Wemyss 8 Year Old Smooth Gentleman

According to the official website of this independent bottler, you must pronounce Wemyss as ‘weems’, which is an old Scottish word for caves. There is also a Wemyss castle where a historic family of the same name used to live. Now it is also the label of a very special range of handcrafted whiskies. There whiskies are, among others, blended malts (previously vatted malts), meaning a blend of different single malts. They get the help of connoisseur and whisky author Charles McClean for the selection of their casks. The name of the distillery is not mentioned on their labels, but the main part of this Smooth Gentleman is a boubon cask matured Highlander.

I’m trying two different Wemyss whiskies today, starting with the Smooth Gentleman en then moving on to the Toffee Apples. Beware: there is also a 5 Year Old Smooth Gentleman, but I tried the 8 Year Old one, bottled in October 2009.

The Smooth Gentleman immediately makes good on its name. The nose is soft with vanilla, overtaken quickly by cut grass, white fruit and a whiff of tobacco. Quite some citrus too.

On the palate, after the initial mildly spicy attack, quite a few flavours emerge such as nuts, leather, lively citrus but mostly heather and wonderful chocolate. Above all, it remains ‘smooth’.

The finish is spicy, but rather short.

This is a very mild dram that again proves that blended malts are not necessarily less interesting that single malts. This non-coloured & non-chill filtered whisky is quite reasonably priced and could easily become a daily dram, being so accessible (both price-wise and taste-wise).