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Auchroisk 15 Year Old 2000 Old Malt Cask

Spring Whisky

3 583

@markjedi1Review by @markjedi1

20th Jan 2020

1

Auchroisk 15 Year Old 2000 Old Malt Cask
  • Nose
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  • Taste
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  • Finish
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  • Balance
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  • Overall
    83

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Auchroisk (say ‘o-thrusjk’) is a very young distillery, only founded in 1974. It’s a workhorse for the blenders and hardly sees the light of day as a single malt. This is a single cask that appeared in the famous Old Malt Cask series by Hunter Laing. A bit young for Old Malt Cask, no? Anyway.

The nose is very soft and reminds me of spring. I get flowers, apples, pineapple juice, freshly cut grass and some honey.

The arrival is mildly peppery. Think white pepper, liquorice and ginger. The fruit remains spring fresh: pineapple, apples, gooseberries. Sweet malt and some honey. Some grapefruit appears, as does some green tea. Yup, this certainly qualifies as a spring whisky.

The finish is rather short, unfortunately, and offers nothing new bar a slightly metallic note that I cannot appreciate. Grapefruit at the death. Ends pretty dry.

A very little dram, to be honest. Nothing wrong with, but just uninteresting.

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5 comments

W
Wierdo commented

The last couple of years I've been trying to branch out into trying more Independent bottlings of Single Malts from distilleries I've not tried before. I've become a bit wary of late though as I've come to realise some of these distilleries aren't bottled much as single malts for a reason because....well they're a bit boring. I've wondered if that was the case with Auchroisk which I've not tried yet. I think your review kind of confirms my suspicions.

4 years ago 1Who liked this?

@Victor
Victor commented

@markjedi1 thank you for your review.

@Wierdo there is a reason that the vast majority of Scottish malt whisky still goes into blends. It's not because it tastes great on its own. As I've expressed before, I expect that the Scottish malt that is bottled and sold on its own is probably all from the top 30% of the barrels matured, and not from the average barrels. When people say, "The whisky from that Scottish distillery tastes great." what they are really saying is that the best 30% of the malt made at that distillery tastes great on its own. Bottling and selling only the creme de la creme barrels as single malt affords the distilleries the ability to artificially "up" their reputations for quality. Mixing 70% of their malt into blended Scotch allows them to disguise its quality in the same way as the quality of an inferior whisky is disguised by blending it into a cocktail.

I love Scottish malt whisky. But what I love is the better examples of it. I say the same for all genres of whisk(e)y. I like the best of it. I do not romanticise the quality of any genre of whisk(e)y. They all have better examples and lesser examples.

4 years ago 2Who liked this?

@CanadianNinja
CanadianNinja commented

‘I do not romanticise the quality of any genre of whisk(e)y. They all have better examples and lesser examples.‘

Could not have said it better myself @Victor!

It always makes me roll my eyes when I hear people go on about how wonderful ‘Japanese whisky’ is!

I always wonder.... What are you referring to exactly?? Hibiki 21? Taketsuru 17? Nikka From The Barrel? Yes, they are indeed wonderful whiskies.

But the reality is that there are plenty of Japanese whiskies that are FAR from wonderful....

4 years ago 2Who liked this?

@markjedi1
markjedi1 commented

@CanadianNinja And not only are quite a few Japanese whiskies not very good, even more of them are actually not even Japanese!

4 years ago 3Who liked this?

@CanadianNinja
CanadianNinja commented

Indeed, @markjedi1.

Sadly, this is true....

4 years ago 0