This was a 3cl miniature bottle I got free when I brought a bottle of Balblair online. I've poured it out and let it sit for an hour.
Nose
Orchard fruits. Pears, green apples, cut grass, heather, a hint of dried fruit in the background and curiously plasticine. Quite a clean nose but that plasticine note is a bit strange.
Palate
Quite a thin mouthfeel (it is bottled at 40% abv). That plasticine note is quite evident on the palate too. Right there on the arrival. It's an unusual flavour and an unwelcome one too. Orchard fruits again. Heather. Not much in the way of dried fruits. I don't have the label to see but I don't think this has spent any time in sherry casks. Quite a long development with a white wine note, pears, straw and more plasticine. Finish is drawn out, actually quite nice with a bit of peat. And then jesus here comes the plasticine again on the finish. It runs right through every element of the palate and ruins it. You get past the initial plasticine note and then it starts to hint at getting quite nice and then the plasticine kicks in again.
I don't know what that is due too? Duff casks? Maybe I just had a sample from a bad bottle? But at nearly £100 a bottle I won't be a buying a full bottle on this experience.
I'd still recommend the 14 year old though. The bottle I had of that last year was very nice.
@Wierdo For me plasticine is one form of the clay family flavor and it could be ok with a peaty or farmyard kind of whisky but that Tomintoul has definitely a profile that can’t tolerate that note imho.
@Wierdo, the outlier poor bottles are legitimate candidates for review, too. Why? Because if you were the one to buy that bottle, that would be 100% of your experience, and it might leave a scar. We do no one a favour to pretend that poor bottles and inferior batches do not occur.
When I have had a bad experience with a whisky which I had expected to be much better I will usually post the review of the non-pleasing product and then later seek out another sample of said whisky from a different bottle. If the results are quite different from the first encounter, then I am very happy to post the new findings, either in a new review, comments on the first review, or on other discussion pages. The idea is to inform those reading about the experiences one might also have with that whisky, not to try to absolutize an image of the whisky in question as either outstanding or reprehensible. Whisky lovers often have such enthusiasm that they want to deify or demonise the products they taste. There is a lot more variation and gray in the whisky world than enthusiasts would like to accept.
I would refrain from posting a review if I had any strong suspicion that the storage conditions of the sample under consideration might have caused it deteriouration.