We’re back to reviewing Auchroisk, which means only one thing: I need to keep expanding my thoughts on the distillery. For those of you who missed my recent review, that makes sense because it’s not peated, not a beloved whisky for flipping, and someone recently has been having a hissy fit about my reviews thus downvoting me, probably because I used the term “blend” against their narrow, pedantic viewpoint.
Anyway, Auchroisk is from the 70s, has been called “The Singleton” and “The Singleton of Auchroisk”, is used in blends typically, and doesn’t come up often. But that doesn’t mean it’s bad. Distilleries go through phases of great releases, less-than-great releases, and something in between. This can be based on the economy, the owner of the company, or even the distillery head.
So today we have Auchroisk 27 1994 Thompson Bros, which differs from our last one in many ways: Different independent bottler (Thompson Bros is a higher end bottler), much more age, and made in the 90s, instead of 2010. The people who put down this cask may have planned for it to go into a higher end blend then the last one. Or the last one, which was in a first fill port cask, may have just been a side project. We don’t know.
So we know what little we know, and we have a 27-year-old single cask full strength offering from Auchroisk. It’s time to try another and see if the distillery should show up more often in my reviews. Let’s see, shall we?
Price: £175
Region: Speyside
Vintage: 1994
Bottled: 2021
Cask type: Refill Hogshead
No of bottles: 218
Bottled for: The United Kingdom (other examples include: Most of history).
Abv: 51.9%
Colour: 7.5Y 8/6
Nose: Caramel, anise, violets, vanilla
Sweet, spice, some floral, and some vanilla. And… then we’re about done.
Huh. That was a tad sad. I gave it more time. Don’t get much else. I make circle imprints on my face trying to nose it; still nothing. Add some water… nope, not much else. Very closed off. Nothing bad, per say, but it’s really hard to pick aspects out of it.
Taste: Lemon, mineral, tree sap, mint, almond butter
Citrus, mineral, and then different aspects of bitter and mineral. Nutty at times, vegetal, and mineral.
This time though time brings out some more mineral and gives different dimensions on said mineral, but I’ll be honest in saying that’s not really the anchor to any food ships I travel on. Or want to travel on.
Finish: Cashew, mineral, butter, grass
Nutty, fatty, some grass, and then just mineral. Like the nose, this is stalwart in sticking to being itself, which I look up to. I’m like that too, in that I don’t hide my nerdy qualities.
The difference is I’m a person and this is a whisky, and if I was this boring then I need new hobbies. Now let’s move on before I have an existential crisis.
Conclusion: A nice mineral dram that seems really closed off. Water, time, everything was thrown at this and it just kept giving me more mineral aspects on the taste and the finish and taste stayed slightly interesting. Blind I’d say this was 18-years-old and not really worth the hype, which is too bad. I was hoping for something akin to the Cadenhead’s from the same year that I had many years ago.
All in all, if you’re more a fan of mineral or nutty notes, or grassy elements, you may enjoy this a lot more than me. You might find it rather unique and tasty. Perhaps I should have paired it, rather than having it sterile, as I typically review things. Oh well, until the next Auchroisk shows up.
77/100
Scotch review #1583, Speyside review #453, Whisky Network review #2307
tomoderawhisky.ca 