Images of Tomintoul Carrbridge Packhorse Bridge

This bottle from Malts of Scotland is dubbed ‘Images of Tomintoul’, which might put you on the wrong track. Sure, the Tomintoul distillery is close to this bridge, but still 40 kilometres away. Closer, about 22 kilometres, you’ll find the Balmenach Distillery where this malt was produced. It’s a port cask that yielded 359 bottles at casks strength. Balmenach is a distillery that does not feature often on my blog. The last time was when Many and I released our very own Save Lars III whisky in 2015. That’s almost five years ago, imagine that! I wonder how the spirit dealt with the cask.

The whisky is like candy on the nose. I do not mean that in the nicest possible way, but rather euphemistical. It really smells of candy. Butterscotch, Werther’s Originals, red shoe laces, superman logos, caramel. And red fruit like there is no tomorrow. But really over the top, if you ask me. And if you take the time to nose this for more than three minutes, you’ll unfortunately also discover a few off-notes that were masked initially by the sweetness. Baby breath, sugared chocolate and plastic bags on fire! Hmmm, this really is not my cuppa.

On the palate, it’s simply sour! What the hell is going on here?! Very piquant on cloves, very alcoholic and simply not good. The red fruit is no longer discernible, the candy-like sweetness completely smothered. I feel like I’m licking a rotting orange. Yikes!

The finish, unfortunately, is medium long, sweet, sour and warm.

Either it’s me, or my bottle was off or… Malts of Scotland has botted one of their very few duds.