Daftmill: 2011 Summer Batch (Scottish Lowland Single Malt Whisky: 12 Year: 46% ABV)
Visual: Slightly yellowed gold body with fast medium thickness streaks from the spirit.
Nose: Banana esters. Grapes. Pencil shavings. Slight jelly alcohol tingle. Water adds fresher grapes.
Body: Smooth, but with an alcohol tingle over time. Heather. Grassy. Green grapes. Lightly waxy. Banana touches. Subtle choc lime. Water adds slight honey. More banana and fudge.
Finish: Drying. Oak touches. Green grapes. Tannins. Dried banana. Slight vanilla custard. Toffee. Water adds slight honey. Slight choc lime.
Conclusion: Ok, it is not something I have hidden that I absolutely adored my first encounter with Daftmill at a whisky tasting, and I have been trying to get my own bottle of this hard to acquire whisky ever since.
So, now I have one does it live up to my hopes and memories, or was I merely swayed in the moment by an epic whisky tasting?
Ok, to be honest I am not as wildly enthusiastic as my first encounter. The special event vibe of my first ever encounter with Daftmill may have swayed me, or maybe that was just a particularly good bottling. However, and it may have helped that this bottle has been open and airing for a while, but this is still freaking good even if not up to my memories of the last bottle.
Neat it has a bit of an alcoholic jelly air that is more present than I would expect, and it is slightly drier than needed in the finish. Ok that is all the bad points out of the way, lets move onto the good. This now has soft banana ester like notes,which when combined with the grape character is a lovely subtle, fruity sweet set of deliciousness at the core of the whisky.
Water definitely helps as well, smoothing out those initial edges. It still has a touch of the alcohol character but generally is a smooth as silk lowland dram. There even a touch of that choc lime flavor I encountered in the 2008 summer batch back in the day. Not much of it, but it is still there.
So this is a great, complex, sweet lowland. Not quite as good as my memory of the 2008, but, rose tinted spectacles of the past can lie, and this is great. The added banana notes notes are a great new layer to this thing.
A seriously good whisky, especially with a touch of water to get everything pointing in the same direction. Well worth getting if you can.
Background: Daftmill, one of the smallest Distilleries in Scotland, with an utterly tiny max capacity of 20K Litres per year using grain made on the Daftmill farm itself. After trying it at one of Independent Spirit’s whisky tastings I have been trying to get my hand on a bottle ever since, but it has been a tad hard to do so – with raffles held for who has the right to buy a bottle. Finally I have one! One of 6550 bottles, this was aged from 2011 to 2023 in bourbon barrels. – specifically 27 first fill barrels from Clermont Springs Distillery. As you can see from the photo of the back of the bottle they have plenty more information, such as it being made from Publican barley, and that it was aged in the upper level of the dunnage warehouse. I love little bits of info like this. This was bought from the aforementioned Indie Spirit and drunk while listening to the Disco Elysium OST – always good backing drinking music.