Tomatin 19 Year Old - Cask Strength Single Cask (Master of Malt)

Master of Malt Tomatin 19 Tasting Note

Tasting notes from Stephen Fry:

"This is one of the most magnificent yet approachable malts I've ever had the delight of sampling.

It is full rich full and malty as one would hope, but with a delightful zinging topnote of peardrops and peachiness that softens into a magnificent plummy grandeur, like ethereal Dundee cake.

I'm fully aware of how pretentious I'm sounding, but I don't care. This is a good a glass as you could ever have.

Stunning from first nosing to final swallow.

It has that quality among great malts of possessing a completely different personality when its fires are softened with a small (very small) amount of (non-chilled) water.

I like it straight or dampened. I regret drinking it enormously for now I am spoiled, completely spoiled.

The 19 year old Tomatin is now officially my favourite whisky."

Tasting notes from Jim Murray's Whisky Bible 2009:

Nose: 24/25 very similar to their 40% bottling except here the citrus and the oak have the starring rolls and it takes time for the barley to secure its place;

Taste: 24/25 ooomph…!! For a while you are not just speechless but without the power of thought; not so much the alcohol intensity – its pretty pathetic compared to the cask strength rums I work with, for instance – but the sheer thickness of the flavour and mouthfeel. It’s a soup of malt, much reduced, with perhaps some of the most intense barley I have ever had the great fortune to come across;

Finish: 24/25 thins out sufficiently for the brain and tastebuds to make some sense of what is happening in there: the oaks, we learn, have arrived but still can’t get much of a word in edgeways against the malt; also, miraculously, a thin seam of citrus has survived; some quaint spices jostle for a place at the very back;

Balance: 24/25 quite simply astounding: this is how 19-year-old whisky should be.

Score: 96 ...more