Hazelburn 10 Year

Light notes of dried fruits, vanilla and a bit of nuttiness.

Cooked pears, aged oak and honey on the nose. Oily mouthful, with a delicious combination of toffee, lemon zest, cinnamon and aniseed spices on the palate. Relatively long, smooth and creamy finish with a slightly herbal aftertaste. Overall, this is a light, easy-drinking, but also fairly complex whisky. Very good.

We return to the Campbeltown Chronicles with this minature picked up at the Cadenhead store in London. It has a lovely nose of pine and mint, almost a rye bouquet. Hints of Vicks inhaler - you can clear your sinuses with this one. Sweet and oily in the mouth. The tangy finish is reminiscent of tom yum soup with a hint of dark chocolate -- is there a Thai dessert that captures that combination? Water brings out more mint on the palate, but it doesn't stand up well to too much dilution. Let's score this: nose 2.5/3, mouth 2/3, finish 1.5/3, bonus point 0.5/1 for balance. So 6.5/10, just a tad below four stars.

Nose: Rustic and elegant with malt, fruit and earth aromas. There is a hint of honeyed peat smoke along with toffee, tobacco, leather and the aroma of a sweetly decaying compost heap. In the background there is a faint brininess and some very heavy, earthy vanilla. Palate: Rich, creamy, almost oily arrival with standout notes of vanilla, malted chocolate and stem ginger preserved in syrup. In the development apple, pear and lemon appear along with toffee, nuts, and stone fruits. There are also deep herbal notes, a touch of hot spice and a fleeting, almost ethereal smokiness. Finish: Long. The creamy character of the palate turns delightfully waxy, almost like honeycomb, but a hint of flinty minerality prevents it from becoming cloying. Considering Hazelburn is Springbank's unpeated and triple-distilled persona it's intriguing that there is so much gentle smoke wafting about the sidelines. It's a very old-fashioned and uncompromising single malt, but it's not hard to strike up a friendship and once you get to know its personality you'll gravitate back to it all the time. The nose is so "big" you can almost get lost in it - I can nurse a dram of this for hours, just nosing it. It has an endlessly fascinating, almost farmyard character, but it never ceases to be elegant and refined. I usually enjoy this whisky neat, but it is also responsive to dilution - a small dash of water opens it up and some hidden sweetness and subtle fruity notes from the barley are revealed, but don't add too much. Like all Springbank whiskies, this seems to be more mature than the official age statement - it's more like a 16 year old from anyone else. The absurd official score on this site does not begin to do it justice - maybe it's a typo and it should have been 92? That I could believe. "Excellent" : 89/100 (4.75 stars)

I was pleasantly surprises at the amount of maturity I found with the Hazelburn 10 despite being relatively young. The flavour was truly delicious and well-balanced - even blind-tasted you know you're having something from the Hebrides (or Campbeltown): a touch of smoke, sweet peat, iodine, and a certain herbacious quality. The finish likewise is solid and fairly long. I truly enjoyed this!