Dailuaine 16 Year Old

Dailuaine is a distillery I've tended to pair with Mortlach in being obscure but underrated. Very little in the way of single malt releases - it seems to be either this 16YO or expensive indie bottles.

The nose is quite a sharp note of red berries, paired with quite a distinct smokiness. And this is from Speyside. It becomes sweeter and mellower with time as it opens up and a toffee note appears. A bit of orange marmalade later on. It's powerful - not Islay deep-south powerful but it certainly bucks the Speyside trend.

Palate - Smokiness along with fruit flavoured hard-boiled sweets. It's not what I would call peaty - much more barbecued smoke. But it's competing with an intense flavour of toffee and red berries. In fact the palate is more or less identical to the nose.

And again on the finish we get drifting smoke coupled with a fruity toffee-caramel edge that clings and dries.

This is a delicious atypical Speyside malt that the world should know more about. Not the cheapest (£45) and some might say that it doesn't really know what it wants to be, (the Bowmore of Speyside perhaps?). But I'd definitely recommend it for something a little bit different.

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