Review #66: Old Pulteney 21yr, 46%, OB

award winner

This won the special Whisky Bible prize a couple years ago, so I guess I'm late in getting around to it. It's bound to be disappointing, of course, but I like their bottles.

I believe this is an outlier in the Whisky Bible sweepstakes: it's the only Thai-owned distillery to win, and one of the few more or less standard bottlings. (I think it's more or less disappeared, though, even if it's not strictly a limited edition.) I looked at the old winners, and it looks like there are some patterns. It should be an exclusive bottling, but not too exclusive that no one who buys the book can possibly get it. (No single casks, obvs!) It should be from LVMH or Buffalo Trace, or, if it really has to be, from Pernod Ricard. It should be available in all the markets that the book sells in. (So no Kavalan, for now.) Given the recent polemic against sherry casks, I'm thinking it should be wine-finished at all, at least not without a really story about exemplary security measures against sulfur. Without a wine-finish gimmick, it'll need a wood-based gimmick or an overproof gimmick I think. It should cost about 100+/-30 bucks. And it should be worth 97.5 points. So I think I'm now in a position to predict the next couple of winners:
2014: Ardbeg Auriverdes, 97.5
2015: William Larue Weller, 97.5
By 2016 all whisky will cost so much that Evan Williams or Wild Turkey will have to win. If we're lucky.

but back to the review ...

Nose is surprisingly sweet and rich. I was expecting some smoke, some seawater, and bourbon cask flavors. It's all those things, but better -- everything's become honeyed, floral, and nutty -- it smells like a well-aged whisky. The fruit really comes through: peach pie filling and some spicy pear compote. Marshmallows, coconut, a little paint thinner, wet hay, and vanilla toffee. Oak.

Palate is nicely balanced between creamy/oily and slightly bitter smoke.

Finish is curiously sweet and oily -- tongue-coating. It's so sweet it might be off-putting, but I think it might be fairly bitter from the oak and smoke otherwise, so it all works out. Some salinity comes back, too. The finish really, really lasts, too. With the oak maybe a little too long.

This is a nice whisky -- better than I expected. The flavor profile doesn't really stand out -- it seems like it could be just as well another bottling from another distillery -- but back when you could buy it it would have been a good buy.

score: 88