Tasting 1 Aberlour A'bunad

Another heavily sherried youngster from oloroso wood in the most popular A'bunadh-series. There's been quite some whiskies in this series, but I hope they keep some of these oloroso casks to bottle as single casks in ten or twenty years from now. I believe only Aberlour knowns

















Aberlour NAS 59.8% OB A'bunadh batch#30

The color is amber brown, nice color, but not as dark as I remember the first batches. I believe Aberlour is one of the lucky few distilleries that's fixed themselves up with a constant flow of sherry casks through an owned plant. This one smells of honey, white wine, pencil shavings, coal, rubber, bitter, yarn, cotton, earthy, licorice, this seems quite thin and earthy, iron, steel, strange whisky coming from oloroso casks. Weird one so far, I would've liked some sweetness, rich, fruit, cinnamon or just anything else assembling a sherried character in this one. This seems more like some refill port wood. The taste is bitter, rubbery, charcoal, grape kernels, earthy, black cheese mould, acrylic paint, this is quite unpleasant, lets add some water. The taste is now lighter, unripe cherries, bitter white wine, sulfur, rubber, a bit of light sweetness initially on the palate this time around, in that case water helps quite a bit, but after that it slips back to its neat ways of rubbery misery.

My biggest disappointment from this series so far: 2.5



Next tasting: Laphroaig Distillery