Springbank 10 Year

Natural light golden color, not chill filtered, medium viscosity. Nose is delicate, with hints of tropical fruit, lemon zest, vanilla, and smoke on the back. Palate is rich, full-body, with a nice balance of sweet and sour notes, and deep complexity with banana, pear, lemon, oak, vanilla, toffee, and smoke. Finish is long and smooth, with lingering notes of lemon zest, peat smoke, and fruits. A teaspoon of water adds sweetness and intensifies floral character even more. Though this is bottled at 46% ABV, I don’t think water adds much to this already excellent and round dram. Overall, this is one of the best 10-year old whiskies that tastes much older its age. Highland Park lovers, you’ll love this one as well!

This 10 yo is my first foray into Springbank’s offerings and it has taken a while for me to figure out. I’m no stranger to peated whisky (some of my favorites are) but something about this bottle was off-putting at first taste. It didn’t seem complex, it seemed messy and disjointed, and there was a trace of something I couldn’t identify that was really unappealing. I tried it again after letting it sit a week or two - still no. I was beginning to regret my purchase, but this is a producer I don’t see stocked all that often. A few months later, and it does seem to have improved greatly. The nose has soft aromas of fruit, sea, and malt. On the palate, it’s a medium-bodied, rich, sweet brine with smoke and citrus fruits. The finish is long, with smoke and an unusually tangy brine at the end. It feels and tastes completely different now, and it’s no longer a bottle I’d be embarrassed to bring to Whisky Night. My takeaways from this experience are: I won’t write off such a unique distillery after such a rough start, I’m curious what their other offerings are like, and I’m reconsidering a local store’s tease of a forthcoming cask-strength, single barrel Springbank offering later this year. TBC. 3.75 ~ 85 ~ Good