Whisky Review: Pulteney 10 Years Old Rum octave finish – The Octave Project

• Category: Highland single malt scotch whisky
• Origin: Pulteney distillery
• Bottling: A. D. Rattray, The Octave Project
• ABV: 55.8%
• Cost: £30 for 5 x 3cl

What they say

This set of 30ml little dram samples of Pulteney single malt are a result of The Octave Project. The Pulteney spirit was originally matured in a Bourbon Hogshead before being divided between four different Octave casks. Specially commissioned from the coopers for our Project, each Octave used oak staves taken from a larger cask that had previously contained PX Sherry, Oloroso Sherry, Rioja or Rum. One portion of whisky from the original cask was retained to enable a point of comparison.

Enjoy and compare these intense new flavours alongside the original Bourbon cask… savour the major and minor notes.

What I say

Similar to the Arran Octave project previously reviewed this set is composed of 5 x 3cl drams starting with a sample from the original Bourbon barrel, distilled at Pulteney distillery and matured for a minimum of 9 years, before cask finishing in 4x different ‘seasoned’ Octave casks a small portion of the original barrel was kept for comparison. The remainder due to their time in the Octaves are 10 years old.

This sample was finished for around 5 months in a Rum seasoned Octave.

My tasting notes:

• Appearance: White Burgundy (5/20), medium-large tears and long fine legs.
• Nose: Sweet, candyfloss and butter candies, Werthers originals, caramel, toffee, a little spirity burn on the nose or sharpness, finishes with lemon puff biscuits.
• Taste: Sherbet lemons, a little spiced and prickly at first then some of the caramel and toffee accompanied by vanilla cream and brown sugar settles things down, their is a persistent sharpness as of Citrus grapefruit perhaps and cinnamon spice, spiced mixed Orange/lemon barley sugars complete the palate.
• Finish: Long, sweet and spiced like a savoury orange sauce for Duck, 5 spice and cinnamon, salt & pepper.

Overall

Sweet but also a little savoury this one, it grew on me but not as instantly likeable as some of the others in this set. It is actually quite hard to fault the Original Bourbon Barrel expression which shone the most in intensity of flavour, the others at time seem a little muddled by the finishing but still of great quality.

Score 83/100

Shop for Pulteney – The Octave Project (opens A.D. Rattray)

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