Dalmore 12 Year Old

A friend and fellow reviewer from Queensland and I have decided to start sending one another whisky samples. It's a cheap way to experience a wide range of the whisky world with quite a bit less risk of buying a bottle that you sit there and go "That's NASTY!" and helps you find the bottles and distillers that make you go "That's YUM!"

A week or so ago the samples that he sent to me arrived and made me happily giggle!

New whisky is ALWAYS fun to taste and try!

In his little care pack he'd sent me a Glen Scotia distilled in 1992 and bottled in 2009 by Gordon & Macphail, Dalmore 12 yr old, Suntory Hibbiki 17 yr old, Aberlour Abunadh batch 17 and a special mystery malt that very few people have ever got to try.

I'd already tasted the Glen Scotia which I really didn't care for and scored a 75 out of a 100.

For those who are new to whisky scoring and especially my reviews this might seem like a great score.

It's not.

That's a it's a decent whisky and I didn't regret the minutes of my life spent tasting it, but it's just decent.

Not brilliant.

Next on the list was a Dalmore 12 yr old.

I'd never tried Dalmore before and was interested in it as I'd heard many good things about the distillery.

Now as is normal at our house I tried this whisky while watching Masterchef Australia with my wife during the dinner hour. Generally speaking I try the whisky after eating, but I do spend most of dinner nosing the glencairn trying to pull what I can out of it.

Now this whisky is a Highland whisky, specifically a Northern Highland Single Malt.

Now Northern Highland single malts are often characterized by a light body and tend to be delicate whiskies with complex aromas and a dryish finish sometimes spicy, sometimes with a trace of salt.

I'd like to thank the fine folks at Singlemalt.com.au for that little blurb.

Now as my wife and I nose the glencairn the first thing she says to me is that she's getting earthy aromas.

On top of the earthy aromas we wind up getting hints of smoke, and some citrus aromas that my wife says are oranges, but I'm not 100% about.

It's an interesting nose and makes me eager to take a sip which I then happily do!

As I sip from the glencairn the first thing I taste is chocolate and oranges. Um I do believe my wife may have been right about the oranges (sorry babe). I then taste some sultanas and a wee bit of vanilla.

The finish wasn't very long and had just a wee bit of nuttiness and sultana at the end. Not bad, but nothing to get all excited about.

This whisky is an entry level malt and not too badly priced at around $80 AUS. Also at that price and being an entry level single malt whisky it seems to be a much better entry level then a few other whiskies that I can think of. I'll be talking about that more later.

Tomorrow it's Old Pulteney 12 yr old time! Another entry level Highland malt whisky.

Find where to buy Dalmore whisky