Cragganmore 12 Year Old

I’ll gloss over the hyperbole on the label, this is despite Diageo’s long seen through hype, a pretty main stream speyside.

Pale amber in colour, the aromas include orange zest, cinnamon and coriander seed, and touch of cheap sherry. On the palate it’s medium bodied with a background of honey sweetness introducing a range of delicate flavours of orange, papaya and strawberries along with a little more of that cheap sherry. Not overpoweringly flavourful or complex but it tastes like it’s doing you good somehow.

The finish seems to make each flavour more distinct as the sweetness fades, but it’s pretty short. Overall this is a simple well presented speyside malt, but with so many others on the market I do wonder how they all sell.

The Cragganmore 12 Year Old is the entry level malt of this Speyside distillery and is also the representative of the region in Diageo's Classic Malts of Scotland series. I am trying it from a 200ml bottle that came in a green box with a Talisker and Lagavulin.

Honeysweet and spicy nose. Candied fruit, nuts, apples and caramel. Sweet butter. Honey. Floral. Rosemary and heather. Breakfast cereals. Not much else. Far from bad, but rather simple.

Oily on the palate. Oranges dominate, supported by sweet malt, spices, roasted nuts and hay. Vanilla steps in to replace the caramel. Mildly drying.

The finish is short and grainy with a hint of chocolate.

Flawless classic entry level malt.

Cragganmore 12 YO is one of Diageo's six "Classic Malts of Scotland". The reviewed 200 ml bottle has been open 2 years, is 2/3rds full, and preserved with inert gas for the last 15 months. The review is of the whisky at present

Nose: the barley-malt shows sweet and tart citrus; there is also just a hint of grape fruitiness, and very light wood influence. There is no significantly noticeable smoke and only the faintest hint of peat. This nose is straightforward, pleasant, inoffensive, but not remarkable

Taste: this has gotten a lot richer in the mouth by having taken air for a long period of time; the translation of flavours from the nose is good, but those flavours were not too remarkable to begin with. Long aired, this has become quite sweet, quite citrusy, and with more noticeable fruitiness than in the nose. At first, and for at least the first year, this was a good bit more staid and ultra-restrained. I have to give this at least 2 more points than I would have for the bottle's first year

Finish: for the first year-plus, this would have been quite the continuation of a muted finish of a muted nose and palate. NOW, it continues a very sweet and sour citrusy and fruity-of-grape palate for a medium-long finish. 2 more points for this now, than before,...also

Balance: Cragganmore 12 is a malt which divides people. Those who like the basic, and I mean BASIC, flavours of barley-malt, often like this just fine. I have always found Cragganmore 12 to be quite pleasant and enjoyable. There is really no "WOW" factor present, though, for those who seek one out

I was surprised by how much this bottle changed after being very long open. Cragganmore 12 is a whisky of which I am happy to take a dram, but of which I will probably not anytime in the foreseeable future buy a 700 or 750 ml bottle. I probably would have scored this around 79 for the first year the bottle was open

Classic, no sherry. The way a whisky should be. Somehow this malt manages to be everything. Very fragrant, it has both cut grass and fruity aromas, which are normally mutually exclusive a-la Glenkinchie vs. Glenlivet. And it has the perfect, perfect amount of peat/smoke; it's there, but it balances perfectly with the other flavours.

According to the Single Malt Flavor Map, this one should have been just right for my tastes. Instead, it is just way too sweet, which ruins it for me. Another one that I ordered at the bar and it saved me from buying a whole bottle.

En bra standard-malt från Highland. En starter!

So thanks to the tax man i was able to purchase some whiskys to try/enjoy, these were Talisker 10yo, lagavulin 16yo, glenkinchie 12yo, cragganmore 12yr, dalwhinnie 15yo and highland park 12yo

So far i have tried the Talisker, Dalwhinnie 15yo and glenkinchie 12 and have enjoyed them all with the talisker being the stand out so far.

Now its time for the Cragganmore 12yo which is the only speyside of these tastings so a little exited.

Nose: Very nice, i get some apples among other fruit, a bit of sweetness and a touch of smoke.

Taste: Similar to the nose with the fruits but the apples dont stand out as much. Bit of spice and sweetness and a very smooth dram.

Finish: Nice and long, very dry making you want to drink more. The smoke on the nose comes back here

Overall a very nice whisky, nice and smooth and easy to drink.

I've tried many, many single malt scotches through the "standard scotch" price point (in my area, something like $30-50/bottle). This is the one I consistently come back to as my "everyday" scotch. The key word here is balance. The nose has nice oak notes, though nothing overmuch. The body of the scotch has some nice light citrus, as well as a little faint hint of peat. It's impressively smooth, but not so much so that it lacks finish entirely.

All that combines for a bottle that's just spectacularly even-handed. It's got hints of everything that makes good scotches great, blended together into a wonderfully balanced mix that is likely to satisfy whatever craving brings you to a bottle of scotch.

If you like scotch, I think you will, with near certainty, like this bottle. And if you're like me, you may find yourself coming back to it quite a few times.

The nose is showing a considerable complexity. It is not a narrow range of flavors. It is convincingly fruity (apple, pears, citrus etc) and lively. The mouth is echoing the fruitiness/ sweetness range, but it adds a pleasant spiciness to it. The finish has a distinct speyside-ness to it… with a dash of smokiness. It is a dry finish. After a while a toffee note seems to grow.

Overall: It is a contemporary classic which is very reasonably priced. However, it is singing a loud E 150 song. The color is much too fake for any Whisky connors… Diageo stop that! Why do you shortchange your fine product with this unnecessary theater?