Pure Scot Signature Blended Whisky

Rating: 7/23 I have no idea what to expect from this. I've heard very mixed things, but Bladnoch is usually fairly good with their single malts, so hopefully their blends are good too. N: Fairly tart and a tad meaty. I get some lemon, tangerine, and dry spice, but not really any wood. A waft of smoke, some vanilla, and a little bit of lemon blossom. Some dry mineral perhaps? Unfortunately , there isn't much going on here, so it's a struggle to pick anything out. It has one of those noses that has character, but it isn't all good character. It most certainly smells like the type of thing you'd pour out of a bottom shelf sub-$20 bottle. The floral (I'm getting tangerine blossom now that it's been sitting out for 10 minutes or so) and slightly rich notes are nice, but it still smells generic, muddled, and unappealing. P: Lemon and spice hit first with an unfortunate amount of harshness and a fair amount of alcohol flavor on a sort of creamy background. The lemon turns into citron at times with a bit of artificial sweetener and then a little bit of meaty malt comes in. There's some smoke and some herbal flavor that even treads a little into the territory of Copper Fox Rye's unique profile, which I guess makes some sense given the combination of grain and malt. It tastes very young and mostly not malty. The flavor is light and nothing here is very full. There are a bunch of flavors that don't quite work, though there are some nectary notes that are promising. The harshness is a real problem though. It really burns. And there is sulfur too. F: Dry with artificial sweetener and citron. It reminds me a bit of the Veil citron flavored vodka. It also burns and has sulfur. The harshness really comes out on the finish here and it makes it feel like the flesh is being stripped off my tongue a little bit. Tragically, this seems worse than I had feared it might be. It isn't just that it has a weak flavor. It isn't just that there's sulfur. It isn't just that it tastes young. It isn't just that the malt is weak. This is also quite harsh. The flavor is better than that of Grant's because it has substantially less sulfur, but it isn't quite as good as Sir Edward's 12 and it isn't as smooth as either of them. I think that means that this is about on par with Grant's. This is a fairly poor quality scotch without the harshness, but the harshness is quite substantial. It is actually painful to drink this. It has the harshness of something 60% alcohol while being the bare minimum of 40%. I might actually pay a little bit to avoid having to drink this because of that harshness. The flavor is way better than Glen Logie's and the drink as a whole is substantively better, but we're talking low bars here: Glen Logie costs 1/5 of what this does. At times, I feel like this is like drinking paint stripper. Grant's is plagued by that sulfur and I would say that the flavors here are executed better, but it's still a less complex and harsher dram. Because of the harshness, I can't even pawn this off on someone who doesn't know good scotch. Sir Edward's 12 still has a weirder profile with its oiliness and such, but it's more complex and its flavors are still decent, so I'd say it's better. This is either at the level of Grant's or a step above it, but it isn't as good as Sir Edward's. That would make this a 7 to 8. I'd say that the alcohol harshness is substantial enough that this about aligns with Grant's' quality, so it gets a 7.

When tasting a new spirit, memories tend to help me shape my tasting notes and overall enjoyment. The smell of freshly baked cookies, camping trips with the smell of the pines while roasting marshmallows, a new pair of tires, running shoes or even hospital trips from where I was a bit too adventurous and ended up needing stitches to correct my mistake with the smell of fresh bandages and antiseptics. This Pure Scot is very familiar to my childhood memory of family reunions. I’m not sure how other family reunions go, but for my family it meant a trip to Kansas. Now there’s nothing wrong with Kansas, but there is a lot wrong with a family reunion in Kansas heat in July for a 100 plus gingers gathering together outside. So you’re already hot and miserable, but to add insult to injury you’re told to go spend some time catching up with an Aunt/Uncle that could use some interaction. Sadly you already know this won’t be the comical and charismatic Aunt/Uncle, so this could go either way, they are either 10 pounds of crazy in a 5 pound bag or they are just unbelievably boring. Either way none of the other family members are going to talk to them, so you’re voluntold to have some character building time or better put as being a sacrificial family member to grenade jump and save the rest of the family. Turns out this Pure Scot is not the irrational one that manages to jumble together all conspiracy theories into one overarching grandiose ill-fitting scheme, but the exceedingly mind-numbing one whose conversation usually brings about a coma-like state until the end when you reawake to find hours have past. Pure Scot starts with a nose that is lackluster and deficient of flavor, basically the Aunt/Uncle begins their story of how they went to their dentist with smells of disinfectant in the air to get a checkup. The taste is a continuation of boredom with the Aunt/Uncle going on about the water they drank at the dentist’s office to rinse their mouth and how watery the water was compared to older days of having more tasty water. As the discussion of how different water at the dentist’s office was from their youth to today continues, your wish of an end to this uninspiring and humdrum story seems to be granted as the Aunt/Uncle apparently were also so un-intrigued by their story that they sporadically entered a state of slumber right there with no great water finale to make this dreadfully uninteresting story/dram have even the remotest interesting tidbit. This whisky is just that, an incredibly boring watery story with no flavor or finish but a slight burn. I wouldn’t be surprised that @ContemplativeFox just gave me some watered down bottom shelf vodka in a vial with some yellow dye and labeled it Pure Scot as a joke. Sadly, if this is not a joke, this looks to cost 50 dollars which is as bad as the lousy 50 dollars that was spent on poorly designed family reunion t-shirts everyone got stuck with and now the family can’t afford to go for ice cream at the Woodford Reserve Double Oak creamery due to prioritizing the ugly shirt of this forgettable event.

Nose: Thin and grainy. A reluctant nose that takes forever to wake up but never achieves real presence. There is a curiously artificial aspect to it as well - something sugary, but not quite. It smells like a cup of weak herbal tea that has had a whole bottle of artificial sweetener added. The dry glass is actually nicer than the dram itself, and a tiny whiff of smoke is detectable far, far in the distance. Palate: Sweet mild heat on the arrival, with little in the way of character. Some grainy, malty notes are present but they are very timid. There is no discernable development but that odd sweetness is back again. The texture is vacant, thin and watery. You get the feeling that it is so weak the only flavour you are tasting is vague caramel from the E150a that has been added. Finish: Short. Little aftertaste other than some diluted grain sweetness. From the few reviews on Distiller I'm assuming this has little if any distribution in the U.S. Given that the distillery owner is Australian I guess it's not surprising that it is being imported out here. This is an underperforming blended scotch with hardly anything happening. The nose is mostly like smelling diluted grain whisky. You do get the occasional suggestion of malt whisky, way back in the distance, but it's extremely faint. The palate is similarly lean with only a few trace cereal flavours in the background to remind you that this is not vodka. There is barely any finish at all. In an odd way it's almost enjoyable, being so sweet, undemanding and effortless to drink, but there is no satisfaction to be had from this dram. At the asking price this is woeful value and frankly a big disappointment. The only thing I can think of to say that is complimentary is that there are no faults to note. I don't know what David Prior and Ian MacMillan are trying to achieve with this ultra-bland blend. "Inferior" : 67/100 (1.5 stars)

Since 2015 when Bladnoch got a new owner, the australian surfer David Prior, the whole image of this Lowland Distillery has been refurbished, and they have released a blended scotch, with a lovely and heavy bottle called "Pure Scot". This is the "signature" expression, and has won a fairly amount of awards lately.  It says on the label that it has whiskies from all over Scotland, but their main malt is Bladnoch of course. Bottled at 40%abv, tawny color. On the nose, very sweet and minty. Butterscotch is the main aroma, dulce de leche, chocolate and a lovely note of mint liquor. Very herbal, like a lemon verbena or chamomile tea. After a few sips, it revealed the grain whisky of the blend, with a decent maize note. On the palate it is a very delicious dram. Again this fancy butterscotch, some bee honey, milka chocolate bar, toffee and danish cookies. A second sip gave me vanilla, a hint of pepper and maize. Very enjoyable. Aftertaste is slightly peaty. Salt, burnt hay, puffs of aromatic smoke and danish cookies (the salty one). Not very long. Overall, for a blended NAS whisky, this one is definitively in the competition against Chivas XV and Johnnie Gold, because of its flavor profile. Since it is new, but better good looking (the bottle that is), it should be considered as one step down from those two, but many steps forward from the classic 12yo blends. My score for it is a fair 83 over 100.

Nose - pear, honey, malty cereal grain, stale fungal notes, stale bread, sour apple, floral notes, light peach, lemon pith, mild to moderate ethanol burn. Taste - sour apple, pear, lemon rind, floral tea, grainy malt, stale bread, banana, bitter oak, moderate to high alcohol bite, finishing fast and thin with bright, young alcohol, sour fruit, and bitter citrus pith flavors. There’s really nothing good going on here. It tastes young, bitter, sour, and stale all at the same time. It’s a step up from the Grangestone sherry cask finish and some of the Canadian dogs I’ve endured, but that’s not saying very much. I’d rate this about on par with JW Red, but I think the Johnnie is a bit better. And I’m just seeing that this is close to $50 a bottle near me, more than double the JW. Wow, this is a contender for worst value liquor I’ve reviewed. In the $50 price range, I’d recommend just about any other blended scotch, or some really solid single malts. Thank you to @ContemplativeFox for providing the sample. It’s just as useful to learn what you don’t like as it is what you do.

Sweet nose, very citrus forward with apples. Taste matches and comes in really sweet *almost* too sweet, adds a little caramel too. Finish still makes you feel like you took a bite off a caramel apple at a fair. Really smooth and enjoyable except that it’s really pushing the boundary of too sweet.