Springbank 12 Year Old 2003 Duty Paid Sample

Here is another one of those ‘duty paid’ samples that you can only get at the distillery itself. This time it’s a Springbank 2003 brought home in 2016. It was part of the by now infamous Christmas Tasting with Michiel Wigman from last December. I was lucid enough to keep a sample for returning to it. Oh, lest I forget: this matured on a rum cask!

The nose starts rather closed and it take a while before I get some weird notes like play-doh and potato skins that retrain themselves into raw barley, molasses and wet earth. Becomes nicely sweet and dirty given time.

It dances on the palate and is now immediately sweet on pineapple and light brown sugar. Add a metallic note as if it was poured from a tin can and my eyes start to sparkle. Nicely smoky, too. And feisty on black pepper and liquorice with a hint of candied ginger.

Long, sweet, smoky, dirty finish. Heavenly.

A three-stage-rocket from Springbank. Amazingly good!

Find where to buy Springbank whisky