Reviews

To celebrate the distillery's 125th anniversary in the heart of the Highlands, Aberfeldy has released a limited special edition. This 25-year-old single malt matured for over two decades in refill hogsheads and refill butts before receiving a finish of over a year in first-fill Oloroso sherry casks. Bottled without chill-filtration and without added colour at 46% – a worthy anniversary tribute.

The St. Kilian distillery from Franconia delivers the smoky counterpart to the Mild & Fruity with the Classic Rich & Smoky. Matured in a combination of 70% ex-bourbon and 30% PX and oloroso sherry casks, this single malt promises the marriage of sweet fruit and elegant smoke – and delivers on that promise convincingly.

The St. Kilian distillery from Franconia has quickly established itself as a mainstay in the German whisky landscape. The Classic Mild & Fruity is part of their core range and serves as many people's first introduction to the distillery – a light, approachable single malt that showcases what Franconian whisky has to offer.

Yet another 1987 vintage on the blog – Marcel's vintage seems to attract such bottles like magic. This Invergordon 35 Years from the Mission Gold series by Murray McDavid relies on a PX finish and presents itself as a Single Grain from the Highlands with a clear cask signature. The result is a mellow dram in which mature grain and aged sweetness are not allowed on stage alone.

The Benromach 11 Years (2010/2022) Contrasts Peat Smoke is an experimental single malt from Speyside, in which Benromach audibly turns up the use of peated barley. It was matured exclusively in first-fill bourbon casks; added to that are 57 ppm and a vintage design that refers to the once hand-painted sign above the kiln as well as the distillery's red gates. Sounds like a grand performance, but in the glass it would rather charmingly trip over its own shoelaces.

Benromach 12 Years (2012/2024) Contrasts High Enzyme is a single malt from Speyside, made with enzyme-rich, unpeated barley. This raw material choice, otherwise more common for grain whisky, noticeably shapes the fermentation process and leads here to an independent, distinctive profile. In the glass, it shows a rather mild character, but one clearly focused on freshness, malt, and edgier accents.

Benromach is primarily known for reviving a lightly peated Speyside style, but the Contrasts Unpeated deliberately shows the other side of the distillery. This nine-year-old single malt from Bourbon and Sherry casks comes in at 46 % vol. and clearly focuses on an unpeated, approachable aromatic profile.

Kavalan Triple Sherry Cask (2021) positions itself as a link between the standard bottlings and the single cask bottlings of the Taiwanese distillery. Matured in Oloroso, Pedro Ximénez, and Moscatel sherry casks, this single malt clearly focuses on a rich, sherry-driven profile. The design also points to its origin: the silver lines under the cork represent the mountain ranges around the distillery, while the water filtered through volcanic rock used forms the background of this bottling.

German single malt from Destillerie Kammer-Kirsch + Rothaus, triple distilled and matured for 8 years in American Oak, ex-Marsala, and ex-Madeira casks.

Falken 5 Years (2022) is a German single malt from Farny Destillerie with 43% ABV, whose profile is strongly shaped by the idea of a “lager finish”: six months of alpine summering on the Falkenalpe are intended to bring topography and climate into the cask and ultimately into the glass. It matures for a total of five years in the distillery's casks and presents itself as a rather mild, unexcited representative with a regional mountain backdrop in tow – whether that is great alpine air or rather alpine marketing is something the glass may answer.

The Elsburn Rivesaltes Casks Batch No. 001 is a German single malt from Hercynian Distilling Co. that draws its character from a sweet wine context rooted in Rivesaltes in L’Occitanie. In the glass, it presents itself as rich, sweet-fruity, and surprisingly approachable – exactly the kind of bottling that simply works without much fuss.

The Tormore 10 Years Blueprint Cream Sherry is the third candidate after the Toasted Barrel and the Bourbon Barrel – and we were correspondingly curious what the distillery would pull out of its sleeve this time. In the Speyside-typical “mellow” corner announced, however, there’s more of a dry edge here than a dessert glass.