Càrn Mòr Cambus 1991 (27 Year)

There’s some nice notes in this whiskey, dried fruits, honey, chocolate and vanilla to name a few, but the ethanol a sour note really detract. Added water helps with the ethanol but the sour note persists. Maybe it’s the sherry cask? Thanks to @ContemplativeFox for the sample.

Nose - buttered popcorn, walnut, lemon pith, light caramel, fig, honey, apricot, raisin, cereal grain, white pepper, cocoa, vanilla, hay, moderate to high ethanol burn. Taste - orange zest, toffee, vanilla, dusty corn, cinnamon, cereal grain, milk chocolate, allspice, lemon pith, honey, walnut, fig, raisin, floral notes, chili pepper, moderate to high alcohol bite, finishing medium length with cereal grain, citrus pith, and nutty toffee flavors. The nose is subtle. There’s a significant amount of graininess, followed by buttered popcorn and caramel. Dried fruit, walnut, and chocolate make the sherry component apparent, but it’s a very light touch. The palate is more boisterous, with the grain presenting as rather astringent. A bitter citrus pith note doesn’t help much either. Past that, there are some nice sherried fruit, chocolate, and nut notes, leading to a middling finish with some toffee and more bitter, sour graininess. I‘ve had minimal exposure to single grain whiskies, so this has been a great learning experience. The Cambus is reminiscent of Compass Box Hedonism, but I don’t like it quite as much. The aging must have been extremely gentle for this to be 27 years old. If it weren’t for an oily, full mouthfeel, I would have assumed it were a teenager. Overall, I like it but don’t love it. The subtlety of flavors and aromas combined with the pervasive grainy, sour, and bitter qualities doesn’t render the experience particularly harmonious or coherent. There are some nice nutty, fruity, and chocolatey notes, but they aren’t enough to overcome the downsides for me. Many thanks to @ContemplativeFox for providing the sample. Maybe single grain whiskies just aren’t my thing.

Rating: 13/23 My hope with this one is that the sherry finish and long aging help it achieve the body and complexity that grain whiskies tend to lack. N: Wow! Immediately, I get dried fruits, chocolate, and toffee. It smells great! There's something a touch savory in there as well. It smells very hedonistic. After leaving it out for a while, I get dried fruits (sultanas, cranberries, prunes), toffee, chocolate, and some citron, along with some savory smell from the alcohol itself. It's a very nice mature smell, but it isn't as rich as I'd expect from a 27 year old dram. Watering it down to 40% straight from the bottle brings out more wood and savory graininess. The wood smells old and savory, not mildewed or like sawdust. A faint hint of citron remains, but the sweetness mostly disappears. This is now a savory, woody nose. P: There's some definite heat from the proof, but there's some nice oily richness like some sorts of nuts and a dark toffee mixed with some dark dried fruits. This isn't a super sweet raisin flavor; it's more like an assortment of syrupy dried fruits. I strongly suspect a PX cask was used for this. I et some chocolate notes here and there as well, along with some savoriness. some spices are hidden in here as well. After leaving it out for a while, the tartness and variety of the dried fruits comes out more. I immediately sultanas, prunes, raisins (but not the ones with a confectioner's sugar sweertness), and rich dried oranges along with a hair of sweet dried apricot an oily nuttiness (walnut) that leads into a savoriness with a sort of chocolate richness backing it. It's tasty, but not terribly complex and with the proof it is pretty harsh. The complexity is OK though and the balance is almost there, so it's close to being pretty good here. With several drops of water added as I get low in the glass, more savoriness comes out, but there is still a syrupy element from the dried fruits, orange zest hint, chocolate, and now toffee that screams "PX sherry!". At 40%, the grain really starts coming through. There's a bit of rubber in the wood though. There is a lot more toastiness now and the mouthfeel is still viscous. The sultana sweetness is back after disappearing from the nose and it brings the faintest hint of orange with it. That rubber somehow fits with the wood in a way that I enjoy. It's more of an aldehyde flavor, which initially put me off on Glenflarclas 25 and Jollite VSOP (though I have yet to try Jollite again, so who knows on that one still). I suspect by the time I kill this bottle, I'll appreciate that flavor more. Still, it isn't a tremendously complex dram, so we'll see if I ever love it. F: Some more bitterness comes out toward the finish, along with a bit of Clynelish style waxiness. The chocolate richness and oily nuttiness stay. It's a fine enough finish. Watered down, It's largely an oily, nutty finish with some wood. Smelling the glass at the end I get this big vanilla, fruity, tart, slightly bitter rubber smell. It's like if you flambe some brandy to pour over a plum pudding and then just keep on cooking it down until it's a sticky goo. It is actually a fairly appealing smell despite being describable as "sticky goo". I really like this. I don't love it though and at this price and age, I really should. It has these great hedonistic PX aspects combined with this harsh grain whiskey. It's like a pretty poor whiskey were put into a nice barrel and aged for a long time. The result is nice and I am quite happy drinking it, but if you're aging something for 27 years, it sure seems like you ought to choose something good to begin with. There's no way that this is below a 10 and at the high end I'm seeing 15 (Geeze, that's a big range.) since I don't think it's as good as Càrn Mòr's 1992 Glen Grant 26 (which I'm only comparing because it's also from Càrn Mòr (which is a fricking pain in the ass to type (a statement that has no bearing on this review))). The Glen Grant has less going on, but it does a good job of showcasing mature, elegant nectar smoothness with refined bourbon spice. This is almost the opposite. It's surprisingly brash for its age and full of all sorts of flavors. The obvious comparison is Glenfarclas 105, which is almost the same proof and also demonstrates a conflict between the spirit and the cask. The Glenfarclas is a bit richer with (obviously) more malt persence, but also more vegetal notes. The Cambus is harsher and a bit drier with flavors that cohere a bit more. They're actually fairly similar, so for less than half the money and comfort in finding something easily (until global warming reduces its quality further), the Glenfarclas is probably the better choice. Side by side with the Glenfarclas, both having been open for 10 minutes or so, I find that I can pick out the fruits and nuts from this a lot better than in the Farclas. The balance here is superior and although the palate isn't as full, the viscosity does come through. This I'd dare say is a couple of points better than the Farclas. The added brashness and alcohol flavor of the Farclas don't adequately compensate for the loss of balance. I guess that puts this in the 12 to 15 range. I'm thinking 13 to 14 does seem reasonable in comparison with my recollection of Macallan 12 at 14. I'm going to land on 13 for now, but I do enjoy trying this with its nice PX flavor, so it could get bumped up in the future.