pop & pour

Two value hits in a row!  With the last week of whisky on the horizon, the KWM Whisky Advent Calendar is heating up.  Tonight’s bottle is a bit of an oddity, as you don’t see a whole lot of 14 Year Single Malts on the market:  if it doesn’t end in 5 or 10 and isn’t divisible by 3, it isn’t usually a whisky age designation.  This is particularly intriguing because the distillery, Tomatin, also has 12 year AND 15 Year malts on the market.  But 14 it is, and it also has another characteristic that doesn’t show up a ton:  Port cask aging.  More of this please, whisky.  Technically speaking, the Tomatin was only finished in Port casks, spending the last 18 months of its maturation in Port pipes after a lengthy initial aging period in bourbon casks, but I am on board regardless.  Three excellent bits of trivia about Tomatin:  1.  It has the best website cover picture of any distillery in Scotland.  Just go to tomatin.com and see.  I’ll wait.  See?  Worth it, right?  2.  Its name means “Hill of the Juniper Bush”, because juniper is one wood that gives off no smoke while burning, making it a top choice for secret distillers back in the 15th century, when whisky production was illegal but Tomatin’s spiritual predecessors in the area did it anyway.  3.  Due to its relatively isolated location in the Highland mountains, 80% of Tomatin’s employees live at houses built at the distillery!  That’s a new one.

Other than riveting trivia, the thing that caught my attention the most about this Tomatin was its incredible dark bronze colour, very clearly influenced by its year and a half braise in Port barrels.  There was instant orange zest, peach iced tea and nectarine on the nose, filled in with sunbaked earth, hot grill and coconut, like an aromatic summer vacation.  However, the texture on this 14 Year was the true story, rich and round and smooth and mouth-filling, like melted caramel.  As soon as you swallow you just want to hold it in your mouth again (an excellent recipe for drinking a lot of scotch too quickly, by the way).  The orange-y citrus notes persist on the palate, along with an interesting rootiness (like burdock, if you’ve had it, or fresh carrots), nutmeg and cinnamon spice, butter tart, chocolate almonds and a twinge of herbaceousness on the finish.  I would be very happy with this for $87, its KWM sticker price.  Considering I wasn’t a massive fan of last calendar’s Tomatin, this is a highly impressive comeback.