Glendronach cask strength batch 2

One thing i left out was a faint barbecue note popping up on the nose after adding water, but now after having tasted it twice tonight i can put a finger on it.. Roasted chicken!

Thanks for this reivew! I like all the other elements, it is just the "intense spiciness" that I have a hard time with. Ouch! Where did my tongue go?

Having tasted Glendronach Cask Strength once, I'd love to get my hands on a bottle or three of it. It is pricey, though, and where I live it is also hard to find.

Unlike my friend @vanPelt 'intense spiciness' is one of those things I like best in a whisky.

True, sometimes I feel like a minority in that regard.... How can it be? It will remain a puzzle to me. Is nobody else disturbed by tongue numbness? By sizzling that distracts from deeper flavors? @Victor , we recently agreed on the Laddie 10 for example (and a good many other examples exist)-- but no biting spice to be found! So surely you don't need it, even if it's one of your best things.... Anyway, I decided to try GlenDronach's CS3, which is allegedly less spicy; but I could never get the water right. Always finished with tongue-drying hot wasabi (the fake kind), unless I took the tiniest of sips. Maybe I'm missing something....

@vanPelt, I think that it was the Batch # 3 that I tried recently in Toronto. I would add water only for contrast. Do I have a numb tongue, compared to others? Perhaps, relatively speaking. I like that it is very rare that a whisky seems too strongly alcoholic to me.

Oddly, by contrast, @Pudge72 recently introduced me to a method of tasting which he loves involving putting the whisky between your lip and mandibular incisors for 15 seconds before tasting any of it. I could not do it. The alcohol burned me and was too much for me with almost every whisky. So my tongue is not too alcohol sensitive, but my labial oral mucosa is.

Thanks @Victor, I am so happy to be part of a discussion involving labial oral mucosae! I've heard of this 15 second technique, and it doesn't jive with me. But I agree that the method of drinking can change the experience dramatically. I drink all cask strength whiskies in tiny sips-- taken in the region you mentioned-- and the sips can then get somewhat diluted around the tongue by salivation. That delivers the flavor explosion for me. Naturally, the degree of that effect depends on how scrumptious it is in the first place....

I did not mean that your tongue was numb-- I meant that MY tongue beCOMes numb! These GlenDronachs are wonderful for me, until after the peak of the palate... At that point and into the finish, the spices absolutely sizzle my tongue into numbness. So it's not flavorful, and it's even kind of painful! And the effect is not completely due to the ABV, because the same effect continues after I add water. But then again, if I take a good mouthful, then it is the ethanol content that burns and prevents any positive experience-- I suppose that would be true for anyone though....