Loch Lomond 12 Year

Ripe peach and pear, vanilla, some peat smoke are all there. I tend to hold my dram in my mouth for 15-20 seconds to savor the flavors. This one displays a little more distracting heat than I prefer when I do that. Trying it with a few drops of water the heat is lowered and the flavor remains strong--until you add one drop too many. When you approach something like 80 proof (I estimate) the flavors simply fall apart and it is nothing more than a bland whisky. I would NOT use this in a whisky and soda. As a side note, I don't see this in my area, so shipped it in. The last time I had this was about three years ago, and I am more impressed this time. I wonder if what I had before was something else, perhaps the younger Loch Lomond Original. My host poured from a decanter and told us it was the 12. Perhaps he was "mistaken."

I found the neck pour of this quite bland. However a couple of days later it came alive. Cinnamon and orchard fruits. A strong arrival of honey, vanilla and smoke with a warm spicy strawberry development that lingers. The peat is light but beautifully integrated, and there is a full, creamy mouth-feel.

Nose: Baked potato with sour cream and smokey bacon, black and green olive brine, slight salinity, damp and ripe orchard fruits (apples, peaches) in a barn filled with musty hay, charred orange peel, lamb chops with a red wine reduction and thyme, blackberry marmalade, rich almost savoury honey, yeasty bread, floral eau de toilette with tangy apple cider, soft vanilla and sweet charred oak, sweet and spicy chilli sauce, a hint of butterscotch, fresh cut grass, meaty and slightly earthy pear smoke, medium roast coffee, slight iodine note, touch of wood stainer, pickled pearl onions, slightly dark chocolate filled with pear mousse, hazelnuts and pizza crust,some tangy plums, caramel covered raisins, green bell peppers, lemon oil, speyside sweet pine note, leather purse filled with werthers originals, slight touch of fudge Palate: Candied orange peel, mashed potatoes with bacon, slight salinity, mixed apple skins, a touch of soapy-ashy peat smoke, bittersweet charred oak, a touch of barley sugars, light pine wood note, some earthy peppery coffee spice, a hint of sweet honey, wood spice, some nutmeg, thyme Finish: Some sweet peat, candied orange and lemon peel, mixed apple skins with a touch of honey, oak spice, a touch of butterscotch, gunpowder type smoke, oregano, a touch of burley tobacco

What is this unbalanced nonsense of smoke and rotten fruit? There are better bottles at half the price. This is a mixer.

A hint of peat and some fruity almost sherry notes. Was surprised to read no Sherry cask was used

N: It's like walking through an orchard in the fall - very ripe apples, peaches, pears. (I'm sure those don't all ripen and harvest at the same time/place, but just imagine...) There's dried fruit too - apricot, red fruit, raisin, fig. Faintest whiff of citrus. Very light smoke in the background - again, really reminds me of a midwestern fall, it's like someone a mile away is burning their leaf pile. Speaking of leaves, there's definitely a subtle note of tree bark and/or dried leaves. Maybe a little bit of dark bread and spice (anise, cardamom), but maybe now I'm just lost in memories of the fresh picked apples and leaf piles from autumn days in my childhood in the Twin Cities - I might be only imagining the bread. Still, a whisky that gets you lost in memories is a damn fine whisky in my book, regardless of how it tastes or smells. P: The fruit hits first, but it has an odd flatness to it - like all those flavors that pop in the nose are mashed down and combined into one sort of big anonymous fruit note in the palate. That fruit is sweet in the first half second, but a sharp tannic and also herbal tea-like bitterness comes in, washes that away, and then sticks around through the finish. The bitterness seems to bring out the citrus a bit more - it's a grapefruit citrus (although the bitter is not quite that intense). There's a veggie-like peat quality that hovers over everything and also lingers long into the finish. Dash of liquid smoke. Finish is all wood and blazing hot - like hot wing hot. LL really doesn't have to say on the bottle that this was finished in American bourbon barrels - it's quite obvious. Char, oak, oak tannin, red hot cinnamon candy, little bit of black licorice - all the hallmarks are there. It's an aggressive finish. Nose here is great - well rounded, well developed. The palate lacks some of that development. Flavors get sort of compounded and mashed together. It's unpolished. And that finish is a monster - the kind that makes you wonder if it was intentional or not. All in all, interesting bottle at a pretty fair price. It makes me curious to step up to the older LL single malts and see if they can maintain that quality nose and bring some more polish to the palate. Could be a killer in the lineup. Thanks to @soonershrink for the recommendation, although it was so long ago that maybe you don't remember. I don't really remember the context, but I'm fairly certain you suggested this in a comment some months back. Anyway, thanks!

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