I picked up this bottle of Lismore 15 Speyside Single Malt the week before Thanksgiving at Trader Joes. It came in a little gift pack with 2 Glencairns and seemed like a reasonable deal when you consider that Macallan 12 is about $60 now. Plus you know… “free” Glencairns.
Being a Mystery Malt I I don’t know with 100% certainty where this came from other than that it comes from the Speyside region of Scotland. The popular rumor is that it’s Glenrothes, but I’ve recently had someone contact me in confidence who says it’s Glenfarclas. Neither Glenrothes, Glenfarclas or Lismore have admitted it themselves.
Regardless of who made the juice in the bottle it seems to me that Lismore, for the most part, is their dumping ground for barrels that didn’t quite make the cut for their own bottlings or deemed worthy by the higher-end NDPs like Cadenhead’s or Signatory. Which would easily explain why the Lismore line is so cheap.
Lismore 15 years Review
Bottler: William Lundie & Co.
Age: 15 years
ABV: 40%
Price: $35
EYE
Light caramel
NOSE
Muddled fruit, spice, vanilla, dark honey and an earthiness roll out of the glass followed by some lighter notes of butterscotch, malt and ambiguous sweetness. It’s inoffensive, but not complex or interesting. It just is.
PALATE
The flavor comes across much darker than the aroma. Muddled overripe fruit, dark almost cloying sweetness, honey and a marshy earthy funk with a raw quality on the end. It’s only a little better than the Lismore 100 Proof.
FINISH
Funk, fruit, dark sweetness, wood and ash run out slowly.
BALANCE, BODY & FEEL
Not very well balanced with a medium body and soft texture that comes through oddly hot.
OVERALL
Honestly, the nose is the only thing that kept it from falling completley flat on it’s face, but just barely. All-in-all It’s dark, muddled and the fruit aspects aren’t very crisp, but they do add pleasant dimension and counter balance to the darker notes. Though at $35 I feel like they’re asking about $5-$10 too much for what’s being delivered. There is no driving complexity and that weird earthy ashy funk seems to be covering up what could actually be a really nice whisky.
SCORE: 79/100