Miltonduff 15 Year Old 2004 Malts of Scotland

This is already the fifth cask of Miltonduff that Thomas and his team have bottled. This time it’s a sherry cask – very active judging by the color – that slept about 15 long years. Looks like we are in for a sherry bomb.

Yup, from the minute I put my nose in the glass, I’m overwhelmed by ‘deep sherry’ as I like to call it. Immediately dark and sweet on typical heavy sherry notes like milk chocolate, furniture polish, chicken broth, candied plums, hazelnuts, caramel and caramelized wood. Add some eucalyptus and cooked cola and you’ll start to get an idea what this malt smells like. Only downside: when nosed blind, I would not have the slightest idea what malt this is. The distillery character is completely overpowered by the sherry cask.

Despite the high ABV, the arrival is pretty slick. Nicely oily, almost syrupy. Very spicy on nutmeg, black pepper and cloves. Candied ginger and some aniseed. The dark and sweet taste offers prune in a marmalade on steroids, raisins, roasted hazelnuts, chocolate… but midpalate a bitterness kicks in as if I just bit down on the pith of a pink grapefruit. The malt is once again incognito.

The finish lasts eternally and makes this Miltonduff quite the ‘enjoy-whisky’. At the death some salted caramel makes an entrance. I quite like it.

A bottle will set you back some 140 EUR, but it’s a fair deal for this lovely stuff. But again: the malt is interchangeable for any other non-peated malt because of the elaborate influence of the sherry cask. Thx, Manny.

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