LeeEvolved
Tomintoul 25 Year
Single Malt — Speyside, Scotland
Reviewed
July 7, 2018 (edited November 11, 2021)
This was the third sample in the official Tomintoul Distillery 3cl sampler pack I bought online a couple of months ago. This well aged pour is the main reason I purchased the set because getting a 25 year old sample of this in a bar would’ve surely cost just as much ($34), if not more. I had a feeling the 10 & 16 year samples might not add up to much (see my reviews for them here as well), but a 25 is almost always tasty.
This one was shimmering gold in the tasting glass and just a touch darker than the other two, younger samples. It still felt like it should’ve been darker after spending a quarter of a century in the cask, but oh well. It had many oily legs while not leaving any water droplets behind- I know this isn’t cask strength, but I’m sure the angel’s share probably kept them from adding too much water- even to get it down to the 40%abv bottling strength.
The nose was vanilla and bread-y with plenty of oak notes and some surprising hints of alcohol. After a good 20-25 minutes I also got a little bit of peaches in the background. The palate was nice and smooth, as it should be, with peaches again along with some pears and slight orchard fruitiness. There was no oak note at all on the tongue. The finish was medium length and silky smooth, but it lacked any real depth or lingering character- just a slight peppery bite.
Overall, it’s marginally better than the 10 & 16 year samples that were included here, but I think Tomintoul takes their slogan a little too much to heart. “The gentle dram” sounds inauspicious enough, but I little kick back or character would go a long way here. It’s just too soft. I gave both the younger pours a 3 star rating and I feel like this deserves a bump because it does have a little more going for it in the flavor profile and is well-rounded like a 25 year should be. 3.5 stars, but at $400 for a full bottle- I won’t be buying much else from Tomintoul unless they push their own envelope a bit further. Cheers, my friends.
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@LeeEvolved Excellent review as always, I am only a bit surprised you didn't taste any oak. For me, it was rather the opposite, the oak was killing it.
@LeeEvolved Yeah, I'd pay for a pour of that at a bar, but I'm not about to shell out $150 for a bottle that is likely to be mediocre. The one potential thing that could have saved it was it was finished for something like 30 months in a sherry barrel, which might have kicked the complexity and richness up a notch.
@ContemplativeFox - a CS bottle would be interesting, but there’s no way I’d pay anything significant to give it a try.
@LeeEvolved Totally fine if that just want to make gentle, boring spirit, but they should be charging a lot less for it. I actually did see a 23 YO cask strength offering of this from Signatory and was considering getting it, but I remembered I had these samples, so I tried them and... not impressed.
@Anthology Good to know. I did find the 16 to be gentle while having a bit of character, a little like Dalwhinnie 15, but gentler and less flavorful. The 10 on the other hand almost tasted like white dog. Sounds like the 14 strikes nice balance with aging and price.
@ContemplativeFox I think they truly aspire to live only up to their motto as the gentle dram. I don’t seek them attempting to push any envelopes. Come to think of it, I don’t even know if I’ve seen an independent, cask strength bottle from them. Of course, I didn’t look to hard either.
@ContemplativeFox I thought their 14yr was a decent introductory speysider for whiskey novices. Truly a “gentle” dram, IMHO.
Wow, congrats on those successful investments @LeeEvolved and I hope your retirement is still on track! I just cracked open what I think is the same sample pack you got and I have to say that I'm thoroughly unimpressed. I would say that this is substantially better than the 10 or 16, but this is just average, the 16 is drinkable, and the 10 is bad. Definitely not a distillery to look for great things from.
@Rick_M - I can assure you I don’t outspend @PBMichiganWolverine, he just has other “valuables” pulling on his wallet, wife and kids and college funds. Whereas, all I have to satisfy is my thirst lol.
@PBMichiganWolverine @Rick_M - that 2020 date is the date I’ll have 30 years of service and that qualifies me for full retirement, but yes, I’m far from retirement age. But, should my company sell this place or offer an early retirement buyout I can walk away and find supplemental income, like say a Macallan Ambassador’s job, to get by. Do what I love instead of what I have to do to get by, lol. That’s the pipe dream, at least haha.
@Rick_M @LeeEvolved bought pre-IPO Alphabet, as well as being an early angel investor in FB and TWTR ☺️
@LeeEvolved - you’re too young to have a full pension. I must admit, I have no clue what you do but it must be pretty profitable the way you outspend @PBMichiganWolverine.
@LeeEvolved. Nice! Two more years and you’re done!
@Soba45 - so long as the global economic implosion doesn’t happen until after 10/31/2020. That’s the date I can retire from my job and receive full retirement benefits.
@PBMichiganWolverine - well, it’s hard to be tough on Tomintoul because they advertise themselves as the gentle dram. Expecting them to make a flavor beast is like asking Donald Trump to stop attacking people personally when they criticize him. It just ain’t gonna happen.
@PBMichiganWolverine The next general implosion of the world economy should do the trick. :-)
@Rick_M it’s gotta burst at some point. Maybe 5-7 years when the Japanese whiskies are ready for market again, and there’s a sudden in-flood?
@PBMichiganWolverine - the whisky bubble is here to stay. Good thing you caught the wave. :)
@LeeEvolved this is just plain wrong. You’d think for a 25 yr old, $400/bottle dram, it would be better than this. When (not if) the whiskey bubble bursts, I have a feeling this will be one to close shop.