Dalmore 18 Year

One of our local liquor stores accidentally got small 100 ml bottles of this whiskey. This one starts of with the scent of dried blueberries, dark chocolate pudding and honey. The taste is very soft to the pallet tasting of roasted bananas in a nutty banana bread and a fresh cream. The finish took a 90 degree turn for me to sweet cloves and honey with the tiniest hint of ginger root.

A fine fancy Whisky. Almost a 5.0, with a nose very different than the palate, you can easily determine that it has been beautifully crafted. Bottled at 43%abv, with an auburn polished mahogany. On the nose is very special. Fresh cherry syrup (that's a first), recently baked vanilla cake, slight sweet liquorice note, jelly beans, nutmeg, sugar. Lovely aroma but a little dim. On the palate, is fine but i believe it could be better. Starts with old citric notes, Oranges and Old raisins. Woody very woody. Bonfire finish, Ashy finish. Fancy and a little dry, has a slight peppery note. Finish is very long, that being the best perk of this dram. Overall this elegant dram is a 94 over 100, nice score suitable for one of my favorite brands. Cheers!

2018

Bottled 2018. What is the best distillery? Springbank. I’ve already said that, and wrote a love poem for Longrow 18. But, what is the worst distillery? Dalmore. Get ready for slander. Some background. I have tried the Dalmore 12, 15, 18, and King Alexander III. They are all garbage. It has always perplexed me how Dalmore continues to exist as a distillery. Macallan is Macallan; Dalmore is not Macallan. Dalmore serves a disgusting niche for people with no interest in taste; but with an interest in luxury, and not enough money to afford Macallan. This 18 year old is the only bottle of Dalmore that I have bought, and I thought I could get a good deal because I found this bottle lost at a Canadian Duty Free for about 120 USD. This was clearly a lost bottle from Europe because it was 70 cL rather than 750 mL; and rather than send it back to Europe, I guess they just decided to dump it at a deep discount. The regular price for Dalmore 18 is 200-250 USD. Clearly, I still feel ripped off. But, some more background: Richard Paterson, the master blender at Dalmore, is a jackass. I cannot believe how many Scotch drinkers idolize this man. He is disgusting, and he is the last person I want to bump into when I am enjoying whisky. So, here’s a YouTube video to illustrate what I mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDS-InpmEnM He has many videos about “How to Taste Whisky”, but this is the best, because it is short, and I know the Canadian host, Sophie Liu. The video is hilarious in a cringe kind of way. Paterson is dressed in full pervert pilot swag and Sophie is honestly concerned that he might rape her, questioning his Dalmore sample with, “It’s from a vial with no label on it…” But, anyway, my biggest problem with Paterson is not that he does not know how to behave around whisky or around women, but it’s because by throwing whisky around the room as a joke, he has no respect as a guest of someone else’s home or workplace. It’s okay that he has no respect for his own Dalmore, because it is garbage, but show some respect for the people who have to clean up after you. Nosing this whisky… Hello. How are you? Quite well. Thank you very much. Dalmore 18 actually has a very nice nose. Sultanas, red citrus, Hermes perfume, prunes, la patisserie, a well-seasoned wood cutting board. Tasting this whisky… Ey yo. What’s up? This sucks. Fuck you too. This thing completely falls apart. At best, the palate is watery and boring, but then there’s this plastic cherry note that takes me on a nightmare-worthy trip of $9 old-fashioned’s, cheap birthday cakes, and fatty liver disease. Some nice red citrus flavors try to make a reappearance on the finish, but it is dominated by this soulcrushing essence of garbage. I don’t know how to explain it any better. Perhaps: depression. This whisky tastes like depression. I actually cannot give this whisky a minus rating because the nose is nice. And I actually cannot tell you how I REALLY feel about this whisky or Dalmore distillery because my wife likes this. Score: 0 (forgettable) How much does a bottle cost: $200-250 How much do I think a bottle is worth: $50