Kininvie 23 Year

Seriously? This is 23 yr old? It’s like a kid you just put through 4 years of college, then 2 years of graduate degree, only to find him sitting around all day on your sofa eating chips and watching Oprah. Such a disappointment for his age. Until @LeeEvolved provided a pour of this for our final SDT round, I’d not even heard of this distillery. Apparently it’s just a front for Balvenie to send second rate stuff over into blends. I had this with about 1/2 teaspoon of water. I got a nice floral nose, like Balvenie. But for me, it all fell apart in the palette. Weak green apples and some honey. I don’t know...seriously, for 23 yr old Speysider, I’d expect much more. Thanks Lee—-good to know and experience.

Ah, Balven...I mean Kininvie. You got me. You got me good. In our quest to try juice from every active distillery in Scotland, I came across Kininvie here. This distillery was founded in 1990, on the grounds of The Balvenie distillery by William Grant & Sons. This single malt is primarily used in Monkey Shoulder and Clan Macgregor blends. The kicker is that Kininvie doesn’t have their own Mash house- all their Mash is piped over from The Balvenie. Kininvie only uses their own mash recipes. So, in effect, The Balvenie is a contract distiller for them. That explains a lot... This is a 23 year old malt distilled way back in 1990 when the place first began operations. Kininvie also releases a 17 year old, but everything else goes towards blend. This is Batch 3 and was bottled at 42.6%. It’s pale gold in the taster, oily with tons of undefined legs running down the glass. The nose is mostly ex-bourbon wood. There’s light orchard fruits like apples and pears and a tiny bit of vanilla. It smells like a light, American whiskey. The palate is similar on the flavor side, but it’s super smooth, a bit thick and sugary with an oily mouthfeel. The finish is medium length, delicate and woody. It’s smooth from start to finish, but incredibly boring. After trying an ounce neat, I did something I almost never do- I added water. At 23 years old there’s got to be hidden complexity or added depth of flavor to be unearthed. Not really. The nose offered up some perfume notes that weren’t there initially, but there was no improvement to the palate. Bummer. So, what we have here is a contracted Balvenie- with a price point to match. I paid $145 for this 375ml bottle. What a rip off! This dram is boring as hell and ridiculously overpriced. I saved this one for the end of our tour thinking it would deliver the goods- wrong. I got robbed. 2.5-2.75 stars TOPS. I want to deduct stars for the price, but it is incredibly smooth whisky. Avoid buying this and bum a taste off of a fool dumb enough to buy a bottle. Cheers.

Stop number 104 on the SDT is Kininvie. I don’t know much about this Speyside distillery other than its only releases are a 17 year old and this 23 year old that my friend @LeeEvolved purchased for this final round of our Scottish Distillery Tour. Bottled at 42.6% ABV, most likely natural color of pale gold and given the lower ABV I would suspect that it is chill filtered. This sample is from Batch 3. Mild tropical fruits on the nose. Kiwi, papaya, passion fruit. Orchard fruits as well, pears, apples, tangerines and apricots. Musty oak, vanilla and coconut with a hint of ginger. This is matured in both ex bourbon and ex sherry casks, but the bourbon casks really show through the most. The palate, well...it doesn’t have much flavor at all. The same tropical fruits from the nose are there, papaya and kiwi, but so soft and mild that it’s hard to tell what’s really there. Some oak and vanilla with a little coconut. Somewhat of a grain alcohol similarity. A medium light bodied mouthfeel, oily but otherwise thin. The finish is short to nonexistent at times. It’s there then it’s gone leaving nothing but an oily residue of vanilla and oak. Given the age and the exorbitant price of $145 for a mere 375mL bottle, this is really a disappointment. The nose showed promise, but the palate and finish lacked any real substance. I was hoping for so much more, but this one just couldn’t deliver. I feel bad only giving this one 3 stars because on the surface it seems like it would garner at least a 4. But I guess that’s all this one is, surface. Cheers

This is a review for the 23 year old 1991 Batch 3 version. I'm assuming it's the same as the age and abv match. Anyhow to the whisky. I bought it as I'm on a mission to try all Scotland's finest commercially available distilleries. I never heard of this one until I checked all the distilleries out there. Apparently I'm not the only one as reviews online start off...'The little known distillery...'. Founded by William Grant & Sons in 1990 it was built to take some of the production strain off its sister distilleries of Balvenie and Glenfiddich.  The majority of the whisky produced there is used in Grant's blended range and Monkey Shoulder.  Kininvie is located on the same site as its sister distilleries and shares aspects of their production. Anyway the whisky. It's a nice drop, until I researched I thought it was a grain whisky by the taste. Very light flavour profile but very nicely balanced. I had this after a dram of Macallan Rare Black and it held up well. Another review summed it up as vanilla, lemon, grass and icing sugar which encapsulates it well. ~$140 USD and a 4.25 for me. One of those drams I don't usually like as its a bit ethereal but it pulls it off nicely due to the multi faceted well balanced flavour profile.