Macallan Rare Cask Black

This is it! This dram makes me a believer in Macallan's potential. Colossal thanks to @Generously_Paul for this glorious sample. The nose has molasses, brown sugar, toffee, vanilla, heavy concord grapes, along with some floral properties, and even some subtle smoke. The palate is even better, and brings root beer, sassafras, milk chocolate, raisins, and figs. A very long finish that comes in waves with honey, hazelnuts, cashews, and delicate floral notes. It is almost torturing, and that's why the theme of the dram is "Linger" by The Cranberries. Definitely a 5.0 and without flaws.

Sometimes you go in expecting one thing but instead it turns out to take a totally left turn, into something darker and nastier. Not nasty as in “ this is crap”, but nasty as in if the sweet girl next door suddenly shows up in a crotchless lingerie. This is so unexpected. When I was a young teen, I visited my cousin in Mumbai. There was this really sweet amazingly cute girl living across our building, who’s window was only 10 feet away from ours ( Mumbai is crowded). I asked my cousin to play this one Hindi song “meri samne wali kirdki”, which is a romantic song that starts off as “there’s a piece of the glimmering moon living across my window”. Instead he puts on an equivalent of “take it off and shake it, I wanna see it all”. Such a dark nasty turn. Anyway...she closes the window, and that was the end of my serenade. This is like that...I expect an elegant noble Macallan, but instead I get something else, something darker and much grittier. In a good way. I had the regular Rare Cask, but I preferred this one just for that unexpected turn and complexity. Tons of dark fruits, but with a backbone of smoke. Not too much, but enough to make you second guess what you’re having. Thanks to @Generously_Paul for this sample. It’s money hard earned, so I’m just thankful for him sharing this.

My friend Paul graciously sent me a hearty sample of the travel exclusive Macallan Rare Cask Black back around the holidays. This is a special release that's advertised as combining a total of 100 casks that previously held peated whisky from an undisclosed distillery. I did a little bit of digging and I'm taking an educated guess that the casks used were from fellow Edrington Group-owned Highland Park. Due to the complete lack of peat, brine and smoke I'd also say that are second or third fill. I could not detect a single hint of peated whisky. This was pretty much identical to the widely released Rare Cask (which is still a phenomenal single malt). On the nose, it's tons and tons of sherry and dark fruits, figs and raisins. It's a delight to just sit and nose this whisky. Just about any other aspects that should be present: oak, vanilla, cinnamon, etc are all overshadowed by sweet, sherry wine. The palate is very Macallan: sweet to the point your fillings are tingling. Those dark fruits feel more like a sugary, fruit juice than whisky. It's amazingly smooth with a nice pop of heat at the end from the 48% ABV. It's damn fine. The finish is medium length, oily and sweet. There's a calm, warming that lasts and urges you to take another sip and another sip. So, I did. Overall, I gave the original Rare Cask 5 well earned stars and the Rare Cask Black is just as wonderful, but I have to dock something because I was expecting some sort of peat or smoke to make an appearance and it didn't. Thanks to my great friend Paul for finally giving in to my persistence and plopping down the hard earned money to buy a bottle of this. Even more thanks to him for sending me what amounted to 1/5 of the bottle to sample. I would've never been able to acquire this on my own. Even though I sent him some nice whisky in trade for this, I still think I owe him more. Thanks, bro. You. Are. The. Man. Everyone else- well, I sure as hell recommend you give this one a try if you see if locally. It's as rare as its namesake and worth every penny. 4.75 stars. Cheers.