Cambus 1991 26 Year Cask Strength Collection (Signatory)

Nose: Vanilla, custard Danish, some grassy aromas, a very slight grape or wine note, bright orange and lemon citrus hints. There's a caramel, toffee, nougat burnt-sugar sweet note in the background, but it is reticent. Palate: Warm, rounded and creamy vanilla arrival that very rapidly transforms into a spicy and hot cinnamon development with an abundance of oak tannin and black pepper. The tannins eventually take over the palate and drive the profile into mouth-puckering astringency, however this is oddly pleasant and seems appropriate to the profile. Later in the development an almost anaesthetic clove-oil and anise facet is noticed. There is a foundation fruity character but it is almost obscured by the long sherry-cask maturation. Finish: Medium. Tannic oak and cereal gives way to an eventual sweet but grippy aftertaste. Laid down in 1991 into butt #55894 and bottled in 2018, this tasting was from bottle 426 of 486. The sherry butt is noticeable on the nose, but it certainly isn't over-prominent. In fact given the definite background vanilla note throughout you could mistake this for an ex-bourbon cask maturation, were it not for the constant reminder of grape-skin tannin. As with almost all cask-strength, single-cask whiskies this is greatly enhanced by a dash of water. I added a full teaspoon to the dram after a quick neat taste and it was considerably improved. The nose retreated at first (which is typical) but soon re-asserted with a more prominent oak note. The palate was enormously softened and in this unleashed form the whisky displayed superior balance and depth - it seemed "refreshed" to a large degree. When watering give it at least 20 minutes to recompose or you'll miss all the unleashed sweet barley-sugar notes. Sweet cereal and more subtle spice notes were obvious, and the progression was more sophisticated. Normally I finish a tasting dram before posting a review but I'm enjoying this so much I'm going to sit and nose it for a while. However in the final analysis although it is a good single-grain it's not an excellent one, and I'd only recommend it to those doing intense exploration into this area of whisky. It lacks that velvety, silken richness you get with a really cracking single grain, and the profile is a little shy. Tasted from a 30ml sampler. "Good" : 83/100 (3.5 stars)