Glenglassaugh Octaves Classic Batch 2 whisky review: A touch spicy as presented but with lots of great structure and medley of fruits, quite a lot of different cask stave influences made this one difficult to ascertain more exact flavour descriptors. A drop of water made it creamier and sweeter and revealed malted milk biscuit cereal notes. 83/100
Grant’s Triple Wood Smoky Blended Scotch whisky review: A delightful little blend that opens on the nose with a definite peat and smoke. I’m sure this will frighten a few people off but the palate in contrast is just full of fruit and dark sugars, the smoke doesn’t really appear until much later. I’m definitely going to use this one in blind tastings as it really plays with the perceptions. Really rather fun! 80/100
Grant’s Rum Cask Finish blended Scotch whisky review: A little sweeter than the Triple Wood. My fear was I really haven’t been enjoying Rum-cask finished whiskies of late, but this one is a slight improvement over the entry-level blend. Perhaps it has polished that grain whisky edge off a little?
Grant’s Triple Wood blended scotch whisky review: A little grainy but decent flavours for an entry-level blend. Enough in here to stand up to mixing this into a long drink. 70/100
Old Pulteney Huddart whisky review: A lot less smoky than I was hoping for, pretty neutral but well constructed. 76/100
Cask Islay single malt scotch whisky review: A delicious Islay expression which at first nose suggested Caol Ila distillery, later a hint of gun oil had my mind drifting towards Lagavulin but the beauty of these is we don’t really know where it came from (or if each release hails from the same place). The best thing to do is not care and just enjoy this for what it is – a really great peated Islay expression, powerfully evocative phenols paired with sweet vanilla from ex-Bourbon casks. 89/100
Steel Bonnets Blended English and Scotch malt whisky review: A robust blended malt, I’m guessing a healthy influence of sherry cask maturation involved in some of the components at least due to the influences on the palate of orange, herbal, wood-smoke and nuts, very likeable in fact. 84/100
GlenDronach Cask Strength Batch 7 whisky review: Surprisingly light in colour or full in flavour, I can’t really decide which. This is packed with sharp and earthy berry fruits, a real hedgerow of foraged fruit flavours, backed by dark chocolate, toffee and nut. Perhaps just missing a little of the oak wood the GlenDronach single cask series display so well. Another excellent GlenDronach and this one is very affordable and readily available too! 85/100
Paul John Peated Select Cask whisky review: Even more fun at Select Cask strength, this peated edition presents the ideal sweet and peaty mixture again with a chewy cereal backbone to this whisky. 89/100
Paul John Bold whisky review: On revisiting this I had quite a different experience, the peat influence appears to have grown despite this likely gaining a couple of years maturation since we tasted the inaugural release version back in 2015. Perhaps it was this extra maturation or the gentle introduction by way of the Edited expression prior, but I was much more aware of the peat influence this time and enjoyed it quite a bit more too. 87/100
