Ok, it’s been a while hasn’t it. Will try to be good and get my tasting notes up! I promise!!
Springbank Local Barley 13 years 54.1%
Loads of cream, orchard fruit and tobacco box initially on the nose. Citrus, tiramisu and shaving cream. Rose petals and an old fire place. Smells like proper Springbank.
Fireplace, minerality, a painter’s palette. Toasted malt. It’s a bit thinner than I hoped but peaches and apples and a bit of baking spice.
Cream, river rocks, passion fruit vines and almond butter. Some grape fruit zest, coffee grounds and chalkiness.
Nose is musky tobacco. Orange zest, wooden draws, carob and some vanilla bean. It does have that Springbank funk. Brioche laced kaya toast!
Palate is bruised apples and flint. The Oloroso comes through with salty leather. Cream, caramel, toasted coconut, licorice and wood.
Finish green apples and apple seed. More of that lovely coconut, orange pith.
4/5 Stars
20 – Springbank 16yr 1997 Single Cask 56% cask 07/178-3 (10 years refill bourbon 6 years fresh Madeira)
Nose of milk chocolate and wood glue is bolstered by citrus zest, bruised apples and dusty drawers. Some lifted florals and berry notes.
Palate is sweet and honeyed. There is some real complexity but not particularly integrated. But it’s funky and really interesting. Woody, dark fruit, tobacco and dried out raisins… then more honey. It is really all over the shop raspberry cordial suddenly appears.
Finish is flinty, bruised apples, chalky, slightly peaty with licks of warm milk and honey with a dollop of cream – and those berries?!?
Nose is fruity and full of fruit jelly. Jersey caramels, cream and grassy. Orange blossoms.
Wow the weight on the palate it is thick and rich. Intense apple, grassy, egg white and spice. Cream and caramel.
Finish more spice and a touch of creme patisserie.
3.5/5 Stars
11 – Irish 21yr 1998 by TWA 51.3%
Nose is peach tea and mango. Almonds and milk chocolate. Liquorice and interestingly the slight saltiness of soy sauce?!
Palate is all juicy dried peaches and peach ice tea. Leads to green grass, LPG and cream.
Finish is like sitting under an almond tree in the sun eating toast with peach jam.
4/5 Stars
12 – Port Ellen 1983 27yrs by Duncan Taylor cask 672 49.4%
Nose is seawater and plums. Bruised apples and seaweed. Flinty. Pineapple jelly, pear juice and caramel.
Palate is super complex. Beautiful Fruit and peat and minerality. Iodine, burnt bacon and juicy tropical fruit.
Finish is long… seaweed, iodine, and bacon and scallop sandwiches with lingering diluted stone fruit.
4.5/5 stars
13 – Springbank 25 2020 bottling
Nose is peppery and fruity (topical and stone fruit). Burnt butter porridge and pineapple. Seaside pier wood.
Palate is fresh cut apricots and bruised apples, brambles. It has leather and salt. It’s pretty flinty, and has good oyster shell. I wanted a little more it felt a touch light.
Finish is buttery and funky in only the way Springbank can do with wood and spice.
Nose is salty, flinty, I ripe plums, maraschino cherries and honeyed… really inviting minerality. Touches of cream.
Palate is intensely floral, salty, peachy, tropical fruit, slight licks of smoke
Finish is grassy, cocoa dusted and salty
5/5 Stars
2 – 1976 Blend The Maltman (Clynelish, Dailuaine, Macduff, Teaninich, Ben Nevis, Invergordon)
Nose reminds me of my grandfather’s garden with dried apricots warmed in the hot sun. Day old cream, spice and cloves.
Palate is gnarled woody apricot trees, apricot kernels and more stone fruit. It is salty and loads of vanilla cream. Goes tannic with bruised apples and slightly thin before the great finish.
Finish is super rich vanilla cream.
4.5/5 Stars
3 – Secret Speyside 1993 26 Years by TWA and Three Rivers 49.3% Ex-sherry hogshead
Nose is inviting deep sherry with apples, salt and stone fruit
Palate is cream, spice, and well controlled rubbery sulphur. It’s got a lightness of spirit with great nuttiness.
Apologies for my record keeping in 2020. Like most work and life were thrown some challenges thanks to COVID. Unsurprisingly I was still drinking drams and had the opportunity to partake in some sensational online “virtual” tastings including all of the Longrow Reds and a Aberlour A’Bunadh through the batches. Anyway here are my top 5 drams for 2020 – lots of Springbank!
Springbank 1991 by the whisky agency 27 years 46.4%
Nose is beautifully waxy and shows loads of fruit including apples, bananas and apricots. There is caramel and slight spice – some Springbank funk and old whisky smell.
The palate is rich and deep. Old apples, fruity, old and funky, waxy and pristine. Honey and super nutty. Wow there is some interplay between the elements.
But wow this finish is just nuts. It lasts for ever with mango and wax. Old whisky, candles and apples, dusty draws. It is elegant and pristine – the warmth of a smile from a girl in a summer dress.
Palate big and impressive, sweetness, spice woody, red apple skin, bounty bars, fruit mince, hand cream, peaches
Finish freshly cut stone fruit, cream that lasts and lasts (we’re talking minutes here), a pleasing metallic resonance
SMWS 27.111 (Springbank) A coal bucket full of marshmallows
Nose unmistakably Springbank. Earthy, tobacco funk with a lattice of sweetness, leather and brandy snaps, dusty, roses
Palate sweet but not cloying, a heavy spirit. Leather bound books, orchard fruits. More fruit with water, start seeing beautiful waxiness, stone fruit and peanut brittle.
Wow! This nose. Shoe polish, maybe?? Carob, pineapple lumps, camphor
Palate really funky, minerality, lots of spice and juicy fruit. Tastes like “old whisky” and elegant.
Finish leather, tobacco, orchards.
Springbank 18YO 2000 Pacific Edge
Nose of pencil shavings, rock melon, cream, honey, iodine, dried apricots. Wow it just keeps giving, new things keep appearing like lemonade and lemsip.
Palate dried fruits, marmalade, orange zest, pencil shavings, rock melon, shaving cream and tobacco
grey whisky 