It's Aberlour's ever-popular A'Bunadh single malt Scotch whisky! Each batch of this single malt is matured entirely in Spanish oloroso sherry butts, bestowing huge helpings of dried fruit and festive spice notes to the whisky, after which it's bottled up at full-on cask strength with no chill-filtration.
Zesty notes of chocolate-coated orange wheels join sticky ginger loaf and sherried fruits.
Plump sultanas, prunes, cakey spice, and marmalade, with biscuity malt and toffee apple in tow.
Sweet spices and rich oak linger.
Phenomenal intensity and complexity, it really shocks you the first time you taste it. It's strong enough that it's well worth adding 2-3 ice cubes to loosen the flavours a bit. Surprisingly moreish, though. Once you've had it a couple of times you'll develop a real taste for it.
Though an Islay fan, I do enjoy other styles, and often try something new based largely on Web reviews. With glowing reviews for batch 45, just after getting a raise at work, I spent $80 for a bottle at Total Wine. Sorry all, but not my cup of tea. Sherry is too strong. Mouthful is excellent, and there's a very nice Christmas spice profile and aftertaste, but the sherry influence is too unabashed, indelicate, and dominant to allow complexity and any sense of mystery. At $80, it should leave you looking into the glass wondering how they pulled it off. If you LOVE Sherry, and I do mean love, then by all means, this is your bottle. At cask strength it holds structure with water, but I preferred it beat. There are lots of malts in the $50 range that are far better IMHO. An overrated classic.
Enjoying a great sherry finished Scotch is a great experience. The Dalmore 18, The MaCallan and now, for me, Aberlour. What an excellent dram for a cask strength. Cask strength Scotch has always has a big bright greeting on the tongue for me and this particular sherried Scotch is so smooth, it doesn't pop with heat on the tongue at first. Greeted with a super smooth sweetness, uncharacteristic of cask strength, gives way to such a nice woodsy vanilla raisin creme flavor really just unbelievable. Moved this to the front next to the Glenlivet 15 Nadurra, the Balblair 24 and The Dalmore 18. It's replaced my signatory bottle of Jura 24 just because it's oh so awesome like that! What a price point!
Perhaps personal preference - but I've not just tried, but become intimately familiar with close to 100 different bottles of scotch in the past year - dozens of distilleries both young and old (some 40+ years) and every time I come back to this bottle it blows my mind. It has to be my #1 favourite, unequivocally. Many scotches can be "good" but this bottle truly gets me excited. It's a delight to the senses. And for the money, that's incredible considering bottles up to 6 times its price have often not had me nearly as excited. You must try this - first neat, then try with adding a generous amount of water (a teaspoon to a 30mL dram). Just beautiful.
I'm lucky enough to have drunk some very good whisky and whiskey over the years. To put this into context I've currently got a Glenfarclas 40, and Macallans going from 25 down to 10 in the drinks cabinet. However, I can safely say that this is the first whisky I have had that actually gave me an anxiety attack after the first glass. All I could think about was buying more of it so that I would not have to suffer the terrible pain of running out. I've never thought that before, but with this dram I went out the following day and bout 5 more bottles (batch 47). I think that says a lot about both it's quality, it's price and it's relative rarity. The high ABV (60.7) might not be to some peoples taste and it will possibly put some people off but I recommend trying it before you poo poo it as being too strong. Also, I won't be telling you how to drink this stuff. With ice, with water or neat, it delivers a wall of flavour that is otherworldly. It; like a huge chocolatey, toffee, fig, oak and balsamic hammer blow from the gods. Neat it coats the glass and then the mouth like nothing else and even with the high ABV is worryingly drinkable. Bang in a bit of water (I went in at about 6/1) and it lightens up a wee bit bit doesn't become diluted, it just feels like your listening to an orchestra in a theatre instead of your front room. The flavours separate a little better and there's more space to taste things. However, if you want the full 'wall of flavour' experience then neat is highly enjoyable and intense. I don't want to bore you with all the different flavours (and there is a lorry load of them) but I will say that it is rich, very, very rich. Imagine christmas cake turned up to 11. Big cakey goodness. The best bit about it though is how drinkable it is. It is one of the most enjoyable drams I've ever had. The night I popped the top on my first bottle I was sitting in the garden on a summers night with 2 friends. One who is a rum drinker, one who only drinks bourbon. Neither really like whisky. We finished the bottle in one sitting. I've never seen non whisky drinkers so readily change their minds about what they think of whisky in my life. And to quote my mate Mike, the rum drinker on his first sit "holy Christ, what the hell is this?" And here is the clincher. If I was ever asked to recommend a whisky to someone, before trying this I had between 5 - 10 that I would flip between. After tying it I now only have one. I hope the quality is maintained, I hope the price is maintained and I hope more people get a chance to try it. It is very special.
