak
Final Thoughts
This was a lot high on my supermarket journey but if you see a Aberlour 10 Year Old or 12 you should for sure pick those up. Aberlour sold as a value for money bottle can be some of the best experiences you can have.
Malted 