Hazelburn: 12 Year Oloroso Cask (Scottish Campbletown Single Malt Whisky: 12 Year: 49.9% ABV)
Visual: Very dark, rich gold. Very fast, thick streaks come from the spirit.
Nose: Suet. Plum pudding. Candle wax. Dried apricot. Water makes lighter in general.
Body: Smooth. Light charred oak in oils. Plum pudding. Sultanas. Thai seven spice. Water makes very smooth, still lightly spicy. Dried apricot. Light citrus.
Finish: Spicy air. Thai seven spice. Turmeric. Suet. Sultanas. Water brings out more suet. Dried apricot. Peppery. Light citrus.
Conclusion: This seemed to go down so very well with the majority of the tasting group of the night. For me it is lovely, but I will admit not the stand out of the set. The base spirit of Hazleburn is mainly used to get that great smoothness of mouthfeel, not as smooth as standard Hazleburn 10 though, as the barrel aging seems to add a bit of alcohol pep despite how smooth the feel is.
When drunk neat the base flavours of Hazleburn are kind of lost to the barrel aging – though thankfully a few drops of water do allow it to show some fresh fruity citrus notes. What the main flavor is is the influence of the barrel aging. That makes this so fruity with plum pudding, lots of spice, but controlled by the fruit – there is so much dark fruit!
Like that it is nice, but a touch of water gives it that additional character that makes not just a (admittedly very good) Oloroso sherry dram. Finally showing some of the base distillery character and creating something new, rather than just a very sherry dram, which while good is something I have seen many a time before.
It is very good, not the best of the tasting for me due to the difficulty getting the base character to show, but that is just how high the bar was on this tasting.
Great, not an utter must have but great.
Background: Another from Independent Spirit’s epic Springbank tasting and this is very hard one to get hold of. The odd cask variants, such as this Oloroso cask aged Hazleburn tend to vanish very quickly and often turn up at silly mark ups on auction sites, so I was very chuffed to try this. As a bonus dram not originally listed, we were given a dram of standard Halzeburn 10 to go alongside this so we could directly compare the two. A delicious bonus! Hazleburn is the unpeated spirit from Springbank and also the only one to be triple rather than double distilled to give a smoother spirit, similar to how most Irish whiskies are done. Now, we were quite deep into this tasting by this point, with a lot of cask strength whiskies so my notes were getting harder to do and later read, but I did my best for you, the readers! 🙂 and me the drinker.
