Origin: Isle of Skye (Scotland)
Type: Single Malt Scotch Whisky
Strength: 59.7%ABV
Ageing casks: Ex-Bourbon refill
Chillfiltered: No
Added coloring: No
Owner: Diageo
Average price: € 114.00
Official website: taliskerwhisky.com
Vote: 84/100
We are starting to address Diageo’s 2021 Special Releases, a fixture at the end of each year and highly anticipated by fans, of which we talked about here, at the moment of the first announcement. As it’s became a tradition, the eight bottles are united by a recurring theme on the labels, which this time refers to myths and legends concerning each single distillery under the claim “Legends Untold”.
And let’s start with the sea monster, the Sea Fury, that haunts the ocean near Talisker, which confirmed the same aging as last year opting for the more classic ex-Bourbon refills (which already contained the distillery’s whisky in turn), subjected to a process of heavy charring.
Cask strength, 2012 distillate, ample number of bottles distributed, for one of the bottlings of the series that generally convinces the most.
Tasting notes
The nose reveals a rather unusual spirit for the distillery, with a lively roasting with herbaceous veins on a fruity heart (peach, mango, melon, apricot) and all in all pleasing, with the classic markers of vanilla, caramel, cinnamon well lined up and tinged with a certain minerality in the background. Young and forthright, without much personality.
On the palate the delicious peppery Talisker emerges, driven by a certain alcoholic brutality that makes you fell all of its alcholic strength, reaffirming its sweetness with sugary fruit, even cooked (apple and pear above all), together with sugar paste, almonds, cereal cookies, all wrapped in peat in its vegetable guise with burning wood in the background. Along the length, the coastal side emerges decisively, with a sharper mark of smoke.
Final quite long and saline, of almonds, copper coins, apple, smoke.
It will probably meet the taste of many, born to be the classic coastal and pleasing peat, young but without edges or streaks. All too linear and predictable, without the subtleties and elegance of which Talisker is capable even in its less mature expressions.