Pure Scot Signature Blended Whisky

Sweet nose, very citrus forward with apples. Taste matches and comes in really sweet *almost* too sweet, adds a little caramel too. Finish still makes you feel like you took a bite off a caramel apple at a fair. Really smooth and enjoyable except that it’s really pushing the boundary of too sweet.

Since 2015 when Bladnoch got a new owner, the australian surfer David Prior, the whole image of this Lowland Distillery has been refurbished, and they have released a blended scotch, with a lovely and heavy bottle called "Pure Scot". This is the "signature" expression, and has won a fairly amount of awards lately.  It says on the label that it has whiskies from all over Scotland, but their main malt is Bladnoch of course. Bottled at 40%abv, tawny color. On the nose, very sweet and minty. Butterscotch is the main aroma, dulce de leche, chocolate and a lovely note of mint liquor. Very herbal, like a lemon verbena or chamomile tea. After a few sips, it revealed the grain whisky of the blend, with a decent maize note. On the palate it is a very delicious dram. Again this fancy butterscotch, some bee honey, milka chocolate bar, toffee and danish cookies. A second sip gave me vanilla, a hint of pepper and maize. Very enjoyable. Aftertaste is slightly peaty. Salt, burnt hay, puffs of aromatic smoke and danish cookies (the salty one). Not very long. Overall, for a blended NAS whisky, this one is definitively in the competition against Chivas XV and Johnnie Gold, because of its flavor profile. Since it is new, but better good looking (the bottle that is), it should be considered as one step down from those two, but many steps forward from the classic 12yo blends. My score for it is a fair 83 over 100.