Old Pulteney 12 Year

Old Pulteney is like the girl next door of whiskey- you might not necessarily try n head out to buy it, but when it’s there on the shelf at the end of the night you’ll pick it up, pour a glass and be comforted in an old familiar way, relaxed and safe in the knowledge you know how to handle it.... just a slight hint of smoke that balances out the sweet fruity wick tones of Caithness

Very nice one! Aromatic and mellow.

The nose on this is pretty nice - I get almost a tropical fruit note mixed with cereal and maybe a touch of honey. The palate is a little less enticing for me - the notes definitely carry over, and the first few sips are pretty good. But then I notice that it just gets brinier and brinier and turns into a salt bomb. By the end of a small pour I'm done and don't want another. I can't think of another dram that wears me out faster than this one. Maybe the Talisker House Greyjoy which I also disliked due to what I perceived to be an unacceptably high amount of salt. All that said, it's actually pretty good, but as I noted it wears thin on my palate really fast. So if I go for this it's always a small starter pour as I work through the bottle. I'm sure others have said it before, but this is like Talisker with the peat ramped down and the brine ramped up - which is not the direction I want to go.

Nose: orange, rock pool, shortbread biscuit, lemsip, charity shop fusty musty clothes, custard cream, earl grey tea Palate: grapefruit, a little salt, wood, Russian caravan tea (but with less lapsang souchong) Finish: vinous dry and lightly tannic, salty and sweet _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- Semi-Final 1: Old Pulteney 12yo versus Compass Box King St. Artists Blend From the notes above I think if this were a cartoon character it would be Captain Haddock. Though very different, the malty, fruity taste of the Artists Blend holds its own against the seafaring souse, as it likewise does on the finish. But the nose of OP12 has more about it and so with an expletive-heavy outburst the short-tempered sailor scares off the sensitive artist. Blistering barnacles! _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- The intolerable torment of a whiskyphile. Faced with a large array of samples and miniatures I can suffer from analysis paralysis - deciding on a dram can often take twice as long as drinking it. So I have selected sixteen scotch whiskies that are 12yrs or younger or NAS to battle it out in a Scotch Deathmatch. It’s my incentive to lighten the logjam. Follow along if you care (and really why should you?). Oh the drama! https://challonge.com/ScotchMadness