Secret Speyside 26 Year Old 1993 BYOB-C

BYOB-C is pronounced ‘biopsy’ and actually means Bring Your Own Bottle Club, but they recently launched a fun new series ‘What if BYOB-C Meant Something Else’ in which they launched their first ‘Build Your Own Bearded Commando’ a little while a go, a wonderful Speyside whisky with a GI Joe action figure on the label. With only 45 bottles, it was gone in the blink of an eye. Now the second Commando has been released, in which the creator of the label took his inspiration in the cargo shorts from the film 13 Hours, the Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. It’s again a secret Speysider, this time from 1993 which means it was 26 years old when bottled. Unfortunately the number of bottles is again very limited and thus again gone in a flash.

Dark and sweet, super fruit and sugared, lightly waxy nose that greets meet from the moment I poured it in my glass. A truckload of candied sugar is joined by some sniffing tobacco and milk chocolate and softly seasoned on some nutmeg. Some roasted chestnuts and popcorn with caramel. This is a liquid dessert.

It’s syrupy on the tongue, you can almost chew it! Immediately honeysweet and pretty feisty on nutmeg, cloves and black pepper. The fruit is much more outspoken now. I get dried apricots, gooseberries, candied orange peel and nectarines. Brésilienne nuts and rum-raisins. The sherry clearly put its foot down. It becomes somewhat dry towards the end.

The finish is medium long, very spicy and drying.

This is another one of those delicious Speysiders as we’ve seen pop up in the last few months, but I’ll never grow tired of this profile. Simply fantastic stuff.