Aberlour A'bunadh

My first taste of a cask-strength Scotch - and what a taste it is!

After having tasted various Glenfarclas', Macallans and GlenDronachs I decided I wanted the full (sherry)monty, so to speak ... and it certainly is a sherry-bomb!

I leave this to breathe for about 20 mins and find it is alarmingly drinkable for a 60%ABV

Matured only in ex-Oloroso casks, I've heard the whisky in this is between 8 and 14 years old.

Lot's of cinammon and sherry on the nose. Taken neat - strawberry jam, apple pie, cinammon, demerara sugar - it's all there. Syrupy and lucious on the tongue, but hard to detect a whole lot of malt beneath the heavy sherry... maybe just a tad more maltiness would have taken this up to a '90' for me.

Beware though - this is seriously rich stuff. Adding water softens the sweetness. I think drinking this neat just before another scotch would seriously impact your palate. Everything else would just taste bitter afterwards!

I've heard that batch 43 & 44 were not as full-on sherried as earlier ones, but I think this must surely be A'Bunadh back to it's sherried best.

It's not extremely complex, but if it's a sweet speyside dessert-dram you're looking for you cannot go wrong with this.