Thompson Bros: Blair Athol – 2015 (Scottish Highland Single Malt Whisky: 8 Year: 48.5%)
Visual: Deep rich gold body with fast thick streaks from the spirit.
Nose: Slight smoke. Stewed apricot. Burnt meat bits. Barbecued vegetables. Burnt brown sugar. Barbecue sauce. Water adds treacle and more smoke.
Body: Barbecued ribs. Smoke. Sticky. Soy sauce. Water adds slight lime. Smokey chipotle and habanero chilli mix. Brown sugar.
Finish: Barbecued ribs. Meaty. Liquorice. Water adds mineral water and brown sugar,
Conclusion: Ok, I may be repeating myself a lot with this phrase in this tasting but … this is an odd one. The base spirits house character is one hundred percent overwhelmed by the aging to create a sticky, barbecue sauce, meaty, umami, soy sauce, heavy and unusual whisky.
That is the experience neat anyway, with water it is still good and interesting, but somewhat muted, Easier to access and still great, but I definitely recommend neat.
So, lets look more at the neat version – Neat it is sticky, so meaty in character, reasonably easy to drink but feels pretty weighty despite that. It feels so unlike your standard Blair Athol, and with no insult intended to the standard release, I mean that in a good way. It is oily, with the meatiness accentuated by a barbecue sauce style. There feels like the flavor of, but not the heat of, a drop of good quality chilli hot sauce mixed in gently there.
This is well worth grabbing – other people described dark fruit notes in it, which I did not see myself, but they seemed to enjoy. For me the umami meets meaty barbecue made it enjoyable anyway!
Background: Another whisky from the Independent Spirit Thompson Bros Tasting. In fact the final dram of the night! I was quite merry by this point. This release of 197 bottles is not a single cask, unlike most of the other bottlings of the night – instead it is a mix of two olorosso sherry casks. I visited the Blair Athol Distillery back in the day, it is very pretty, though at the time very much about the Bells blend which most of Blair Athol’s output is used to make, but lets not hold that against it. So far I have not encountered a Blair Athol that blew me away, but I went in hoping that maybe this would be the first. As well as the usual disclaimer about being at a tasting so not able to do my best notes, also I had serious hayfever before this. However I was dosed up on my antihistamines and drops so seemed to be able to smell and taste reasonably so decided to go ahead with doing notes here.
