Dailuaine 34 Year (2015 Special Release)

This is a fascinating dram. Given the age, many of the flavors you’d generally associate with Scotch have long been lost to time, but what’s left is here to stay. I get subtle but noticeable roasted cacao and astringent Italian salad greens, like radicchio, followed by oak and seaspray —and not the vanilla you get from wine barrel oak, but like wood-chip oak. Long, savory finish, and the mildly bitter astringent qualities are surprisingly pleasant, setting up the palate nicely for the next sip and the next. Like having a conversation with a sharp ninety-year-old whose youthful vigor and ebullience is gone, but what remains —character, tenacity and grit— is well worth contemplating and interesting to be around. Not a hedonistic drink but certainly an unusual, cerebral and enjoyable one.