Review #90: Miltonduff 30yrs 1982/2013, 49.5%, Maltbarn, sherry cask, 63 bottles

a lot of early 80's Miltonduff has popped up recently

and no one seems particularly excited about it. It's fairly priced and still for sale here and here and here, for example, so it can't be any good. Still, with this one, you never know.

nose: apples, burnt grass, honey, wet log, and then settles on white chocolate and spicy flowers. It's nice, but it's pretty mundane, except for a second there was an interesting note, somewhere between antiseptic and cardamom, that I can't find again. After 10 minutes or so, the fruit gets a little juicier, and the grass a little grassier, but that's about it. Eventually lots of smaller notes come out -- rocks and leaves and coconut and coffee -- maybe a raisin -- but these are really tiny. Mellow apples and grass if you aren't paying attention

palate: this is the hoppiest whisky I've ever had. Overall it's slightly sweet and very drying, but what really sticks out are the hops and tobacco leaves. Ricola, too.

finishes with faint sherry fruit and lots of eucalyptus


This one veers between very conventional and very curious. Interesting but also ponderous.

score: 86