Macleod’s : Lowland Single Grain (Scotland Lowland Single Grain Whisky: 40% ABV)
Visual: Deep, slightly darkened gold. Fast thick streaks come from the spirit.
Nose: Alcohol air. Clean. Vanilla. Muesli.
Body: Light and smooth front. Alcohol jelly touch to the middle, but not heavy. Jelly babies Marshmallow. Water adds white chocolate. Toasted teacakes. Buttery notes.
Finish: Tinned tropical fruit. Clean. Vodka. White chocolate. Apricot. Water adds more white chocolate. Some chocolate cake. Sugar dusting.
Conclusion: You know, considering the dark gold color this has, I was expecting a bit more to the flavor it comes with. Or at least a bit more weight to it. Ok, yes this is a lowland single grain, but man this looked utterly soaked in its bourbon aging.
Instead, without water, this is a fairly clean, smooth spirit. It is a tad alcohol touched, but not too much, just a bit more than you would expect from a 40% abv lowland. It is kind of vodka with whisky flavours added in style more than anything else.
So, yeah, this definitely needs water in order to get it going. Which is no real surprise with the exception of the aforementioned color of the spirit. I’m guessing that this isn’t old spirit, despite it being generally smooth, so a bit of water always helps, and this is doubly true with grain whisky.
Now water makes this a fluffy, marshmallow, lightly sweet thing – against a still sweet, but bready toasted teacake backing. It is still nothing like what you would expect from the darker gold colour, but, oh yeah, this is some easy drinking fun.
It is still not up there at brilliant, the tail end finish is kind of neutral alcohol which is .. meh – but generally it is a gentle, sweet, light fluffy thing. In fact it very much shows the bourbon influence – maybe that is all that is shown – like a lot of grain whisky the base is very neutral, so nearly all if not all the flavor is from the oak.
Still, it is nice bourbon aging. It is very much a one style whisky, and very much needs water, and even with that has a few off notes buuut generally you will find it an easy drinking, sweet and fun whisky for a fairly decent price.
I dig it.
Background: I can’t actually find much on this whisky. I can find a lot on Macleod’s Single malt regions range, but, while this is visually very similar, and comes from the lowland region, this is in fact a single grain whisky. Which does not get listed with the regional single malts for obvious reasons. Anyway, there are not many lowland single malts, which I guess is why they went with a single grain for their pick for this – I’ve only had a few single grains, and while very different from single malt they have earned their place. Tend to be much more influenced by oak aging than base spirit in my experience. Anyway- have been playing the utter hell out of Celeste for a while, so went with Celeste: farewell OST for drinking music. Such a good game. This was another one grabbed from Independent Spirit.
