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| Hi, this is one of our (almost) daily tastings. Santé! |
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September 4, 2026 |
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The Time Warp Sessions,
today a pair of high-strength independent Aberlours, bottled almost twenty years apart |
The headline rather gives the game away, does it not…You'll have noticed, though, that we’re still resisting the wave of clickbait titles so fashionable among the new generations. The sort of thing along the lines of: ‘The Two Greatest Independent Aberlours Ever Bottled??? You Won’t Believe the Score of the Last One!!! Read to the End, and Don’t Forget to Tell Us Your Favourite Aberlour in the Comments!!!!!!’ |
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Aberlour 12 yo 1994/2007 (60.4%, C&S Dram Collection, hogshead, cask #8863, 245 bottles) 
We’ve had this baby waiting in the wings since it came out, so it’s well past time we gave it a proper tasting. Colour: pale gold. Nose: textbook Aberlour in its natural state, full of orchard fruits, wild strawberries, peaches and melon ice cream. With water: a few delicate floral touches emerge, along with wormwood, peonies and the like. Mouth (neat): the very same fruits return, this time as compotes and sweets. With water: still very much on sweets and fruit syrups, with plenty of pear and peach. Finish: fairly long, slightly rustic, with leafy herbal infusions made from leaves, stalks and stems. Cherry stalk tea, for example. Comments: this is really rather lovely, close to the distillate, entirely natural, yet without too many rough edges. In short, we do like this pretty much indeed, despite its relative rusticity.
SGP:641 - 84 points. |
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Aberlour 14 yo 2012/2026 (61.9%, Signatory Vintage, Cask Strength Collection, 1st fill oloroso sherry butt, cask #4, 660 bottles) 
We ought to be much closer to the official bottlings here, such as the A’bunadhs. Which reminds me that it’s been almost two years since we last tasted any of the newer A’bunadhs, some whisky blogger we are! Colour: dark reddish amber. Nose: Armagnac-filled chocolate truffles, that’s how we’d sum this nose up for the time being. Add to that a few drops of good old family kirsch and a touch of fresh rubber. With water: chocolate, brown tobacco and light hints of Marmite, perhaps even Maggi, that liquid we either loathe or adore, depending on our family background and cultural upbringing. Honestly. Mouth (neat): once again that very kirsch-driven profile, very much in the style of well-aged fruit eau-de-vie matured in oak (not always the greatest idea), with plenty of Marc de Bourgogne as well. With water: this time it’s genuinely impossible not to think of A’bunadh, surely because of the oloroso. Finish: much the same. Long and punchy, packed with kirsch once again, together with touches of brandy, from Jerez this time. Bitter oranges in the aftertaste. Comments: ‘A’bunadh Indie’.
SGP:561 - 87 points. |
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