Isle of Jura 10 Year Old

I was hesitant to give this a shot. Reviews for this tend to be on the average side. I hadn’t planned on picking this up, but this was on sale at my local liquor store this week and I had a few extra bucks in my pocket. And to be perfectly honest… I love the look of the bottle. Yeah I know, silly reason. Luckily I didn’t end up regretting the impulsive decision. At the time of this review, the average score for the Jura 10 is no higher than 73. This is a charming and pleasant whisky of quality that deserves much better than that imho.

Nose: A light nose with a good helping of cereal. Otherwise there are some apples, etc. A basic ex-bourbon nose that hardly exudes originality on the first whiff. On the second whiff, I get a somewhat herbal or vegetal note. Ginger and wisps of salt are here, too. There’s a bit of sharpness here, but it never loses its balance.

Palate: Some white pepper and some ginger are the first things I notice. Butter. Heather. There are some oak notes that follow. This is a bit saltier than expected. Salty, but not dry and briny as some maritime whiskies tend to be. Some mild citrus notes come through, too.

Finish: Short to medium finish. Some lemon rind, ginger ale, salt, white vinegar, and lingering pepper are the last to leave. Nice and even.

I had read a few reviews of this and to be honest I didn’t expect much. It’s nice, though. Ralfy mentioned in one of his reviews that this distillery excels with its older releases. I admit I haven’t tried them, but I do feel like if this were aged longer it’d be a lovely dram. With the salt, butter, pepper, and cereal notes, this has the potential to be on par with something like the Old Pulteney 17. But not yet. It needs a bit more of a punch to it. And while it is a balanced dram, there is some sharpness here. It needs a higher abv. and a few more years in the barrel. With some extra time to mellow out, this could be something truly wonderful. I’m definitely going to have to try some more Jura offerings… the 16 perhaps?

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