Milliardo
Glen Scotia 15 Year
Single Malt — Campbeltown, Scotland
Reviewed
January 2, 2021 (edited June 2, 2022)
This will likely be my last taste for a while, because when you open a new bottle almost every day for a month, turns out you have a lot of whisky to drink. To that end, if any of my distiller friends would like a sample for free plus boat of any of the stuff I tried in December (aside from the sample-sized stuff of course) hit me up. Let’s make some magic happen.
I was talking to a few friends last night about my scotch tour over December when it occurred to me that I never hit Campbeltown. Oops. This is the only scotch from Campbeltown available in my area.
Nose is... absent. I transferred to a glencairn. Faint lemon, grain, honey, salt. This nose feels a bit astringent, but the notes are very faint. Maple syrup and wet stones come later in the drink. Cinnamon and apple come on the second pour.
Body is butter, citrus, raisin, creamed corn. Vanilla too. Again, on the second pour, apple showed up. I got ginger at one point.
Finish is black pepper. Surprisingly spicy given the mildness of nose & body. If you let your palate rest for a bit, a very small amount of peat surfaces, I’d say in the form of smoked meat. Very faint, very late in the finish.
This is a subtle but well-balanced scotch. I think the mildness of the notes contributes to their number. I could easily see 10 different people trying this and coming up with 10 different dominant flavors. The most opinionated part is that black pepper on the finish, but the rest is so muted. I like it okay, but I ain’t twitterpated. I think if I mapped “cost” vs “enjoyment” of all the scotches I have experienced over the past month, this would be on the wrong side of that regression line, but that’s less a problem with enjoyment and more a problem with cost. For that reason, I factually will enjoy this bottle to the last drop, but when I replace it, I will likely spend less money on a different scotch.
70.0
USD
per
Bottle
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I second Springbank. Every part of the process done in-house there. Hard to do these days. Also, the Glen Scotia Double Cask was one of the most fragrant whiskies I tried last year. Odd that this is so tame. Try the Double Cask, if you can find it. It should be a little cheaper too.
@Milliardo LOL...z-table and TI calculators...bought back memories of my engineering days
@DigitalArc I take my TI-83 and my z-table wherever I go, because you never know when some data gonna need to get interpreted
@Milliardo is 'dropping science like Galileo dropped the orange!'
@PBMichiganWolverine thanks! I’ll keep my eyes out
Out of Cambeltown, the must try is Springbank. 10yr should be commonly available, but the sweetspot is 18