Whisky Connosr
Menu
Shop Join

Glenlivet 12 Year Old

Back To The Barrel

0 465

@OJKReview by @OJK

3rd Nov 2010

0

  • Nose
    ~
  • Taste
    ~
  • Finish
    ~
  • Balance
    ~
  • Overall
    65

Show rating data charts

Distribution of ratings for this: brand user

Nose, Taste, Finish and Balance are graded out of 2.5 each:

Nose: There's a feel we've just entered a university laundromat, there's that unique dry-cleaning smell, mixed with fabric softener and soap. Once we enter the laundromat however and allow for our senses to get used to the ambient aroma, we can find banana and custard notes milling around, backed up by a slightly lost layer of aniseed and malt. 1.5

Taste: The palate does its best to make up for the nose's failings, and delivers a welcome dish of shortbread covered in marmalade and gooseberry, on a bed of very soft spice. Delivering a solid tried-and-tested Speyside repertoire is a surefire way to win back some favour from the crowd. 2.0

Finish: A slightly bitter note of pencil-lead and wooden spice lets down the palate's hard work, leaving us with a very short finale of wooden jalapeno spice and a very stingy serving of vanilla cream. 1.5

Balance: Certainly a bottle I could live without. Were I to be served it as a guest, I would still be able to find some redeeming qualities within it, however it would be a bit of an effort. The palate is admirably faithful to the Speyside tradition, even if not trying to do anything different. It's the nose and the finish though that really let the side down, giving the whisky an air of having been sloppily and hastily put together. Surely this can't have been worth a 12 year wait? 1.5

Related Glenlivet reviews

4 comments

@jdcook
jdcook commented

Is this your lowest rated review thus far? I can't recall you giving a 1.5 before (although you have more than a few reviews now so I could just be forgetting)...

13 years ago 0

@OJK
OJK commented

Hi @jdcook. That is indeed my lowest score. Although I've given quite a few 1.5's in the sub-categories, I've so far not reviewed anything less than 7.5. That's because I normally only write reviews about whiskies that I really rate as they tend to be the ones I want to tell people about. In this case however I happened to have it in a blind tasting along with the whole Amrut range, and had written up my notes so I thought I may as well publish them!

13 years ago 0

@drinix
drinix commented

Hi @OJK, I love your reviews. In this particular case, I would have given the nose half a point more. However, I totally agree with bitter notes on the finish and the overall unbalanced feel.

13 years ago 0

@OJK
OJK commented

Hi @drinix, thanks a lot for your feedback, very much appreciated!! i have to say i was close to giving the same score to the nose as to the palate, but i went back to the glass after about ten minutes and there was a slight note of windscreen wiper fluid that had developed through oxidisation, that i thought made the nose feel very out of key. not a terrible whisky by any means, just very forgettable.

13 years ago 0

You must be signed-in to comment here

Sign in