Jan-Case
Tomintoul 25 Year
Single Malt — Speyside, Scotland
Reviewed
March 24, 2020 (edited November 11, 2021)
Nose: huge bowl of fresh cut autumn apples, lemon, sour grapes, bid of honey, very fresh and not at all mature or settled as you would expect from a 25y.
Palate: hard arrival with a fresh fruity sourness and light chili burn. Herbal tea aromas along with a woody bitterness reminding me of mate-tea.
It sadly is not very pleasant. I mean, it definitely is interesting and has some impressive fullness with a long aftertaste, but I would never have guessed 25y age. It feels and tastes like one of the many popular NAS whiskies from oh so many distilleries these days with 3 to 7 years in one or two large casks. Those aren’t bad at all but this Tomintoul here is missing a twist or convincing character - it doesn’t deliver that and so for me it is just a fairly normal dram with nothing special or something to remember it for. Strange but glad I had it. Worth a try - for me not worth a whole bottle.
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@Jan-Case Tomintoul is (or at least was) what you would call a blend filler distillery. Back in the 1990's when this malt was distilled, no one thought of bottling this as single malt. Hence the mediocre cask quality, why would they spend a lot of money on quality when this was dumped into blends?
@Slainte-Mhath Ah so it was intended for blends only? Interesting. That for sure makes sense too, since this has something to offer which just on its own isn’t interesting enough.
@Jan-Case Very nice review, what you describe as light chili burn is hard to pin down. I thought of it as fizzy soda pop, my wife thought it was spirity (which is surprising for a 25YO). The oak is simply killing it, I mean I am not surprised, none of the casks they filled in the 1990's were intended as single malts.
Totally agree that it it doesn't taste close to 25 YO.