Tamnavulin 1993 Old Malt Cask Review

Hello all,

On my quest to taste a whisky from every distillery in Scotland, I did taste a lot of rubbish. Speyside distilleries that all tasted the same, cheap indie bottlings from re-re-re-re-re-refill casks, but this was the biggest surprise.

I had a hard time tracking down a sample of Tamnavulin. They haven’t released an official bottling until very recently and the indies that had samples were much older expressions. Not really surprising given that it’s made for blends and was closed 1995-2007.

In the end, I managed to convince myself to get this while I was buying other samples.

What a mistake.

Photo courtesy of Master of Malt

Tamnavulin 1993 Old Malt Cask 50%

Colour: Light Gold

Body: Light

Nose: Weird. Soap, cheap perfume, flowers, pollen, freshly cut grass, plastic, melon, lemon, some yeast.

Water: MUCH more yeasty, rising dough, gin, angelica root.

Taste: Follows the nose. Starts with soap, then more floral, flower shop, honeysuckle, honey, chlorophyll, some clean alcohol.

Water: Softly floral, perfume, building soap, ugh! Yeast and cheap Pu-Erh tea (swamp water).

Finish: Medium length. Weird soapy oak and some perfumed chocolate.

From Cask 11150 a refill butt, bottled 2014 at 21yo.

Independent bottlers sometimes buy cask from distilleries that don’t fit with the profile or style that the distillery is looking for. That can mean that they are a bit weird, or unexpected and this is really the perfect example. It’s just unfortunate that ‘weird’ means ‘soapy swamp water’ weird. Also, a great example of older not equalling better.

49/100

Thanks for reading!

Review #278

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