SMWS 54.36 Pocket rocket

Whisky Review

• Category: Speyside single malt scotch whisky
• Origin: Aberlour Distillery
• Bottling: Scotch Malt Whisky Society Cask No 54.36
• ABV: 59.7%
• Cost: £46.40
• Score: 81/100

What they say:

54.36 Pocket rocket

Cask No. 54.36

Have you ever wondered how to make the perfect ‘Sex on the Beach’ … cocktail? You have most ingredients for it on the nose neat; peach schnapps, vodka, cranberry, orange and pineapple juice, finally place a maraschino cherry on the rim of the glass and enjoy. It was sweet, hot and spicy with a truly remarkable chewy mouthfeel like a hot Thai green coconut curry. With water, less intense but a more intriguing sweetness; fresh pineapple cubes, caramelised sugar, gooseberry fool and blueberry muffins and the taste, a luscious Indian dessert made of rose syrup, kulfi, basil seeds and vermicelli called Falooda.

Drinking tip: A good pick-me-up

Date Distilled: 20 October 2005 Colour: Silver duckling Age: 9 years Flavour : Young & spritely Cask Type: Refill ex-bourbon barrel Whisky Region: Speyside Spey Outturn: 246 bottles

What I say:

Sampled at the SMWS Big November Outturn preview tasting on 10th November 2015

Colour:

Silvery gold (2/20)

Nose:

Fruity, orchard fruits, peach, apricot, apple, pear, cherry lips sweeties some honey sweetness

Taste:

Fruity palate with pineapple, apple pear and ginger spice, quite hot and spicy neat with some alcohol burn, with water this tamed a little giving pineapple cube sweeties, black liquorice and some herbal notes

Finish:

Medium, fruity and sour/bitter in places

Overall:

A little underwhelming, I found this quite one-dimensional ‘fruity’ and was a little disappointed – though that may have been partly due to my expectation of Aberlour to be much more entertaining than this. I guess despite the quality of the spirit a young refill barrel hasn’t completely tamed this one for me and adding water makes it more interesting but not necessarily more enjoyable? Sadly my least favourite of the tasting.