This is a fascinating dram. Given the age, many of the flavors you’d generally associate with Scotch have long been lost to time, but what’s left is here to stay. I get subtle but noticeable roasted cacao and astringent Italian salad greens, like radicchio, followed by oak and seaspray —and not the vanilla you get from wine barrel oak, but like wood-chip oak. Long, savory finish, and the mildly bitter astringent qualities are surprisingly pleasant, setting up the palate nicely for the next sip and the next. Like having a conversation with a sharp ninety-year-old whose youthful vigor and ebullience is gone, but what remains —character, tenacity and grit— is well worth contemplating and interesting to be around. Not a hedonistic drink but certainly an unusual, cerebral and enjoyable one.
4.04
About this bottle
Dailuaine is not well known to many drinkers as a single malt, as it is most commonly used as a blending component for Johnnie Walker. However, as part of the 2015 Special Releases series from Diageo, this Scotch has been bottled in its oldest expression as a single malt, distilled in 1980. It was aged in second-fill American oak hogshead, bottled at 51% ABV, limited to around 680 bottles worldwide.
How it tastes
Measured across 14 flavor axes. Tap a note to find other bottles that lead with it.
Reviews
Showing the most detailed of 1 parsed reviews.
Ed H
4.3
Tastes like this
Closest flavor profiles across the whole catalog.
