Generously_Paul
Tamdhu Batch Strength Batch 001
Single Malt — Speyside , Scotland
Reviewed
April 23, 2018 (edited October 21, 2024)
Tamdhu entered my life a few months ago by way of the SDT. The 10 year old Speysider old blew me away and I had to have more. I quickly went out and bought the 10 and not long after I decided to start a collection of all of the Batch Strength releases. This review is for batch 001.
Batch 001 is bottled at 58.8% ABV and is non chill filtered and natural color of a rusty copper typical of a heavily sherried whisky.
Let me start by saying that over the multiple tasting sessions I forgot to separate out the nosing and tasting notes with and without water, so please know that somewhere between neat and varying amounts of water this is what I found.
Strong sherry and spicy oak open the nose. Powerful. Red berries and maybe blackberries, caramel apples and cherry cordials. Nutty - walnuts, pecans and cashews. There was a strange detergent note but I wouldn’t call it unpleasant. Oranges, tobacco, fennel or anise, a little mint and some candle wax. Some BBQ sauce shows up with brown sugar, vanilla, maple syrup and salted caramels. Tangerines and chocolate. At times it’s malty/yeasty like buttery biscuits. Raisins, dates and some chocolate chip cookie dough.
Strong spicy oak and intense sherry on the palate. Pepper, cherries and berries. Orange peel, tangerines and tobacco. A touch of almonds, some nice spiced fruitcake and raisins.
Medium to full bodied mouthfeel. Hot, dry then mouthwatering.
A long finish. Orange oil, sherry, cherries, oak and spices.
At first tasting this was really a difficult whisky to wrap my head around. The ABV really closed off the nose and made the palate too intense to pick out the nuances. Such is the case with most cask or batch strength whiskies I suppose. Once I put my ego aside and gave in to the addition of water I was greatly rewarded with a nice robust sherry bomb. I found the sweet spot to be a 15-20% addition of water. This is enough to bring out much of the greatness that is in the 10 year old and still leave some of the batch strength power. I still prefer the 10, but this is pretty damn good. I hope the subsequent batches are just as good. Out of the bottle I’d give a 3.75. With the perfect amount of water it’s a 4.25. So I’ll split the difference and call it a solid 4.
Cheers
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Well, the good news here is that the early reviews stating that batch 001 wasn’t any good are clearly not accurate. That was my biggest concern, but I know that Paul is pretty spot on when it comes to picking whisky apart as well as giving them appropriate scores. The fact this one garnered a 4 from him tells me all I really need to know. Great review, as usual. I’m looking forward to my pour even more now. Cheers.
I think it’s an astute observation you made, and never really thought about it until you and spoke about the time aspect. There are some drams though (e.g. like a few of the indi bottles we’ve done recently) that time will never help. Hehe.
On a side note, @Telex pointed out to me that among all the tour samples, the ones that I provided I tended to rate higher than others who only received 2oz samples. I was not ignorant to this fact and can state with some confidence that this is due to the fact that I had the rest of the bottle to experiment with and taste over multiple sessions. 2oz is not really enough to get out of a whisky all that there is to be discovered. It took me over half the bottle to get all of these notes. Just an observation and I guess a reminder to all of us here that review based on samples that we might not get a great first impression of something and if that’s all we have to go on then we might overlook something that was hidden value. I could go on but I think I’ve rambled enough for one night.