Balvenie The Sweet Toast of American Oak 12 Year

Cereals, coconut and spice on the nose. Vanilla butterscotch on the palate.

A bit honey an flowers on the nose. Oak, liquorice and citrus peel on the palate.

Nose: On quick short whiffs I get this sharp potpourri, lots of dry fruit, dried mango, raisins, jam. Processed fruit… on second and third whiffs I get sweet brown sugar notes. Palate: You’ve got this dried fruit flavor that’s sandwiched between an initial burst of cigar ash and char. Pepper and Spice. The char reminds me of the burnt end of meat out of a grill. Reminds me of burnt toast and jam prepared by my dad when he was trying to make breakfast while getting ready for work. Sometimes the bread stayed too long so we’d lather it with jam to mask the burnt parts.

Nose: sweet oak and smoke, light peat Palate: light oak and honey, more peat. Not extremely complex, but very tasty and drinkable neat. Definitely a solid scotch if you like sweet drinker

Blind tasting Nose: get a little bit of that funkiness early on in a bottle of old pulteney. A little bourbon. Not much else. Taste: not too complex. Sort of bourbony. Falls flat. Maybe slight note of smoke at the end. Adequate but not really interesting Wood: ex bourbon Distillery? Bunnahabhain Aberfeldy Auchentoshen *** I’m amazed to find this is from balvenie. I had previously rated this much higher but now am underwhelmed by it. I was so surprised I dug out an old sample and tried it for comparison. Very interesting…

Lots of bourbon on the nose, first sip a full-flavored scotch with a little bite, followed by a softer, sweeter vanilla finish. Great sipper; nothing too complicated or fussy here.