dmcentee
Grangestone Highland Single Malt Rum Cask Finish
Single Malt — Highlands, Scotland
Reviewed
February 8, 2018 (edited August 3, 2019)
For those of you unfamiliar with Grangestone, it is one of Total Wine’s house brands, and they have both NAS and aged offerings, as well as blends. It’s a William Grant & Sons product, with the word on the street that it is likely distilled at their Kininvie distillery. I think Balvenie 14 Caribbean Cask is the only other rum finish I have tried, so I picked a bottle up, as it sounded kind of interesting and unusual (and was pretty inexpensive).
**Abv:** 40%
**Price:** $28.99 at Total Wine in Houston, Texas
**Setting:** Neat in a Glencairn, with a fat basset hound half in my lap.
**Color:** Orange
**Nose:** Tequila with salt, rum, baked apples, and baking spices. It smells really promising, with two different profiles that duel it out: one that is a dead ringer for tequila with salt, and the other that is more rum-like in character. Both of them are pleasant. **(18/25 points)**
**Taste:** Oranges, baked apples, baking spices, and cloves. Well that went south quickly. The rum flavors are there, but everything tastes dull and flat. **(25/50 points)**
**Finish:** Short. Alcohol, honey, and cloves. Blink and it’s gone. **(7/25) points)**
**Conclusion:** This is pretty terrible stuff. The nose starts out promising, and then the taste and finish really go off a cliff. I do wonder if it degraded some in the bottle, as I opened this particular bottle about five months ago and I remember it being more mediocre than bad. I’ll still finish the bottle, but this experience has turned me off to Grangestone. If anyone else has tried any other Grangestone products, I’d be curious to hear your experiences.
**50/100**
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