Annandale 3 Year Old 2017 Scorpio for MMM

The sting is in the tale… our final release in the Artist Series is named Scorpio and believe it or not, it’s another Lowlander! This time we succeeded to get our hands of the very first (and as far as we are aware only) PX sherry cask from one of the new distilleries: Annandale! This obviously means that it can only be a young malt, calling itself whisky legally for only a few months, but we could not let the opportunity to bottle this pass us by. It’s also, by the way, only the second release from MMM that is not bottled at cask strength. In fact, we had this cut to 55% as Manny and I felt this made the malt it’s absolute best.

Plum liqueur, freshly roasted coffee, candied syrup, baked banana, red lace candy, glühwein, cuberdons… you can see where this is going. The nose is outspokenly sweet and reminds me of Christmas. That’s called good timing, eh?

Nicely oily and piquant. The spices put their foot down from the get go: chili peppers, cloves and nutmeg. A pinch of sea salt and loads of liquorice candy. Only after your saliva glands to into overdrive do you also taste the lovely fruity spirit – sorry, I mean whisky! – that offers notes of apples and oranges interwoven with quince and banana. Nicely dark, characterful, playful and all grown up at the same time.

The Finish – that capital F is not a typo – lasts very long, remains warm and spicy until the end. It’s a battle of sweet versus salt at the death, but sweet conquers easily.

You can imagine we are very happy with this unique release, as we are with again a beautiful painting – ‘Scorpio’ – from Nathalie Pien on the label. A worthy conclusion to the Artist Series!