It's rare for me to have a Saturday evening off. Even if I'm not working, as such, I need to be up early prepping for Sunday's tours and so tend to avoid heading out to whisky tastings. However, I'm currently taking advantage of the calm before the storm - the storm being August in Edinburgh - and have been allocating a few weekends to myself. So it was great to be able to make this tasting at Loch Fyne Whiskies in Edinburgh last weekend.
Hosted by Craig and Morven, the line up was:
The Living Cask Batch 7, a blended malt, was the welcome dram and I much preferred it to Batch 8. The latter was made up of more Highland whiskies and, on the palate, seemed much younger. Which is no bad thing, of course, proved by the young independently bottled Talisker.
This was, by far, the best dram on the night for me. It had a lovely sootiness to it and the finish was surprisingly long. Limited to 474 bottles (and only one remaining at the Edinburgh shop) and matured in a refill sherry butt this comes in at £115. Initially I thought it was cheaper over on Master of Malt but a closer look shows that this bottling is actually from a refill hogshead.
My least favourite was the Ailsa Bay 1.2. Having tried Ailsa Bay previously, I found it plastic-y and synthetic tasting and, unfortunately, this was more of the same again. It would be interesting, however, to try this blind as I'm sure I was influenced by my previous thoughts.
The other drams were all easy going and would make great every day sippers with the Batch 7 and Glen Moray being pretty good value.
All in all, it was a great tasting - very relaxed and informal with plenty of opportunities to chat about the drams.
The above (commission) links are for The Whisky Shop (the same company therefore the same prices as Loch Fyne Whiskies) but it's always best to shop around (e.g at the time of writing Master of Malt have a Flash Sale on for the Glen Moray 15 years at £33.64)
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