Auchentoshan Valinch 2012

2011 Bottling

It's a good idea to give this one some time after you've first peeled off the plastic and uncorked the bottle: right off the bat, this is fiery and young, but a few weeks of oxidization go a long way. Still certainly not for the faint of heart (if you're a less experienced drinker, you'll want water or an ice cube to make any sense of this), but there's actually a really lovely, elegant spirit hidden beneath the fumes and the flames. Strong smell of lemons and lemon zest, it's herbal and minty, old-school cough drops (camphor?), vanilla, barley sugar, light oak, and white grape/grappa. Taste, sans water, echoes those notes, along with some serious heat--a lot of raw ingredient flavours, slightly syrupy texture. But water actually softens things up while still retaining the core flavours (along with a nice cinnamon hearts-type tingle). It's far from my favourite whisky in my collection, but it's a really nice example of how ingredients come together and what raw, uncut spirit tastes like.