Cask No. 18.31

Cask No. 18.31

Fragrance and flowers

Speyside, Spey

Buttery biscuits and custard tarts arrived with an impressive amount of fruit that combined mangos, banana chips and satsumas with fragrant honeysuckle and waxy textures. On the palate, a burst of red apples, poached pears and soft plums joined crumbly shortbread sprinkled with ginger, dry roasted almonds and just a suggestion of cocoa powder. With a small dash of water came coconut milk with the accentuated fragrance of cherry blossom, jasmine and buttercups in the sunshine. Fruity flavours now embraced bramble and apricot jam on Battenberg cake with vanilla icing. Orange peel brought a fresh zing as cinnamon spice joined bananas flambeed in spiced rum. After spending 11 years in an ex-bourbon hogshead this was transferred into a 1st fill ex-rye hogshead for the remainder of its maturation.

Cask:First-fill Ryehogshead
Age: 13 years
Date distilled: September2007
Alcohol: 55.9%
USA allocation: 78 bottles