A bottle of the well-established mauve-packaged 18 Year Old Springbank. The multi-award-winning Campbeltown single malt has been matured in ex-bourbon casks, so expect a big, coastal, oily flavour from this one.
Toasted bananas, honey and bakewell tarts with coastal hints. Quite oily.
Big, spicy and gutsy, with notes of chilli, pine, citrus, aniseed and rich fruits.
Long, salty, chocolate caramels with hints of smoky fruit.
Whisky rocks might not be as disastrous as actual ice, but chilling the whisky will still ruin part of the flavour and aroma. So the critic was right in this case. Just drink it room temperature, that's the way to treat a good Whisky, or as a Distillery manager in Scotland once told me: we drink Whisky to warm us up, if you need cooling down, jump in the Loch.
He didn't say he drank it on the rocks (over ice), he said he drank it "on whisky rocks," which are completely different. Whisky rocks chill the whisky without adding ice or water. It makes for a chilled (not cold) drink, neat.
Mr. Very Nice: drinking an 18 YO Springbank on the rocks will not "open it up nicely." It will close it tighter than a puckered oyster. Ill advised strategy. This whisky deserves better treatment than ice. Neat is the way to go
In doing some serious side-by-side tasting of this versus the 15-year-old; this came out clearly on top. The difference is significant and by my wallet, worth the extra money. If you like this one, I would also suggest the Hazelburn 12-year-old, and the 19-year-old single cask 482 which I preferred over the 15 year old.
Just got a bottle for my 18th wedding anniversary. My first bottle of Springbank, matter of fact the first 18 yr old to grace my cabinet. I have had many other single malts, mostly 12 yr. My experience of flavors of this tiny dram runs the gammit from everything described in the other reviews with a subtle smoke at the end of the palate that lingers. This is the best dram I have had to date. I drank it on whisky rocks, no ice, no water added and I found it to open up very nicely on it's own.
