Bladnoch 11 year old

This review is from a bottle I brought after I'd had a few sips from the sample of Bladnoch 10 kindly provided by @Timp. I decided to do a side by side between the 11 and the 10. The Bladnoch 11 is a 2020 release to replace 2019s 10 year old. Bottle is 2/3 full.

Nose

(Neat) If the 10 smells of the Spring the 11 is Autumn (fall). A similar nose to the 10 but everything seems just a little more....cooked and yeasty. Wet straw rather than fresh straw. Sourdough bread rather than fresh bread. Some whipped cream. Iced buns

Palate

A spicy arrival. Bitter. A little chilli heat. The finish is spicy and long.

With water

It improves a lot with a splash of water. The nose becomes more winey. The heat from the palate calms down. It becomes much softer and creamier. The finish gets longer still.

Overall

I've read that the 10 is much better than the 11. Someone on the internet told me I would get baby vomit on the nose of the 11 (I didn’t). I would agree that the 10 is the better of the two. But not by a big margin. You could easily think they were same whisky and difference was just batch variation.

The one thing I will say is that I'm quite disappointed with Bladnoch's reaction to the positive reviews around the 10. They were a distillery that were not especially popular. Largely flying under the radar. They release an acclaimed 10 year old and now they want silly money for all their bottles. This 11 year old was £60. They've released a 19 year old for £150. IMO they are pricing out a potential customer base by asking too much money for their whiskies when they should be looking to develop a following.

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