Origin: Highlands (Scotland)
Type: Single Malt Scotch Whisky
Strength: 58.7%ABV
Ageing casks: Ex-Bourbon and ex-Sherry
Chillfiltered: No
Added coloring: No
Owner: Adelphi Distillery Ltd.
Average price: € 85.00
Official website: www.adelphidistillery.com
Vote: 86/100
Having tried several expressions of this young distillery’s core range, the curiosity to taste the cask strength version was high.
And guess what? I succeeded!
The first of two editions, bottled in February 2022 as the name suggests, it’s the fruit of the union of several ex-Bourbon and ex-Sherry casks, to be precise forty-five of the former and five of the latter, chosen from those that contained peated (forty) and unpeated (ten) whiskies.
This and other information can be found by scanning the QR code on the label, which also lets you know how the distillates are three from 2014 and the rest from 2015, as well as the quality of the barley used (Concerto), details on fermentation and much more: a true monument to transparency.
After this wave of notions, let’s see what the glass has to say…
Tasting notes
What immediately strikes the nose is the delicate sweetness of this whisky, with its totally absent alcohol content and a soft freshness that leaves you (almost) breathless. Fruits (white melon, apple, pear, peach), orange marmalade, vanilla, acacia honey, cashews, hyacinth… so many intense and rich aromas, in which the peat smoke is a gentle caress of moist and vegetal tones, with tobacco veins. Delicious.
On the palate, the alcohol already becomes more evident, but it’s not a muscular test as much as a test of the depth and drive of the flavours, which find a charge of pepper and ginger, abandoning the sweet trace of the nose to move onto burnt tones of coffee, chocolate, caramel and cereal biscuits. Citrus fruits are the representatives for the fruit world, accompanied by touches of liquorice, while the vegetal side is amplified, also expressed by peat, which emerges above all on the length together with a mineral vein, of wet stone, and an impression of brine. Oily and lively.
The finish is quite long and repeats the score of the palate, with a greater presence of citrus and vegetable notes.
A truly bewitching and seductive nose to which responds a palate that betrays some youth but does so with a certain class and substance, re-proposing that masterful balance to which the distillery has accustomed us and which not even the full alcohol content manages to disturb. Perhaps not memorable, but it’s very, very enjoyable to drink.