Imperial 1995 The Ultimate, Review

Hi everyone,

Another whisky review coming at you today. It’s from a closed distillery but one of those ones that’s closed relatively recently and so is still relatively available.

If you hadn’t heard of Imperial Distillery, I wouldn’t blame you. It was defunct for a number of years, only really producing between 1991 and 1998. It was never really available on its own and is only available through the independent bottlers. It was demolished in 2013 and a new distillery was built on the site, Dalmunach.

This is a sample I picked up from FineDrams a while back and is bottled by The Ultimate Whisky Co., who I haven’t seen in the UK but are mostly in Belgium and Holland I think.

Imperial 1995 The Ultimate 46%

Colour: Gold

Body: Medium

Nose: Noses older than 19 years. Dusty fruit, mothballs, dunnage, beeswax polish, old dry wood. Some fresher fruit starting to appear, red apple, soft raisin, some spices too, fresh cut ginger, clove. Liquorice and old homemade limoncello come out after a bit.

Taste: Soft arrival with red apple and fruit, quickly becomes dry with lots of oak and spices, some dunnage, Hessian, then the fruit comes back a bit with dried orange peel but doesn't overcome the spiciness. After some time its softer, lemoncello, very dry old oak, tannins, bitter lemon pith.

Finish: Medium/Long length. Intense spiciness with dry old oak and some old dusty lemon peel.

Bottled at 19yo. Really interesting stuff. Reminds me of Bladnoch or Glen Elgin with the dunnage style. It felt a bit overaged with any water, but neat it was a good example of a more ‘traditional’ tasting whisky.

77/100

Thanks for reading!

Scotch Review #433

Whisky Network Review #493

Network Average: 74.3

Best Score: 92

Worst Score: 22

0-49 Terrible

50-59 Bad

60-64 Just About OK

65-69 Ok to Good

70-74 Good

75-79 Very Good

80-84 Excellent

85-89 Superb

90+ Magnificent

Full Disclosure Disclaimer: I currently work as a Brand Ambassador for Penderyn Distillery. The views expressed here are purely my own and do not reflect the views of Penderyn Distillery or The Welsh Whisky Company. I try to maintain as much objectivity as I can but feel free to take my reviews with as big a pinch of salt as you like. Furthermore, my rating scale is NOT based on a Parker type wine scoring scale or a school/college/university % or A-F grade score. You can find more on my scoring here. I apologise for any seemly low or 'bad' scores given with my system and am sorry I can't say only nice things. Please keep in mind that I am ethically compromised and am unable to produce 100% unbiased reviews.

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