Auchentoshan 15 Year Old 1981 First Cask

First Cask has bottled quite a few Auchentoshan already, including 6 sister casks from 1981. This is cask #1159, which I discovered on the table at The Whisky Mercenary’s booth at the recent whisky festival in Ghent. It was bottled exclusively for direct Wines in 1996. So it has been sleeping in the bottle for 23 years, which is longer than it has slumbered in the cask.

Lovely, fresh nose on Granny Smith apples and Doyenné du Comice pears, white chocolate, green grapes and ripe kiwi. Green banana peel. Lemongrass. Nougat and candyfloss. Being 1980s I also expected some FWP, but it has none of that. This is a wonderful nose!

I could have done with a bit more power on the palate, but hey, it’s Auchentoshan. That means delicacy. And it has a lot of that. Good continuation of the nose. WYSIWYG. Upholstered with a pinch of white peper and something bitter – but not overly much – from the wood.

The finish is surprisingly long, bittersweet and a touch piquant (for an Auchentoshan!).

A textbook example of a simply but lovely, classic Auchentoshan. Nowhere to be found by now, of course. The nose was certainly the most interesting part.

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