The Malt Nuts are no strangers to Mannochmore, we’ve taken on this distillery in the past and it ended with some mixed feelings with some folks talking about how it was so much better “back in the day”. This conversation laid the seed for this 70’s vs 90’s Mannochmore Tasting.
We needed to see if it actually was just our imagination or if there was something to the often touted rhetoric of the whiskies of old being better than what’s out now. To address this idea we got a Mannochmore distilled in the 70s, some in the 90s and one that’s a more modern release and then we decanted and blinded the bottles and set about the task of comparing and contrasting in one round of whisky.
1: Mannochmore 12 years: 43%
- Nose: Honey, graham, apples, malt, wax, cocoa and tad grassy.
- Palate: Same as aroma but butterier.
- Finish: Long -> Fruity and malty
- Overall: (4/5) Good solid fruity and buttery malt. Would love to have a bottle (and turns out I do!)
2: Blackadder Raw Cask Mannochmore 12 years (99-12): 60.6% – “oak cask”
- Nose: Cereal grain, wax, dry erase, sulfur, clay and spice.
- Palate: Sulfur, clay, dried dark fruit, spice and malt.
- Finish: Long -> Sulfur,d fruit and malt
- Overall: (3/5) The sulfur is right at my threshold and adds an interesting dimension, but not overly exciting on the whole.
3: SMWS Mannochmore 23 years (90-13): 56.4% – Refill ex-Bourbon
- Nose: Honey, apples, fruit candy, malt, char and nuts.
- Palate: Apples, medicinal profile, nuts, fruit and honey.
- Finish: Long -> Fruit, nuts, cocoa fades to medicinal.
- Overall: (3/5) Medicinal notes are distracting but doesn’t kill it out right. The fruity nature is nice.
4: Cadenhead’s Mannochmore 19 years (77-97): 60% – “Oak Cask”
- Nose: Clay, fruit, spice, plastic, soap, malt and nuts.
- Palate: Funk, char, clay, medicinal and floral.
- Finish: Med-Long -> Fruity, floral and medicinal.
- Overall: (1.5/5) This is not pleasant. It’s soapy, it’s floral it’s medicinal and has an odd essence that reminds me of Silly Putty.
5: Mannochmore 25 years (90-16): 53.4%
- Nose: Dark fruit, Honey Nut Cheerios, leather, iodine, fruit and olde candy.
- Palate: Butterscotch, cocoa, leather, honey and dark fruit.
- Finish: Long -> Char, cocoa, leather and spice.
- Overall: (4/5) HEavy, rich and tasty. A nice dark profile that gets accentuated by the honey and fruit.
Scientifically sound findings? No. Interesting that the 1977 Mannochmore was the worst of the night? Yes. I get that it’s just one cask from one year, but 70’s Mannochmore isn’t exactly easy to find and so doing a larger tasting than this is tough on both the quantity and cost side of things.
Still, we were all a bit surprised to see the ’77 end up where it did and the Diageo Limited Edition land where it did. At least in this round of 70’s vs 90’s Mannochmore, the 90s won.
Cheers!
